And I am sure that you would look very cute doing it but you still couldn’t land that 747.
World Eater,
I am a pilot as are many other dopers and I love flying more than anything in the world. I can fly small planes like the king’s business and I can land 747’s, 767’s, and 737’s 99% of the time on flight simulators regardless of the ridiculous conditions that I set up. I still don’t think that I could land a real transport jet during the situation that you describe. It is just not a skill that is possible to pick up by reading about it or even by using common sense or PC simulators. You just have to know that particular skill.
If you are that interested in aviation, buy a copy of “Stick and Rudder” for theory. All major bookstores carry it. I keep it beside my bed at all times and re-read it about 4 times a year. It will teach you all you ever wanted to know about flare and more. Buy MS Flight Simulator 2002. It is a very good program. ALthough it won’t teach you to fly actual planes, the aviation knowledge that you aquire will be invaluable if you follow the lessons and procedures and treat it as a tutorial and not a game. A single, first lesson will cost a little less than $100. There are no obligations. At the end of that lesson, you should know how to land a small airplane quite poorly but with no major carnage on the ground and the aircraft still intact.
Xerxes wrote:
Did anyone here see the movie Turbulence?
A flight attendant, all alone in a 747 cockpit, with no flight training of her own, had to be talked down to a landing at Los Angeles International airport.
How did she do it?
She basically pushed the “fly me to LAX” button, the “line me up with runway 25 Left” button, and the “land me” button, in that order. :rolleyes:
My parents’ next-door neighbor is a simulator technician for American Airlines at their main headquarters in Dallas/Fort Worth. I’m told this is no longer allowed (after 9/11), but in the past the guys who ran the things were allowed (possibly unofficially) to bring in guests on the few occasions during the year when they weren’t in use. 9:00 p.m. on December 24, for example. Whenever he called to extend the offer, we jumped at the chance.
Aside from being loads of fun, it was quite educational to fly 767 or MD-80 simulators. These things are stunningly realistic.
The usual routine he’d set up for folks like me (basically no flying experience) was to set us up on an approach with the automatic throttle control set to maintain the desired landing speed. We’d set the flaps, and control the plane on our own using the yoke and rudder pedals. The ILS was generally “on”, giving us a very easy target to shoot for.
The ILS did not fly the plane for you. It provided a glideslope target that you aimed to stay on.
Given all of that help, it really wasn’t that hard.
My father, who is not a licensed pilot but has a good bit of small-plane time, asked if he could try setting up a landing and making it on his own. As in, no automatic throttle control, and making the turns to line up with the runway himself. My neighbor said “Sure.”
He did it. Without that much trouble.
Read into that what you will.
Much appreciated on the info Shagnasty, but at 28 its probably too late for a career change. I will definitely pick up the book you mention though, because aviation is very interesting to me. The fact that we can get multi-ton hunks of metal with thousands of parts, and put them tens of thousands of feet into the air is pretty mind-boggling. I also am in no way belittling a pilot’s job by implying its easy, as they have only my utmost respect.
You don’t have to do a career change. Most anyone can become a private pilot if they desire. That license gives you a surprising amount of authority compared to most licenses. Want to land at JFK or LaGuardia, no problem, Air Traffic Control will find a slot for you just as they will a 747 arriving from Hong Kong. You would be just as legit as they are.
A private pilot’s license will cost roughly $6000 but flight schools do not mind at all if you just take 1 or 2 lessons at less than $100 a piece. You do not need to sign up for any kind of full program. Also, flight time is good forever so if you take a lesson now and retain those skills 10 years from now, they still count as if they were yesterday.
Do buy “Stick and Rudder”! It is not only the best aviation theory book ever written, it is one of the best and clearest non-fiction book written in any field. It was authored in the 1940’s and has yet to be challenged by any rival if that is any comparison.
Shagnasty wrote:
Yeah, but the landing fees will probably set you back some.
[Hissing]
Join usssssss…!
