How hard is it to fly a plane?

Factual Questions
1

I was watching the Discovery Wings Channel last night and they had a show which said that in the near future that the common person will use small planes, instead of cars to travel – thus eliminating the congestion on our highways.

While I doubt we will see this in our lifetimes, it begged a question for me – Exactly how difficult is it to fly an airplane? I am not talking about flying a 737 or an Airbus, or flying a Navy jet onto an aircraft carrier. I am talking about your simple small plane (jet or prop)and using it for personal use.

I would think it is hard, (just ask JFK Jr.) and therefore eliminating the possiblity of someday having the common citizen commute to work via a turboprop.

2

In clear weather, in level flight, it’s real easy. I was up flying in a friends 1946 Commonwealth SkyRanger (now that’s a great name for a plane) and I flew it for a while. Basically, if you let go of the controls, most (?) planes return to level flight.

Flying isn’t the problem. It’s taking off and landing.

3

When I was a reporter for my college paper, my assignment was to fly with the students in the aviation program at the college’s smallish airport.

Anyway I boarded this two-man cropduster-looking thing and we took off easy enough. When we were up there he let me take the controls, and having absolutely NO experience with plane flying, and very little experience as a plane passenger, you can imagine I was pretty nervous.

He seemed perfectly confident that I could do it though, so I didn’t question myself. I took the controls and found it exhilarating! It is easy to do because you can really FEEL the movement of the plane.

I found that it’s kind of like driving a car for the first time: I had some awkward banks, and trouble flying in a straight line (I would drift), but on the whole, he said I did very well. (we didn’t crash, anyway!)

As simplistic as this may sound, I found it’s like driving a car without the 3rd dimension as stabilization (the road), and most notably, without lane lines - nothing more. But like I said before, the sensation of control over the machine is higher (IMHO) than in driving a car (it’s much more sensitive).

However, the weather was perfect, it was daytime, and I didn’t have to land, but with training, I’m sure I could do it.

I’m sure there are some pretty technical things going on too that I wasn’t familiar with, but still…

Seriously, if you ever get the chance, go up and try it! I had so much fun from that one experience that I will definately try to fly later in my life.

4

It’s so easy a 7 year old could do it.

[sub]sorry.[/sub]

5

IANAPilot, but I’ve been thinking about becoming one for the longest time. I just need the money.

Ahem

My Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 Professional Edition® CD-ROM has this “Become a Pilot” feature. You combine reading about 11 chapters in the book with video lessons, flight simulation, and simulated instructions from a simulated instructor. After you’ve completed all the lessons and passed the test flight, you get to print off this nifty little certificate that basically says you’re a certified pretend pilot, and please don’t get in real plane and start flying because Microsoft® doesn’t want to get sued when you crash.

I’ve made it to Chapter Three (“Climbs and Descents”)and have more-or-less given up. The first two pages of Chapter Three have gone into a dissertation on manifold pressure that I would need a degree in engineering to make sense of. I get the sense that if I fail to understand manifold pressure I’ll fail to understand climbs & descents and thus never get the plane off the ground :sad:.

Long-story short: It looked easy at first, but now I just want to sit in a corner and cry.

6

Here’s a question: Does anyone know of any research where an unskilled person is given the controls of a plane and is allowed to attempt to land or come close to landing?

Sometimes some strange ideas can get a Govt. research grant. I can think of several (cockamamie) reasons why you might want to see how bad a landing by an unskilled pilot would be, or the probability of survival: It might affect design decisions for the landing gear, for instance.

If such studies do exist, what did they find was the probability that a passenger could land a plane (a la “Airport 1975”)?

7

IAAPilot (Fixed-wing back in the 80s and rotary-wing in the 90s). You asked about airplanes, but let me say this about helicopters: You cannot fly one without training. Helicopters are inherently unstable.

On the other hand, airplanes are usually inherently stable. That is, if you deflect the controls and then let go of them, the airplane will return to stable flight. For example, if you push the nose down, dive, then release the controls, the airplane will pitch up due to the increase speed and lift. When it pitches up it will climb higher than the starting altitude and slow down. It will pitch down and speed up again, but to a smaller amplitude than the initial dive. When the speed picks up it will climb again, but it will not climb as high as the previous time. The oscillations will become smaller and smaller until the aircraft returns to its original altitude. (Of course you have to take into account local weather conditions, fuel burn, etc.; but it’s close enough).

Have you ever flown a balsa-and-tissue airplane? You wind up the elastic band and put it on the ground and let it go. It will take off, climb, fly in a circle and land (if you built it right). Given enough space and a perfectly trimmed airplane, and a little nonchalance about where you land, an airplane should fly itself. Okay, we don’t all live on a huge lakebed. What about flying a real airplane?

