Could I Land A Big Airliner With Just Radio Assistance?

Factual Questions
1

In another thread we are discussing what to do if crazed terrorists take over your plane. As I fly a lot in my job, this is a matter of some interest to me.

Suppose a pack of al-Qaida goons take over my Boeing 757 intending to fly it into the Sears Tower, and so they murder the flight crew. However, I and an intrepid band of passengers overpower and kill the terrorists and commandeer the plane. But now what the hell do we do? Assuming none of the passengers are deadheading pilots, we have to figure out a way to land the plane. Your seat cushion may serve as a flotation device, but it’s a crappy parachute.

I know how to use radios so I could probably figure out how to radio the nearest airport in short order. So let us assume the passengers elect me Pilot, with some other clown elected Co-Pilot. I know the basics of flight - pull the yoke back and the nose goes up, push it forward and it goes down. I’ve flown lots of PC simulators. I know what flaps do and what the rudder does, more or less. But I don’t really know how to fly a plane in real life and to me a jetliner’s control panel looks very confusing.

So in the movies, the control tower would tell the intrepid hero how to land the plane. My question therefore is:

  • Could they actually talk me through landing a Boeing 757 (or an equivalent, big jet, such as an Airbus A320) over the radio?
2

No.

You could debate using the autopilot. But hand flying? No way.

3

Recently flew from O’Hare (Chicago) to Bradley (Hartford) on an American Airlines Super 80, I believe thats a 727…?
I was wondering the same thing. I sat in First Class, and saw the pilot close and lock the cockpit door.
Safety measure #1 that calmed me down.
After the flight I noticed the door did not open once.
Safety measure #2 that calmed me down a bit.

The other thread in IMHO - Is about if terrorists tried to take over the plane…Most of us would stand and fight to the death until the pilot could land the flight.

However, if the pilot and crew could not do this…what would we do.

It is my guess that that would depend on when the hijacking and subsequent hostile take over was thwarted. Mid flight on a 5 hour flight, the flight path is all auto pilot I believe (pending no turbulence you have to steer out of)

So in that case radio towers could most likely be raised, and hopefully, they could tell you exactly what to do and how to do it. Things to take into account would be wind speed, how to line up to the stripe. when to give more or less flap…when to power down and how to power down, how to keep the nose up when on decent. I mean at that point, gravity and airspeed are making you plunge to the earth.

I noticed on my last flight the pilot was a mid-40’s looking gentleman who gave a really smooth flight. And upon landing, I noticed that 15 seconds before we actually touched down, the plane was tilting from side to side to some degree

Anyone who travels with any amount of regularity would see this too.

So if it were me…I’d have to be told waaaay in advance how to avoid tilting from side to side so much as to not shed a wing off the plane…

There have been plenty of accidents right at airports resulting in a ball of firey mess, going 157 mph down the runway.

4

Well, you’d certainly have a better chance at landing it yourself than you would in crashing into the Sears tower…

5

Don’t newer large jets have auto-landing functions? Some sort of means for a plane to be landed by the auto-pilot based on GPS and signals from the airport?

6

I thought pilots were needed for taking off and landing and the auto-pilot was for cruising speeds. No?

7

Yes, using signals from a ground based ILS. The impression I got from the OP was that he was speaking of hand flying the landing.

8

My response was for Jonathan Chance.

9

I found a couple of old threads discussing this topic (I knew I remembered having read a GQ about this before, maybe a couple years ago). So, if you’re interested:

“By the way, is there anybody on board who knows how to fly a plane?”

Could I land a commercial airliner?

10

Thanks, berkut! I thought I read something somewhere about that.

So then wouldn’t your best chance be to figure out how to contact ATC, scream ‘HOLY FARK! WE’RE SCREWED!’ and let them tell you how to engage the auto-landing system? And I’d bet they’d divert all other nearby traffic to get you on the ground, too.

11

From what I wrote in the first linked thread

Phlosphr I am in agreement with you, and I have discussed this with flight crew members. I am of the opinon that the terrorists would have to kill a bunch of people before they could take over the plane. As one Filght attendent said to me, “All I have to do is tell the frequent fliers that these are the guys responsible for the long security lines, and they would get torn limb from limb.”

12

I’ll let the big iron guys answer that one. I don’t know how hard it is to set up an autoland, procedure-wise.

My first job when I came to school was maintaining the various simulators owned by the department. One of these sims was rented out to airlines to give potential new-hires their sim ride. It was also used in various experiments, tours, just goofing off, and so on. We would often have situations where someone with some flying experience (or PC sim experience) would attempt to land it while being “talked down” by someone in the right seat, who was actually rated in the aircraft. These situations, with very rare exception, ended in accidents.

If the average person can’t land it while having a rated pilot sitting next to them, talking them down, pointing out the necessary indicators and controls, then I doubt someone will be able to do it over the radio.

13

In 1991, I was flying a Air New Zealand B757 from Auckland to Singapore. Although I was in coach, looking forward could see light coming though the front curtains, meaning the cockpit door was open. I nonchalantly strolled through first class, stuck my head in the cockpit, and said hi to the crew. They were very friendly, even more so when I told them I worked at the National Air and Space Museum and expressed knowledge of, and interest in, the glass cockpit. (The 757 was the first major airliner to use a few integrated CRT displays in place of the myriad separate gauges and dials of older aircraft. It was dubbed the “glass cockpit.”)

