Ahem… see post 17.
Great minds think alike!
So how would the pilots and ground crew respond? And is there any sort of alternate flight controls? Could the pillow reach the wires that control the fiddly wing landing bits from ripping plates off the wall panels?
The professionals here on the board will be able to answer for certain, but I don’t believe that there are any “alternate flight controls” located elsewhere in the airliner (i.e., there is no “emergency bridge”).
On the ground, air traffic controllers would, I imagine, discover that they were no longer getting the doomed airliner’s transponder info (since that transponder is likely located in the cockpit or avionics bay). I imagine that they would still see the plane on radar, but there wouldn’t be a thing that they could do, other than possibly ask any nearby planes if they can see the plane in question.
The 737 Cabriolet was never a big seller.
The only aircraft I know that had alternate emergency controls was the WW2 era Douglas Boston(A-20 Havoc in US service). A twin engine light bomber, the fuselage was very narrow which meant that the gunner in the rear compartment could not get to the cockpit if something happened to the pilot.
The solution was to give the mid-upper gunner a set of emergency flying controls. The small flaw in the plan? The gunner had zero forward view so the pilot, or bombardier on planes with glazed noses, had to be alive and able to communicate in order to direct the gunner as he flew.
These emergency controls were deleted from later versions of the aircraft as they never proved useful.
The OP is total insanity.
TWA 800 didn’t so much “fly” after it broke in two as it “hurtled”. The two halves were going 300+mph at the time. It took a few seconds for their suddenly much less aerodynamic shape to slow down and fall more or less vertically into the sea. But nobody would describe what was happening as “flying” in a controlled or controllable sense. No more than you’d describe what a book does as “flying” as you’ve thrown it across a room.
And here we thought the US government was inept …
This is an amazingly good idea … not in the case of the cockpit falling off … rather the prices the airlines could charge for that seat … (maybe load the machine gun with tracer fire as a safety precaution) …
A little pessimistic don’t ya think … we could pinch the fuel lines with pliers and gain throttle control … what more would we need? …
The absurdity lies in imagining that the cockpit is attached to the plane. Like a bolted-on thing. It is an integral part of the fuselage. For it to “fall off”, the skin of the fuselage would have to rip all around it. At 12.5K, the immediate result would be that the cockpit door would blow out from the instant depressurization of the cabin, meaning anyone who chose not to lose consciousness from anoxia would have to be using one of those oxygen masks, so the crew would hardly be mobile enough to do any fiddling with, well, anything. On top of that, you have the ragged edges of the torn fuselage skin which, at the typical ~800kph that a jetliner would be cruising at that altitude, would peel off rather quickly from the wind.
In short, if the cockpit fell off, the plane would just be torn apart from the wind.
Other way 'round, I’d imagine - That flat surface of the after cockpit bulkhead would likely buckle under the aerodynamic forces and blow back into the cabin - Possibly peeling the rest of the fuselage like a banana, until airspeed fell low enough.
That is, assuming that the cockpit didn’t take the after bulkhead with it - in which case, the only thing preventing the fuselage turning into a nasty wind tunnel experiement is… Nothing.
Okay, since the scenario of the cockpit just “falling off” on it’s own for no reason, especially in such a nice plane is a little unlikely, let’s say that ermm… a “Random Omnipotent Being” perfectly cuts it off with a laser beam or something. So it doesn’t actually damage the rest of the frame.
Now let’s also say that, through some more divine intervention, when all the pressurized air inside the cabin rushed forward to get out of the airplane, it slammed against the cockpit door, which caused it to actually bend forwards (towards the lack of cockpit) and become pressed into a dodgey cone-shaped thing, in which it then became somewhat stable, which is then further pressed into a solid shape and allows only tiny amounts of air to pass through.
Now you have a vague cone-like ending on the front of the plane which could almost pass as what the cockpit originally looked like before it magically fell off. Yes I know that is probably completely impossible and probably breaks many laws of physics.
So now that the airplane is somehow still pressurized, mostly still aerodynamic and isn’t getting ripped apart or uncontrollably (at least not in the traditional sense) falling out of the sky, could it somehow land with not too many people killed? Since some of the air control surfaces are electric, would there be no way for the pilots to carve out some panels and just zap the right wires going to the control surfaces?
BONUS: What do you think of the 787 series? I don’t know anything about airplanes, but isn’t it supposed to be a beautiful airplane? I’ve flown on it once, but that one time was actually the first time I flew on any airplane, ever, so the entire time I was actually terrified that it was going way too fast and that it would spontaneously explode into a million pieces from the wind rushing up against it, or the pilots would somehow “forget” to fly the plane, like in some of those Aircraft Crash Investigation TV shows where in one or two episodes the pilots either fell asleep or went outback to eat or have a break while the plane became unstable and crashed.
It didn’t help that I had no idea what a 787 actually was, and for some reason I thought it was an ancient junker plane from like the 1960/70s that had just been renovated a bunch of times, instead of the airplane that it actually was. The return flight back, however, was on a 737 which wasn’t too bad, even though the 737 is probably quite dangerous and has killed lots of people.
The hypothiticals change nothing:
No avionics. Plane falls from sky. Everyone dies.
If weight falls off the airplane is unbalanced. If the cockpit is gone there’s no way to interact with the various systems. The airplane will be upside down or tumbling in 10 to 30 seconds.