Taking off isn’t that difficult. Just keep it lined up on the runway. Okay, there’s more… You have the P-factor to deal with. This is caused by the propwash that spirals around the fuselage. It causes the airplane to bank, so you need to add opposite rudder. You also need to watch your airspeed. Too slow and you stop flying. This is called a “stall”. Easy enough to recover from if you have the altitude, but it can be fatal if you run into the ground before your wings develop enough lift for flight. And you don’t want to hold the airplane on the ground when it’s going fast enough to fly. Wouldn’t want to get into pilot-induced oscillations and start banging stuff on the ground. But as long as you don’t stall, it’s easy enough.

So you’ve managed to take off without killing yourself. As long as you don’t get too slow and stall, you’ll probably be able to control the direction and altitude of the airplane. Piece of cake. A child could do it. Many, in fact, do.

And now the landing. While all flying can be said to be an exercise in energy management, this is where you really get the practical application of energy management. The game is to run out of flying speed at the same time that your wheels hit the runway. Oh, and it would be good to actually be on the runway and heading lengthwise, into the wind. You need to line up with the runway, heading upwind. Then you have to get down. Don’t dive. The elevators are really there to control your speed. It’s thrust that controls your altitude. Throttle back to get down. Don’t get to slow and stall close to the ground. Keep heading toward the runway. Be ready to advance the throttle in case you’re going to be short. If you’re high, you need to do something so you don’t land long. Flaps, a slip, or just throttle back and descend more rapidly if you have the room. Energy management. Landing is the hardest part, but it’s also often the most satsfying. Non-pilots have been “talked down” when the pilot became incapacitated.

Is it hard to fly? Not really. It just takes training and practice.

8

It is impossible for humans to fly airplanes. They just don’t have the intelligence or dexterity to master such a tremendously complex device. That’s why all pilots are actually cleverly designed cyborgs built by a race of giant super-intelligent lampreys living in lake Erie. This is part of their master plan to enslave the human race using a combination of psychedelic drugs, kitchen utensils and bad sit-coms. Humans will be turned into a zombie army which will destroy the lampreys’ enemies, the african dung beetles, and the evil dung beetle queen, Christina Aguilera.

You’re welcome.

9

No we’re not.

What are your temporal-spatial loci? … I mean, Where do you live?

10

Yes, the flying part is relatively simple. It’s the flight environment that can do bad things to you. The majority of aviation mishaps are caused by pilot error (no, no cite), and I’m pretty sure most of those occur during poor weather conditions. Flying in the sun is easy; flying in the clouds, where you’re in turbulence getting bumped around, trying to talk to ATC, descending towards an airport and trying to get set up for the approach (getting out and reviewing the approach plate (i.e., instructions), conducting your approach and landing checklists, resetting your radios and altimiter) all the while trying to maintain wings level, on course and on altitude, which means you have to really hawk your instruments, since you can’t see outside the cockpit… this is where many humans start to break down. And it only takes on silly mistake, like forgetting to bring the gear down, forgetting to reset the altimiter, tuning in the wrong navigation aid, to really ruin your day.

11

Preview, dammit… I’ve had a bad day, so excuse the mispelling. “alimiter” should be “altimeter.” And I mispelled it twice, for chrissakes! :eek:

12

"The Harrier Jet is one of our more dollar-intensive ordnance delivery vectors. And, although it looks complicated it is so well-designed, even a child could fly it.

Can I fly it?

Of course you can not."

13

I’ll second the thoughts of flyboy88. Usually, when someone unfamiliar with flying asks “how hard?” they’re thinking about the stick-and-rudder stuff. That is, how do I move the controls to make the airplane go where I want it. This is the easiest part of flying, IMHO, much easier than driving a car. (True, you have to learn to think in 3 dimensions, but then you don’t have objects driven by other idiots whizzing by you, just a few feet away).

The things that are hard, and what worries me when people start talking about “airplanes for everyone” is that flying requires far more planning, preparation, and attention to details than most folks are willing to deal with. The two most signifiacnt aspects (IMHO) are weather and training to deal with emergencies. There just isn’t any comparison with automobiles in these areas, and failure can turn into a smoking hole in no time.

Flying with computer simulators may give you an idea of what’s going on, but you always are able to re-boot yourself out of trouble. Every pilot I know of has some kind of “I could’a been killed” story, and none of them survived by re-booting. (And I know some that didn’t make it).

[my stories have to deal with a run-away trim motor, and landing a C150 with the windscreen completely covered in ice, but that’s another topic]

14

I’ve heard that the Harrier is one of the most difficult aircraft to fly.