The 757 was also the first airliner capable of auto take-off and landing, making it theoretically possible to fly a complete hands-off flight.

I asked the ANZ pilots about this and they explained that (surprise!) they preferred to handle the controls themselves on landings, adding that not all airports had been programmed into the system. So despite the technical capabilty, I suspect that, except for some system tests, very few (if any) flights with paying passengers have ever been fully hands-off.

We chatted for several minutes and then the captain was kind enough to invite me to sit in the jump seat during the landing at an island refueling stop coming up. It was quite a thrill. And I was interested to note how llong they left the autopilot on. The approach was parallel to the runway from the opposite end, requiring a U turn before coming in to final approach. They didn’t take manual control until the autopilot had completed almost half of that last turn.

I assume that the 767 and 777 have full auto takeoff and landing capability, too. A 7x7 pilot will no doubt be along shortly to clarify this point.

14

You know I spend a whole 5 minutes trying to dig up that thread. I have to be the Flash around here to post a link.

Sheeeeeesh :wink:

15

I believe I could do it, with an excellent pilot to talk me in. I will go to my death believing I can do it, maybe dragging a couple of hundred people kicking and screaming with me. :slight_smile: And I can guarantee 100% that with me at the controls, the plane will return to earth.

Could YOU do it? Who knows, and the only way to have a factual answer to this is to try. So this is really an IMHO thread.

I believe there are some who could do it , while most could not.

Still, think of the Souix City crash. If you can get the plane into the airport grounds, and not hit at too sharp an angle, and the emergency response teams are ready and waiting – there’s a very good chance that many or most of those aboard would survive. Of course, that plane had great pilots, but the plane irself was seriously crippled mid-flight.

In a properly functioning plane I bet I could match that landing. And what, after all, would I have to lose in the attempt?

16

I don’t think so. Even with an autopilot landing you have to stop before the end of the runway, so it would sort of depend on the length of the runway you land on.

For a relatively short one maybe you need to use brakes plus thrust reversers so you have to know how to work them and that requires training.

There’s at least one airline pilot on the board and maybe he or she(?) will come on line with an answer.

My money is on “no.”

17

Real quick because I’m off to the simulator for a recurrent checkride tonight…

From the first linked thread I’m just going to cut and paste my response. Overall, autopilot = good. Hand flying = disaster.
From the previous thread:

I’ll use one example: my last job in the Air Force was flying the T-1 and training students how to fly. I got a good deal and went to Pensacola, FL for 4 months to fly the same airplane, but use it to train navigators instead of pilots. I flew in the left seat, student Nav in the right seat, instructor Nav in the jumpseat. We had sorties that the instructor Navs had to go on with just us so they could follow us through a set of stalls, steep turns, etc. Some of the Navs wanted to try landing the T-1. Because of the mission (lots of low-levels flown at 500 feet and 300 knots) there was a chance that we would hit a bird and the pilot would be incapacitated. Now, these navigators had all sorts of experience - from B-1 bomber guys to backseaters in F-14s and F-15Es. But without fail, they would have killed all of us attempting to land. The T-1 is not a large jet - it only weighs 15,000 lbs. But start jockeying those throttles around and yank that yoke close to the ground and you’re history. I ended up telling everyone I flew with that if I got taken out by a bird, hook up the autopilot, get vectored onto the ILS and let the jet land itself. All they had to do was pull the throttles to idle and brake to a stop.

What that means for this discussion is that the autopilot is the best friend that a motivated passenger could ever have. If (for the sake of discussion) it ever did come down to Joe and Jane average passenger sitting up front, the first priority would be (as stated before) to get in radio contact with someone. Most likely you wouldn’t need to change anything - just use the frequency already tuned in the radio (it’s probably also already selected on the comm panel), put on the headset (or turn on the speaker) and start talking to center. Once they realize what has happened you will get ALL KINDS of help. My guess is that you would get a quick and dirty education in autopilot operation. It’s much easier to say “twist that knob until you see 5000” than to actually descend and level off at 5,000 ft. The controller (or whoever he brought in who is familiar with your airplane) would then talk you through the descent - there would be a lot of punching of buttons and dialing of knobs, but no actual hand-flying of the jet. They would vector you onto an ILS for the longest runway available near you.

As someone else mentioned, if the airplane is autoland capable you don’t really need a Cat III or even a Cat II runway - any ILS will do. Just hook it up and press “autoland”. And even if the airplane isn’t technically capable of it, just letting the autopilot fly the ILS down until it hits the runway is very survivable - you’ll hit the ground at a descent rate of about 700 feet/minute. It will just feel like a hard landing.

As for stopping, if an airplane is autoland it most likely has autobrakes as well. If not, someone could be instructed fairly easily on how to use the brakes (you could even practice in the air to get a feel for it).

So, if for some reason this DID ever happen, I’d say the chances are pretty good you’d survive…IF you have an autopilot and no damage to the airplane. Get rid of the autopilot, or add in a control problem…that means (more) trouble.

18

Heck, landing is easy! It’s keeping the plane in one piece after touchdown that’s the tricky bit.

19

Indeeed. It’s a fine line between “land” and “crash”.

Of course, sometimes that line is the colour of burning jet fuel and scorched bodies, but hey, omelets and eggs.

20

Since we’re fooling around:

The odds of surviving the landing are inversely proportional to the angle of approach.