Can anyone be taught to fly a plane?

Factual Questions
21

Planes aren’t that hard to fly, but one cannot seriously argue that it’s nearly as simple as driving a car. A car moves on what is essentially a… well, a plane, a two-dimensional area. Car go forward, backward, and can turn. Planes move in the Z axis as well, and their movement in that axis affects everything about everything else. Energy management in an airplane is literally a life and death matter; energy management in a car is making sure you stop for gas.

I’m not saying flying a plane is hard or that most people couldn’t do it, but it absolutely is harder than driving a car, a lot harder. Consider this line by Crafter Man:

I believe his son is telling the truth, but consider some of the implications of these sentences. First, his son has been taking lessons over the course of a year. I’ve never heard of a person taking DRIVING lessons for a year. The reason planes are generally handled more safely than cars is that the expectations in terms of of instruction, tutelage, and attentiveness for the new pilot are much, much higher. Where I live, you can legally acquire a driver’s license without taking any formal instruction at all. That casual attitude would be unthinkable in licensing pilots.

Secondly, Crafter Man’s son is taking flying lessons because he specifically wants to fly. It’s a very self-selecting group, as opposed to car drivers, who in North America are almost the entire adult population. It’s very unlikely your daft Aunt Edna who dings her fender every time she goes to Walmart is going to decide she wants to buzz around in a Cessna every weekend. To again draw the parallel with drivers, in my country, Canada, more than 90% of adults have a driver’s license; less than a quarter of one percent of adults have a pilot’s license, and according to some sources Canada has more pilot’s licenses than any country in the world except the USA.

The point about rules is an important one, too. Most of us when we learn to drive already know most of the rules. The rules of driving are generally quite obvious, and we are surrounded by the rules our whole lives. I don’t think many people attain the age of 16 and step into driver’s ed not already knowing what traffic lights and stop signs mean. You will usually have spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours in a car by that point. By comparison, the rules of operating aircraft are not always intuitive, are not ubiquitous throughout our culture, and very, very few people have ever spent a minute in the cockpit of a plane when they were kids.

22

But that wasn’t the question. The question was not how hard flying a plane is relative to driving a car, the question was whether or not the average person, or just about anyone, COULD learn to fly an airplane.

The answer is yes. It is possible for just about anyone. If you have the physical skills and the intellect required to learn to drive a car you have the basic requirements required to learn to fly.

But most people don’t have the motivation to do the hard work/additional work above what’s required for driving in order to become a pilot.

Most people who are able to jog COULD run marathons… but most are just not interested enough to do the training and work to pull it off. There’s a lot of things the typical person COULD do, but doesn’t, because he or she is not interested enough to put in the work and time required to do it.

23

Out of curiosity, which skills and knowledge are required to fly a plane (say, a private craft like a Cessna)?

For example, I have a college degree and can drive a car with the best of them. But even simple arithmetic gives me fits (watch me play Dungeons and Dragons and try to calculate the outcome of a a 4d6 + 8 roll; it’s quite a sight). And algebra? Forget it.

Would I be putting a foot in the grave as soon as I flipped the ignition switch if I tried to learn to fly?

24

I took a few hours of flight lessons many years ago before quitting because I didn’t really have the money to pursue it. From my perspective, it seemed like the toughest part of flying was learning to understand and deal with air traffic control and other planes in busy airspace. I never dealt with adverse weather conditions, which affect planes’ performance much more than cars’. With good training and enough experience, I think any normal person could learn to fly safely but I thought it was going to take me a long time.

25

If you just want to fly around sight-seeing on nice summer days or take easy trips to nearby locations you don’t need much math. Maintaining a constant speed is very important for planes, but from a perspective of the physical motions required again, if you can operate a car you can operate a small Cessna.

A lot of the math is already worked out for you - calculating weight and balance means plugging figures into a chart for an airplane like that, or using rules of thumb. You are certainly allowed to use calculators, and there are small flight computers that, again, reduce much of the math to plugging numbers into pre-made formulas.

Algebra would be the highest math involved in small Cessna flying, and you can actually avoid most of even that if you want to do so. The big sticking point for you might be passing the written test - but there are a LOT of test prep materials, courses, and so forth out there. If you were able to do enough math to get a college degree you should be able to deal with it.

26

it’s also got more severe consequences for screwing up. A car has airbags, crumple zones, side impact beams, and so on. And when you’re learning you can practice at slow speeds in an empty parking lot for as long as you want before you get onto a six-lane urban highway at rush hour. Flying an airplane? The only way to get a sense of how it handles is to take to the air, at which point you are committed to performing a successful landing if you want to see tomorrow.

Driving? All you gotta manage is speed and direction. You can generally sense your speed from the scenery going by, and if you do get too slow, it’s not a disaster; just step on the accelerator a bit. And you can generally sense your direction by looking at the road ahead of you, and maintaining certain spatial relationships WRT to lines on the pavement. There are basic rules of the road that are always in effect, easily memorized, and the only transient rules are the signs and traffic lights you see through your windshield.