I’ll second what kellymccauley said, and add something of my own. As I’ve posted in other threads on “Planes for the Masses” (try a search on “Volantor” or “Moller” or “Skycar”), I think maintenance would also be an issue. How many rattle-trap cars do you see on the road? Think of the maintenance that people will put off “just until the next paycheque”. The carnage would be glorious! I posted elsewhere (in the civilian-owned jet thread) that civilians who owned jets would be likely to maintain them correctly; but in that case we’re talking about properly trained, rated pilots. When it comes to something like the Skycar, where Every(wo/)man thinks he can just jump in, program a destination, and enjoy the ride, that things will start falling out of the sky.

Back to the OP, it’s really not that difficult to fly an airplane. I think helicopters are easy to fly as well. But whether your wings stick out in the breeze or go round and round, the ease comes with training. You not only have to know how to react to a situation, but you must anticipate it – “Stay ahead of the airplane”, as it were. It’s like riding a bike. You wobble and fall, but eventually you get the hang of it and you wonder what all the fuss was about. Same thing in aircraft. You’ll get frustrated, you’ll sweat, you’ll wonder from what inner ring of Hell your instructor was spawned. (“Airspeed!” “Look outside of the airplane!” “Go around!”) And when you get the hang of it, you’ll say “What’s the big deal?” It will be as your instructor was telling you all along: “This is supposed to be fun!” All you need is to be shown how to do it (training).

So it really is easy. Just don’t tell anyone or everyone will want to be a pilot!

15

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by djbdjb *
**Here’s a question: Does anyone know of any research where an unskilled person is given the controls of a plane and is allowed to attempt to land or come close to landing?

Not “research” but----

Strange you should ask. A friend just recently told me that his brother let him fly one of his two planes(brother was COP in Chi. “On a policemans salary?” ROTFLMAO!!) when he was a kid. Let him LAND IT as a teenager. No “real” lessons. Bumpy but OK.

16

Johnny L.A. wrote:

I never really got to that stage. Even now that I have over 200 hours of flight time in my log, my gut still tightens a little while I fly. Not because of nausea, not because of fear of crashing – because I’m constantly worried about which obscure little mistake am I making this time?

Especially when there’s an instructor in the plane with me. Good God, I sweat bullets whenever I have to go up with an instructor. Even if it’s just to get checked out in one of the FBO’s run-of-the-mill planes for insurance purposes. Flying may, in fact, be fun, but I’ll probably never get to experience just how fun it is because it always feels like one big bout of rule-mongering to me.

17

Tracer: The trick is to keep expanding your comfort zone. I used to get that feeling every time I went up to fly circuits. After doing cross country work, suddenly going out to fly circuits wouldn’t give me that sinking feeling. Then I started planning longer trips, then cross-border trips, then trips into major commercial airports, etc.

Now, going on a 400 mile trip by air feels comfortable, but I’m a little leery of flying a major X-C, like going 2000 miles to Oshkosh. That’ll probably be my next goal.

But if you just go out once a month and fly circuits, that feeling will never go away, and the harder stuff will get even harder as you start to forget your navigation, etc. Keep stretchin’!

Back to the OP: Anyone can learn to fly. But not everyone has good judgement, and that’s what ultimately keeps you alive. The sky is terribly unforgiving of mistakes. Did you ever run out of gas in your car? Do that in an airplane, and you’ll probably destroy the airplane and maybe yourself with it. Did you ever ignore a little pinging sound you were hearing in your car, only to have some catastrophic failure on a road somewhere? Do that in an airplane and you’ll die.

Imagine a city full of skycars at 5 pm, when a thunderstorm rolls overhead. How many idiots are going to fly home anyway, because they don’t want to be late for supper? Bad judgement and bad maintenance would combine to make those things fall from the sky like rain.

18

Oh, really? I used to be based at an airfield 8 miles from O’Hare. Trust me, it can get just as congested up there as down here.

Planes have their uses, but for short commutes in all weather cars are superior. I can drive in weather so foul I wouldn’t even take the plane out of the hangar, much less fly it.

Flying isn’t hard. Flying into “instrument meterological conditions” without being fully trained is hard. In fact, it can often be deadly - as JFK, Jr. proved.

I also don’t see the “average citizen” using a “turboprop” - much more power and expense than would be needed for the work commute. Regular piston power is quite adequate for the “average citizen”.

Don’t need to do the research - there have been numerous instances of just that happening. Usually the pilot is “suddenly incapcitated” (heart attack, stroke, other sudden death, knocked unconcious by a bird slamming through the windshield and into the pilot’s forehead, etc.) and the non-pilot passenger is then left to save his/her own butt. If they can avoid complete complete panic and get someone on the radio they can usually be talked down. The landings aren’t elegant but the occupants of the plane typically do walk away with only minor injuries, if any.