[/Hissing]
It was just an example. Aviation is not a cheap hobby but the point still stands. You do have a lot of authority and many ground systems either under your control or at your disposal. Most airports do not have landing fees. I would never advocate flying a small plane into JFK but you most certainaly could if you wanted and you would be treated just as any other. Outer airports that are more tailored to general aviation are probably a better idea though.
Ya know, I’d feel a lot better about this sceanario if you were “pretty proficient” with a yoke and rudders, not knobs and gizmos.
Just for free - put on one of the headsets lying around the suddenly uninhabited cockpit. Now, look for a little button on the yoke - that’s the steering wheel in front of you. Push it and yell “MAYDAY!”. Release the button. Assuming you haven’t activated some control system like an autopilot someone will be along shortly to ask what the problem is. If there are multiple buttons on the funky steering wheel and the first one you try does not achieve the desired results try another.
No.
OK, if it’s a - what, category III? - plane equipped to land itself AND you were headed to an airport with the capability to direct such a plane AND it was already programmed to land AND nothing else went wrong - the plane could potentially land itself. But you sir, could not.
I’m a pilot and I don’t believe I could land a commercial airliner successfully, although in such a situation I would be highly motivated to give it a try. Why not? At that point, what have you got to lose?
wince! cringe!
Not that kind of airplane, no.
Gee, I dunno - is it more painful to fall out of a 20 story window than a 19 story window?
When I was walking out to the Cessna 150 for my first solo (one of the easier airplanes to fly, by the way) my instructor, bless his heart, said “Now, if you have any problems I’ll be right here on the radio to help you out”
I looked at him 
“Uh… let’s see, you’ll be on the ground and I’ll be all by myself five hundred or a thousand feet up there… You’re going to help me how?…”
“Well, OK” he said “There isn’t really much I can do… but you weren’t supposed to figure that out this soon.”
(Actually, the flight went off without a hitch - they’re sort of careful not to let you out on your own until you’re ready to handle it)
Gosh, I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a crosswind… think it must have been back in August of '00…
Wow. You know, flight instructors sitting next to students in simple trainer planes sometimes have trouble with this - you’re talking about a complete novice doing it solo in one of the most complex machines ever designed and built?
Yes, people who have never flown before have been “talked down” in simple piston-planes. But it doesn’t always work. And the plane is usually damaged by the time everything comes to a halt, even if the people inside are OK. It’s not just going through the motions - the picture is a lot different from the front seat, and most folks do not react well to the “if I don’t get this right I’m gonna DIE!” sort of pressure this sceanario implies.
Never heard of anyone being talked down in a jet.
Well, maybe if the controller had flown such a plane before… but most of them aren’t pilots of any sort. The way the system works, the controllers tell the pilots when they can take off or land, and if they’re about to hit someone, but they system assumes it’s the pilots who fly the planes.
Wow. I am imagining 300,000 lbs of jumbo jet skipping down a runway at 120-150 mph. The mind boggles. You know, even if the plane could handle it (which I don’t believe for a minute) I don’t think the runway pavement would survive.
Hey, the fantasy is fun - but until it actually happens I just can’t believe a non-pilot could land one of those things. Hell, I don’t think most pilots could do that - the majority of pilots do not fly jumbo jets, we’re mostly piston-powered.
Interesting factoid - it’s not safe for pilots who exclusively fly things like 747s for years or decades to fly a single-engine plane. They’re too out of practice with the small stuff - it’s really that different. Sure, it may only take them a couple hours to get back into practice, but meanwhile they will be doing some strange flying.
(Of course, some airline pilots DO continue to fly little airplanes - there are a number of such guys at my local airport - but that’s like saying I still ride my bicycle even though I have my driver’s license)
If I were ever in a situation where I’d have to try to land a large jet, I’d be praying I had enough fuel to reach Edwards AFB (in the summer or fall). A huge dry lake bed might give me a fighting chance to not kill to many people. As Broomstick says, at that point, what have you got to lose? But I’d want a lot of acreage.
