Like in the Hollywood scenario? The pilot had a coronary, the co-pilot ate the bad chicken, and now it’s up to me to land a Boeing 737. I have zero flying experience but some degree of technical saavy. Could an experienced pilot talk me down? Has this ever actually occurred?
All planes land eventuality. Now, a landing most walk away from? Maybe,Flying mag. had a good monograph on just this subject once. There are so many variables. I am not a pilot.
First, a quick semi-joke. The definition of a good landing is one you can walk away from; if it’s a great landing, you can use the plane again.
I’m not a pilot, but did take lessons for a while and actually soloed a few times before lack of money stopped my training. So I have a minimal amount of relevant experience.
Personally I think the chances of a successful landing (either good or great as defined above) in a large jet for someone that has never touched the controls of any kind of plane before are rather slim. Landing is the trickiest phase of flight and requires some judgement that can only be developed through practice. Plus after you land you have to handle the jet on the roll-out, and lots of people find handling an aircraft on the ground at even low speed tricky at first. The problem is in a large jet there just isn’t that much margin for error, and there are lots of things you have to get right.
On the other hand I think you’d have a decent shot at getting a light plane down successfully (at least no/minimal injuries, and at that point who cares about the plane?). Something like a Cessna 172 for instance is a lot less comples, moves at much lower speeds, and is designed to handle a fair amount of abuse from beginning pilots. I think someone could talk you through getting lined up on a large runway on a long final, have you drop the flaps and establish a glide that gets you on the runway, and don’t worry too much about doing a roundout/flare. It wouldn’t be pretty but I think you’d survive.
I remember that article. Every pilot likes to think he (or she) can come through and save everyone’s life at the end; but according to the article, this is not really likely. IIRC it mentioned the height of a jet’s cockpit giving visual cues that are different from the visual cues a lightplane sends. Also, most pilots are used to getting power when they push in the throttle; a turbine takes a little time to “spool up” so the maneuver must be planned ahead. I’m sure a pilot would have a better chance at landing a jet than a non-pilot; but in spite of our egos, Flying thinks it would be a daunting task.
Of course if I were put into that situation… 
Hmmmm… maybe you could, Choosy. Me, I can’t even parallel park.
I went from flying a Stearman N2S3 open cockpit biplane, to flying copilot in a cessna citation corporate jet. I didn’t really fly copilot, i just got to sit in the copilot seat and play with the controls. The thing that threw me was not all the instruments (we were flying VFR and it was perfectly clear out), but rather the speed at which things happen! One minute I was 30 miles from the airport, and it seemed like ht next one I was on top of it. My reaction times were all messed up. Of course, seat of the pants joystick flying in an open cockpit plane is the far end of the spectrum, I expect a competent twin engine instrument rated pilot probably could have pulled it off, But I sure doubt that I could have.
[sidenote]
A friend of mine here at work used to fly for United, and is required to alert the flight crew that she is qualified to pilot the plane if necessary when she boards. (I know she’s certified on 747s; I assume she has other flight qualifications, too). So, there probably wouldn’t be a situation where a flight attendent would scream to the cabin, “Is there anyone who can fly this plane?” He/she would already know if there was.
I have no idea what happens if an unqualified person has to fly the plane, though. Most likely, everyone dies. 
[/sidenote]
A cool book that came out in 1999:
(The Worst Case Scenario Handbook)
gives instructions on a non-pilot landing a small plane,
but admits it can’t give you much help with a large jet.
If you’ve read the book, and know how much it has a ‘never-
say-die’ attitude, its lack of instructions for a large
plane is very telling.
:eek:
You’re kidding right?
Well it all depends really on a couple of things.
1.)Have you ever flown a plane? (other than video games)
2.)Have you ever landed a plane?
3.)Have you ever flown a Jet? (this is the biggie)
Jet aircraft fly completly different than propeller aircraft. If you’re in a little plane like a Cessna 172 if you dip down too much or lower the throttle to soon, you have a little bit of time to play around with in order to get the plane under control. In a massive airplane like a Boeing 747 you don’t have this luxury. If you do anything wrong on approach (landing) than you will almost certainly crash the plane or miss the airstrip. Remember a 747 handles something like riding a cow. Slow, but once you get it to do something it’s hard to get it to do anything else.
So if you’re gonna try, remmember to say hi to St. Peter for me.
I think everyone is pretty much right. The “could I get talked down over the radio” theory is pretty much bunk, too, I think. Someone could probably talk you to the vicinity of the airport, if you’re lucky, using standard inputs to the autopilot. Once you turn it off, though, it gets tough, not only because of all the reasons mentioned so far, but because unless you’ve had flying experience, and unless you know the specifics of the aircraft you’re flying, you won’t recognize any warning signs. They may tell you over the radio where the airspeed indicator is, and you may find it and say “ok, it says i’m going 180 knots” but that doesn’t tell you anything unless you understand if that’s what speed you should be doing or if it’s too fast or slow, and what the safest slow speed (or speed at which the aircraft stalls and stops flying) is… the same goes for altitude, sight picture, lineup corrections approaching the runway… all these little things that are happening too fast for you to relay them to the ground and for them to figure out and relay back to you the appropriate action.
I seriously doubt it’s ever occurred, but I’m not sure.
Discussions like these make me want to start packing a parachute in my carry on luggage.
I’m a Private Pilot, and I can’t even land a big jet on my X-Plane simulator. I hope never to find out what it’s like in real life in a crisis.
When Kurt Russell (a licensed pilot in real life) got a role in Executive Decision where he played a student pilot who, by the end of the movie, gets to land a jet, he bought some time in a 747 simulator to see if he could actually do it by being talked down.
He crashed a lot.
I’m not even going to talk about Turbulence, which I enjoyed only by a hefty dose of suspension-of-disbelief.
All I know is that I hope never to be on an airplane where that sort of thing happens. :eek: Jeepers, I’ve already been through busted flaming engine on take-off scenario, don’t need any more bizarro stuff on commercial airlines, thank you very much.
Now, if it ever did happen that the entire complement of experienced jet pilots on a 747 were out of commission and there was no choice BUT to talk someone down on a big jet… I have no doubt it would be tried. Why not? If the choice is between 100% you’re dead and only 99.99% you’re likely to die what have you got to lose? In which case someone who had never flown before might have a hair-thin advantage over a single-engine piston pilot because they don’t have habits from flying lighter planes to overcome. Or maybe not. Maybe someone should pop over the FAA accident database and see if this has ever happened.
Light planes are a different matter - people have been successfully talked down even in planes with complications like variable-pitch propellors and retractable landing gear. The landings aren’t pretty but the people on board survive (except, perhaps, a pilot expired from a coronary or stroke which caused the problem in the first place).
Virtual Reality is a quantum leap easier than Actual Reality. Many years of flight sims have convinced me that the nice lady who has been feeding me vodka all after noon has a better chance than anyone else of getting a plane down.
How much do flight sims really teach us?
I read an article on AVWeb written by a low-time private pilot with no instrument rating who took a crash-course (no pun intended) in a Boeing 737 type rating, basically to see if it could be done by a pilot with so little experience. The course included some simulator time and one hour of actual flight time in a 737 (note: this airplane costs $50 per minute to rent). He passed the course and got his type rating (which led to him wishing desperately to be in one of those emergency situations described in the OP). Interestingly enough, he said the actual plane was considerably easier to fly than the simulator. They even told him that would be the case during training.