Flying? You need to manage speed more carefully and deliberately, because if you go too slow you’ll stall/crash/die, and if you go too fast you’ll shred the plane. It’s hard to gauge your speed from the scenery going by, since everything’s so far away, so you have to watch your airspeed gauge closely. You also have to pay attention to direction, altitude, and climb/descent rate. And maybe also prop pitch, mixture, and power setting. And manage your interactions with ATC at the same time. And before each takeoff and landing, there’s a whole checklist of things you need to do to assure you don’t end up in a hospital or morgue.

Watch people drive on roads, and you’ll see most of them engaging in unsafe behaviors, some more so than others. Tailgating, not signaling turns or lane changes, driving distracted, driving drunk, speeding, driving in blind spots, deficient maintenance, and so on. These may get you into a car crash, but the safety features of modern cars give you a good chance of walking away. Cut corners as a pilot, and you’re far more likely to get killed. Skipping checklists is a good example. There’s this runway overrun crash because the pilots left the controls locked…because they didn’t go through the checklist to confirm the controls could be freely moved. Similar crash here, when the control yoke was blocked by a goggles case.

I flew a few times with a small-plane owner who held that safety procedures ought to be adhered to with religious dedication, and that pilots who didn’t do so were grossly overrepresented in crash statistics. I think he was probably right. And given the average human being’s penchant for cutting corners on safety issues, ISTM that while most folks could probably be taught to fly (in the sense that they might actually be able to earn a pilot’s license), most folks would probably kill themselves before accumulating many hours of seat time.

27

Posts like Broomstick’s are why the SDMB needs a “Like” button. Thanks Broomstick!

28

My WAG as a non-pilot: No, not everyone can be taught to fly, and indeed a good many can’t. It is harder than driving, and there are some people who can’t even drive, ergo, cannot fly. As **RickJay **points out, in a car, at worst, you can always stop the car at the side of the road and it’s just 2-dimensional travel; you can’t do that in an airplane.

If the “everyone can fly” theory were tested in real life, there would be a whole lot of failed students and/or fatalities.

29

The airforce had (and maybe they still have it) a short course for officer candidates to learn how to fly a small cessna. Not everyone passes that course and those that don’t pass have to switch from pilot to some other job in the air force.

30

I will note that the minimum requirements, both from a physical standpoint and a performance standpoint, to be a pilot in the military is significantly higher/more stringent than for a civilian private pilot.

31

I remember some Flying magazine article from decades ago where the guy describes giving a recently discharged Air Force pilot his introductory flight in a small Cessna. This guy had flown supersonic jets, but how fragile and rattletrap a Cessna was apparently terrified him.

As for lying - as others mention, the problem is that exceeding the envelope can have fatal consequences. Yes, you can let go the controls and accelerate, and there’s a chance the aircraft is trimmed ok an will lift off. If not, hitting whatever is past the end of the runway at 200mph is probably a risky maneuver. If you lift off and it’s trimmed s the nose keeps going up - you will reach a few hundred feet then suddenly nose down. (Think Lion Air). A common fatality in pilots in engine-out emergencies is thinking “if I pull the nose up just a bit more I can glide a bit further, to that safe landing spot” and pull the nose up, slowing too much, and again stalling and heading nose-down into the ground. You cant fight physics, and when it’s critical, you cannot spend a minute looking up safe glideslope numbers in a manual, or researching what that button does or that blinking light means - which is why airline pilots are type-certified for each type of aircraft.

Similarly, a small Cessna supposedly will recover from a stall or spin even if you just pull back the power and let go the controls (I did it once with the instructor) - but needs a few hundred feet vertical to do so. Most of the time when you have that problem, you don’t have the vertical. The big jets should never be allowed to reach that state.

landing is best described - once you reach flare level height, a few feet up - level off and pull up the nose slowly as the speed bleeds off. Pull up too fast, an you are suddenly 20 to 50 feet up when the plane stops actually flying; too slow, and you hit the ground a bit too hard and too fast. Landing gear are petty forgiving, but only so much. So it’s a skill that has to be practiced with a qualified instructor; the consequences can be far more expensive - or lethal - that parallel parking.

So I’ll go along with the assessment; probably a decent number of people can be taught to fly, fewer can be taught to fly well enough that they won’t kill themselves and others. It requires a level of dedication to learning that is more detailed than driving, so is not something someone would do occasionally, which is why generally it’s a profession. And as pointed out, we have a lifetime exposure to driving before we even get behind the wheel - a lot less so with flying.