This is with single-engine planes - multi-engine planes are more complex, although with the more simple ones a non-pilot could still probably be coached down. I don’t think it’s possible to pull this off with a big jet. Despite being a licensed pilot, I don’t think I could land a 747 on my own (although if the alternative was an uncontrolled crash I would certainly be motivated to try!). The big planes require more training than the little ones, as a general rule.

There are “pilot companion” courses for those who aren’t/don’t want to be pilots but spend a lot of time in small airplanes. The idea is that the person learns just enough to handle emergencies, assist the pilot, land the plane on their own if necessary. All of this is typically accomplished in a weekend, with 2-5 hours of actual flight time. This is usually enough to enable the average human being to learn what they need to know to get it on the ground safely in a crisis.

I found flying to be the easy part - learning all the #@&*!! rules and how to navigate with a map and compass to be the difficult bit.

19

I fully suggest to anyone wondering how hard it is to fly, or anyone planning to shoot for a license, to pop down to your local software store and pick up a decent flight simulator program and a joystick to go with it. It’s a lot of fun, highly educational, and very inexpensive (until you start buying every flight sim to come out, a $300 flight control setup and constant computer upgrades to run them all :smiley: Even then, it’s well within the means for even a poor college student like me)

You can be up and buzzing around in a digital Cessna or F-16 in five minutes, and probably land successfully in another five (maybe 30 for the F-16 :wink: ) The concepts of fixed wing flight are really easy to grasp, and after a few hours with a simulator you’ll be well on the way towards mastering the basics. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll be ready to go out and fly the real thing…as has been said by others, there’s a lot more you have to know before you should take control of an actual aircraft, but if the mere mechanics of flight are what you’re curious about, this is a fine way to learn, and can even get you started on the meatier subjects like navigation, “rules of the road” and emergency procedures (this has been the main area of improvement for sims of the last several years, in fact)

However, I would agree with Johnny LA on helicopters, they’re completely different when it comes to the total neophyte at the controls. IANAPilot yet, but I (perhaps arrogantly) consider myself relatively well-versed thanks to computer flight simulation, and helicopters have been something of a hobby of mine. I would not trust anyone to be able to fly one without at least some knowledge about how they work. It’s not very intuitive at first, especially coming at it cold, and it’s fairly unique, whereas flying a fixed-wing is not greatly different from driving a car.

20

A thought on simulator games: For the price of a couple games, you can actually go up and get a lesson. Of course you can’t play the lesson over and over except in your mind, but it will definitely be more realistic than a game!

Taking the cyclic control of a helicopter in flight isn’t that hard. The most surprising thing is how sensitive it is compared to an airplane. It’s actually like a big video game: point the stick in the direction you want to go. Just point it gently and don’t move it too much. The hard part comes when you want to use the other controls. Altitude is controlled by the collective lever. There is a throttle on the end of it. Unless you have a governor, you’ll need to adjust the throttle as you change the pitch of the blades. You set the power with the collective and throttle and you have a choice: You can pitch forward for speed or not pitch forward for altitude. You have to keep the tachometer, which measures percent of revolutions of the rotor and engine (two needles) instead of number of revolutions, within the correct limits. Too fast and you can damage the rotor system. Too slow and you fall out of the sky. Literally. (I’ve posted the effects of low rotor RPM in other threads.) I mentioned power management earlier. In a piston powered helicopter (I haven’t flown a turbine) the manifold pressure guage is used a lot. Generally, low manifold pressure means you go down or slow down and high manifold pressure means you speed up or go up. It can be complicated for a neophyte, but not insurmountable.

What happens if you find yourself in a helicopter and the pilot becomes incapacitated? Hope there’s a god and you’ve lived a decent life. Actually, if you can keep the (inherently unstable) helicopter from falling out of control with its sensitive control system, and if you can play with the collective and throttle and keep the RPM between the lines, you might get close to the ground. But a normal landing requires that you hover. I hovered – barely – on my first lesson. (I did take a 1/2 hour “intro lesson” which was more like a ride where I could take the stick briefly, so I don’t count that as a “lesson”.) Learning to hover was like trying to stand on a bowling ball and move it where you want it to go without falling off. I’m told that most people take longer to hover, so I must have had a good day. And even then, I could just barely hold it still at the end of the first lesson. There was a lot of hovering practice after that. Hovering is the hardest part of flying a helicopter, but it’s the most important so it’s taught first. Someone taking the controls for the first time would not be able to do it. Assuming you can keep the helicopter under some control until you are near the ground (and that might be a rather large assumption), the best a non-pilot could hope for is a survivable crash.

But don’t let that discourage you. Flying helicopters is much more fun than flying an airplane. They’re not very good for cross-country (too slow, too little payload, too expensive), but for local flights they’re a blast! Just get trained before you try it.