The April issue of AOPAPilot has an article about Navy fighter jocks who try to fly “little airplanes” at NAS Pax River. One instructor said that the test-pilots-to-be [flail arms and legs for a mental image] the first time in some of the aircraft. When asked about his first experience in one of the “little airplanes”, one Naval Aviator said, “It was like this: [flailing arms and legs]”
Well, if you’re like me, you never leave home without your copy of A Man’s Life: The Complete Instructions in your pack. This book actually has a chapter on how to land a 747.
Course, ya gotta fly with one hand and turn pages with the other. Guess you could have that sexy stewardess (excuse me, flight attendant) read it to you.
Anyways, check it out: A Man’s Life: The Complete Instructions
Wait a minute. If you can’t learn how to fly a 747 on a simulator, and you can’t learn it by flying smaller planes then how do you learn to do it? Surely they don’t take 747’s up for training flights or do they?
I can fly radio control model planes, could I do it?
I’m assuming you mean could you land the plane. My answer is no, no, no. But as someone said, it you are ever in that situation and no one else steps up, why not try?
The big difficulty is that will big airplanes and jet engines, the response time is so long that you have to anticipate any problem before it happens. That is to say, you simply can’t allow a problem, such as an undershoot or overshoot, too high or low airspeed or the like to develop in the first place. And without experience you wouldn’t have the slightest idea what you were looking for and so wouldn’t even know you had a problem.
I flew Martin B-26’s, an airplane that was relatively unforgiving of mistakes. I’m pretty sure that even when I was young and had good reactions and some experience to boot it would have been questionable as to whether I could get a modern jet airliner safely on the ground.
I’m not an airline pilot, but I’m assuming they get you in a class which teaches you all you ever wanted to know and more about the plane. Then you get some sim time in it, along with copilot time. I don’t think the airlines have training flights… that’s why you buy simulators. All this exposure is what you need to get a feel for the aircraft.
My neighbor the sim-tech told me that the really top-of-the-line simulators such as those at American are so realistic that hours in those are considered by the FAA to be equivalent to hours spent in the real thing.
Was he right, or pulling info out of his butt?
Well, reading FAR 61.157 (Flight Proficiency, Airline Transport pilots), para (g) addresses sim time. “If a flight simulator… is used for accomplishing all of the training and the required practical test for an airplane transport pilot certificate… the applicant, flight simulator, etc, are subject to the following requirements…”
So, from my understanding, you can equate sim hours to “real” hours if you’re applying them toward getting your ATP cert. I don’t think you can simply log sim time as actual time, though. Also, I don’t have my 2002 FAR/AIM edition handy, so this info came from an old 2000 version, and it may be outdated.
Okay, I’m a pilot and I’ll offer a marginally dissenting opinion. Things like visibility and whether there is a crosswind are going to be a big factor in our success rate here.
Given a beautiful, calm day, I’d say that the plane’s chance of survival is directly proportional to who’s on the the other end of the radio. If they can get ahold of a type-rated pilot who has a clear view of the approach, then I’d say there’s a decent chance of talking the plane down. He knows all the ref speeds - if someone in the co-pilot’s chair can rattle them off when asked, and the guy can see the plane coming in, he can probably guide the person in to a reasonable facsimile of a flare and landing.
Just a guess. I haven’t tried it. Someone above mentioned that he’d never heard of someone trying to land a jet after the crew was disabled. But I haven’t heard of any that tried and failed, either. That means we have no empirical data to work with.
But imagine being in the simulator while an instructor is saying, "Pull back…more…stop. Okay, hold 185. Power back slowly…
THAT guy could probably land a jet first time.
As a matter of fact, the previously mentioned X-Plane simulator program was just approved by the FAA for “official” simulator training (Towards an instrument rating, Commercial Certificate, or an Airline Transport Certificate)–When used in a full motion simulator only, but it’s the same software that would be used on a home computer. I’d post a link, but it’s a commercial site.
Just so ya’ know.
Ranchoth