32

I can well imagine. A fighter jet weighs upwards of 20,000 pounds, has a pressurized cockpit, enough thrust to go ~vertical, and is designed to tolerate 9g and Mach 2. A general-aviation plane like a Cessna 172 weighs 2,000 pounds, has barely enough thrust to take to the air, and is made for only a few g and less than 200 MPH. I get the same feelings when I switch from my motorcycle to my bicycle. :smiley:

33

That was going to be my reply. Basic flying is pretty easy. Landing is a little more difficult but I did it acceptably on my first try. I always found dealing with ATC and airspaces pretty hard however because I have only flown in the really busy busy Boston and DFW areas. Most flight training is just about what to do during abnormal situations because you can’t just pull over to the side of the road.

34

You have to define what you mean by “learn to fly a plane like an Airbus…”.

Do you mean the real pilot gives your aunt brief instructions, hands over controls and she keeps is straight and level? The answer is probably yes.

Do you mean the same situation, but your aunt must make some gentle turns? Answer likely also yes, esp. in Airbus which does not require use of rudder pedals, automatically trims itself, automatically protects against over-banking, stalling or over-stressing the plane.

Do you mean can she manually fly some course changes as indicated by the flight director “command bars”? Probably yes if she was properly instructed: https://i.stack.imgur.com/nBu0s.gif

Do you mean your aunt must land the plane under supervision of another pilot? The answer is also yes, provided she uses the autolanding system. You could argue that’s not real flying but 95% of airline miles are on autopilot and carriers often require the pilot to use the autoland system. In that case she’d just use the controls under the glare shield to dial in the course, vertical speed, airspeed, then arm the approach hold system and intersect the glide slope for a fully-coupled approach. The plane automatically follows the glide slope to the runway. Modern airliners can do auto flare on landing, auto braking after landing, and rollout guidance to stay centered on the runway.

Do you mean your aunt must enter the cockpit of a cold, dark Airbus and manage the entire sequence of startup, programming the flight management system, interacting with tower, taxiing, ATC, etc? Probably not.

Could she be handed controls in a hard IFR condition and hand fly a missed approach in a difficult airport environment like Aspen CO? Probably not.

Could she learn to fly an Airbus and become a certificated commercial pilot with ATP and type ratings? Unless she was young she probably wouldn’t get hired, but if she was rich and wrote a big check to a traning academy or FlightSafety to spend whatever time was required to learn it, it’s possible, provided she was sufficiently motivated.

35

there have been cases where a pilot died and the passenger had to land the plane right? Or are those urban legends?

36

A friend who’s also a pilot for a big airline says something similar: that the auto-pilot flies the plane for more time than he does. He says that he only flies the plane for takeoff & landing, the rest of the time the autopilot is flying it, during normal flights. (He’s only there to take over when the flight stops being normal.) And he says the builders are working on automating the takeoffs & landings.

He likes this automation; says it makes flying much safer for everyone. But he does worry about a decrease in the skill level of new pilots (and a likely reduction in their pay/prestige level). Says he might choose another occupation if he was young and just beginning as a pilot.

37

Oh, sure, passengers have landed airplanes with incapacitated pilots. However, it’s the smaller planes where that is much more likely to be successful. The two and four seat modern airplanes (that means post-1960 with one or two models from earlier) are pretty user-friendly as aircraft go, you generally don’t have to worry about fooling with the landing gear (it’s down and welded in place). Plenty of people have been talked down over the radio, and there’s a number of publications that cover what to do (the Emergency Survival Handbook, for example, has a pretty decent “how to land a small airplane” entry).

The more complications you add - more weight, more speed, retractable landing gear, adjustable propellers, more flaps/slats/etc. on the wings, more engines, etc. - the less optimistic one would be about a non-pilot passenger landing an airplane. It’s not impossible, just less likely to have a good outcome for all.

38

I had 70 hours of pilot training and then my wife wanted a second child, which put a dent in that conquest.

But basically, yes, just about anyone can learn to fly a plan. There is a large muscle memory component, so just like learning a musical instrument, the younger you are, the faster you will pick it up.

While operating a plane in flight is pretty easy, the act of flying is mentally (and physically to a degree) demanding. It’s a job of constant corrections in speed, trim and direction to stay on course.

39

When I am in Chicago, I try to avoid the Dan Ryan and Eisenhower until at least midnight. And not even then, if the Cubs or Bears won a night game.

Definitely true, in fact, one of them happened around here a couple of years ago. But when the pilot had a heart attack his wife A) knew how to use the radio and call for help and B) was directed to fly to the least busy staffed airport they could find.

And, as noted, landing a small plane can be pretty easy if you have a straight-on approach in good weather, keep a light touch on the controls, and someone is telling you what to do every step of the way. Change any of those variables and your chances drop dramatically.

40

And even in the one or two legendary cases of an untrained passenger landing a large airliner, there’s a difference between step-by-step following the directions of trained professionals on the radio, who are telling you everything you need to do and doing everything else in their power to make it easier on you, and doing it all by yourself.