Any movie-like MacGyvering would take minutes to hours. And would require a miraculous knowledge of the aircraft innards that nobody aboard will have. And require that everything that got severed did so neatly without jamming or shorting anything and without taking any vital control components or computers with it. All of which simply *can’t *be true.
In all, this scenario is exactly as realistic as those modern CGI scenes where from the hero’s POV we see the bullet coming at us in midflight and then we do a pirouette around it while it waits for us to move out of the way before going back to normal speed. Yeah, sure it does and sure we do. NOT!!!
Not to mention a complete lack of feedback to McGuyver about what the aircraft is doing, and what his control inputs are doing to the aircraft.
Back in about the B-17 days if the pilots were simply asleep in an undamaged airplane one could sorta steer the beast from back by the waist gunners by tugging on the various exposed pushrods and cables. If somehow you knew which of the several dozen items where which. You couldn’t fly well, and you darn sure couldn’t land. But you might be able to reverse a slowly increasing bank or pitch one way or the other to stay upright for a few additional minutes.
Not so much nowadays.
Something like a 767 has about 30 mechanical cables and a few thousand electrical wires leading into/out of the cockpit. No way anyone is gonna know what does what.
Something even newer like a 787 will have fewer wires. Because half the system controls are now data packets on an IP network. Good luck tapping into that and sending well-formed IP packets Morse code style by touching two sparking wires together.
Y’know, now I’m flasing back to the “Airport” movies of the 70s…
But look, the cockpit is severed, you are goners. Well and truly boned. It’s that simple. As LSLGuy explains, the control systems in a modern airliner are just not designed or laid out at all to make the hypothetical MacGuyvering even possible, crews are only trained to fly using the cockpit interfaces, and even if aerodynamic stress doesn’t tear you apart in seconds, you will not remain stable for long enough to do anything, and then it will as you tumble.
Considering that IRL the kind of catastrophic failure that will sever a cockpit will certainly destroy the aircraft if it happens inflight, it makes no sense to design for such a contingency.
First of all, this would never happen. They are absolutely never allowed to all leave the cockpit at one time. It’s just never done.
And what 3 pilots? I don’t know of any commercial plane that has 3 pilots. Most have 2, pilot & co-pilot, plus a navigator. Airlines are pushing for eliminating the navigator position, claiming that with new technology the co-pilot can do that in his spare time. It may already be allowed on freight-only flights.
That’s a *little *behind the times. 
The last airline navigators disappeared in the early 1960s. That reduced the then-current 4-man crew on long range flights to 3: Captain, co-pilot, and flight engineer. The flight engineer is sort of an on-board mechanic and the equivalent of a ship’s engineering officer: responsible for operating all the mechanical systems so the pilots can concentrate on steering. So hydraulics, engines, electrical, HVAC, fuel, etc.
The last mainstream airliners built with flight engineer positions and hence a need for flight engineer workers were the Boeing 707, 727, 747-100, 747-200, and 747-300. Plus the Douglas DC-8, DC-10, Lockheed L-1011, and the earliest couple of versions of the Airbus A300.
As far as I know none of any of these aircraft types are left in passenger service anywhere in the world except for a few 727s banging around in Africa. There are a decent number of the early 747s and 727s and a few DC-8s and DC-10s still in freight service.
Everything built since then, roughly the late 1970s, has no flight engineer. Which reduces the normal crew complement from 3 to 2. This includes the later A300s, all higher numbered Airbuses, the 747-400 and all higher numbered Boeings, and all the Douglas MD aircraft including the MD-11 variant of the 3-crew DC-10.
The one place that 3 (or 4) pilots are still used today is on very long range flights. A 2-pilot aircraft that can stay airborne 10 or 12 hours will carry an extra pilot and they take turns: 1 sleeps while 2 work. A 2-pilot aircraft that can stay airborne 14 or 16 hours will carry two extra pilots and they all take turns: 2 sleep while 2 work.
But all these people are pilots doing the pilot job. Which now (with help from smarter airplanes) includes all the functions formerly performed by flight engineers and flight navigators.
Well, suddenly, IF they live, i know a couple cockpit guys who are getting fired.
Everyone can not leave the cockpit, post 9/11 can they leave it period?
I am thinking it would be more than a bit of wind at the door y the way
Is jesus on board?
“AND THUS DO I COMMEND THEE INTO THE ARMS OF OUR LORD OF EARTH, OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, PRESERVER OF ALL MERCY AND REALITY, AND THE FATHER CREATOR”
Aside from filling their clothing with several types of bodily substances?
Perhaps
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
key word there being off i am guessing?
We are definitely not any longer pressurised, there is a big round gaping hole where the sealed fuselage used to be, also where the controls and wiring and part of the hydraulics and lots of other neat pieces used to be.
As much as a miracle on 54th street
What wires? we have just sawn off and discarded a huge important chunk of the flight wiring.
And we do not have the time or the ability to go crawling through the plane structure and playing McGuiver rigging up controls made from cabin light switches and such.
The plane is busy returning to its natural state of resting on the ground.
You just cut off the secondary control panel, the other name for it is the Co-Pilots seat.
This may be a worse movie than sharknado?
They’re too busy fighting snakes to worry about piloting.
Which is why I’ve always said* the control cables and electrical wires need to be clearly labelled. As a contingency in such a case as the OP presents.
*I have never said anything like this. Sorry for the mix-up.