I’ve seen at least two films in my life where the situation presented was that the pilot and copilot (and in once case, the navigator, as well) of a commercial airliner were incapacitated, leaving the passengers in an apparently dire situation. In these cases, inexperienced pilots have been put at the helm and talked through the situation via the help of the folks in the tower.
I’m just wondering what the odds are that such a scenario might be successful in real life. I have heard indirectly that these commercial jets are capable of landing themselves via autopilot, and that pilots are actually required to test this capability from time to time. For the sake of my question, let’s assume the autopilot is unavailable for whatever reason.
Would it be possible for the tower to talk a competent but completely inexperienced individual through a safe landing?
We have done this one before. The autoland capability of the autopilot makes a favorable outcome fairly likely but you took that away. The airline pilots on this board tell us that even a private pilot experienced in small planes is likely to do well landing and airliner. I guess we have to take their word for it. It would be cool to see an experiment on this done on the full simulators they use to train and test pilots. Those could tell us the odds without anyone getting hurt.
That should read private pilots are not likely to do well.
I am an aviation buff and I have a fair amount of small plane time. One of the big problems with airliners is that they are so big and there is a fairly big lag in the controlling process. With small planes, you can move them around similar to a car. With airliners, the jet engines don’t respond instantly and banking and raising the nose also give delayed effects. Without direct experience in that aircraft, it would be difficult for someone to figure out how to control it predictably.
Maybe one of the guys that flies heavies can confirm or refute this, but I’ve heard that the Boeing 747 (in its various updated forms over the years) is a beautiful plane to fly. I’ve heard it’s docile and compliant to the pilot’s commands, it’s smooth, and doesn’t have any strange quirks or unpleasant surprises.
Perhaps the pilots of big equipment will say different, but from all of the NTSB reports involving CFIT, if the trained and seasoned fellows have problems, a n00b isn’t likely to fare well, one would think.
But maybe a bit better then someone who has no experience flying though? Of course my only experience was in a C-152, in which the plane would respond immediately to engine speeds, flaps, etc…
Having been a passenger in many A320’s, it seems the plane would respond quickly to the pilots actions. I can generally feel the change when engine power would vary, as well as when the flaps are in use. It’s very predictable as to what’s about to happen and why.
Should this type of doomsday scenario ever play out, I would think a private pilot could understand airspeed, altitude, and flying the pattern. However, IFR’s would definitely be a problem for those only familiar with VFR’s. But with instruction from air control, isn’t there’s a good chance it could be done safely, assuming no mechanical issues, just without qualified pilots?
I am just saying what the big iron folks tell me. I secretly know that I wouldn’t have much of a problem with it at all although I am certain that everyone else would. If anyone has access to a full simulator, just let me know and I can show you how it is done.
I flewMartin B-26’s which at the time was a relatively unforgiving plane and I question whether I could have sucessfully landed a large jet.
It might be just barely possible if I had been forced to do so within a year or so of having flown and could get tuned to the ILS or if Ground Controlled Approach radar was available.
One problem that might have stumped me would be the management of the high lift devices on the wings of the big jets.
My husband is a firefighter for a large airplane manufacturer. (no pilot, he) One of his inspection areas is the simulator used to certify/recertify users of the large commercial aircraft built by said company.
The simulators have to be calibrated every day. When he can get there early enough, he gets to help with that calibration. He swears he could land a heavy from that experience.
I don’t believe him, however, since he ran the sim-plane over a sim-marshaler at sim-Heathrow.
I’m sure what he’s done in the simulator is but a fraction of what would be necessary to actually land a real plane.
In real life, I’m sure he would pee his pants if asked to bring in any aircraft.
What I’m trying to say is that we pretty much controlled descent rate on final approach by use of the engines. As I understand it, jet engines respond slowly so that the technique is to set some rpm and pretty much control descent rate with flaps and stuff. Completely different method.
Well I got an hour of bootleg time on a comerical flight simulator once. Did 4 takeoffs and 4 landings (if you can call them that) :eek:
Takeoffs are easy.
Landings on the other hand…
1st attempt. At one point I think I saw the runway above me. I think they would have used a dustpan to pick up the pieces.
2nd attempt. They would have needed some heavy equipment to pick up the pieces, as they would have been much larger chunks.
3rd attempt. I think some of the people might have lived. Although the corner of that hanger did look alwfully hard.
4th attempt. The instructor put me in fog, and had me fly the video display and follow the glide slope. I greased the landing. The instructor told me that I did better on that than many of the students do when presented with this senario for the first time.
So either give me three warm up tries, or let me fly the video display, and I am your man.
Want me to look out the window to do it, on the first try? This bucket got an autoland system?
The sims are getting really good but … You know you are not going to die. IRL, there is the panic, what ever caused you to be in that predicament in the first place, the bodies to remove from the cockpit, the right people to get a hold of that know anything about the airplane, the actual feel of the real thing in the air, the fact that you have not had 50 hours in the last 2 months of learning that particular airplane, the need for suitable flight- destination conditions, the problem of getting the passengers to go along with it, etc.
You buy the airplane and get takeoff clearance or let a real ATR pilot take off and then parachute down while you try for Edwards in the desert, nice long runway to work with. The FAA will surely go along in the interest of …
I’ll watch the film at 11.
It is always an interesting question for small plane pilots but I hope we don’t ever have to find out for real. I think it would be a real mess.
To use a (simple and probably faulty analogy), if you have experience driving a normal car on a normal road, could you in jump and drive an 18-ton truck (through a snowstorm on a mountain road, to compare the stress levels) just by doing what somebody on the radio tells you to do? Wouldn’t the whole movement, inertia, resistance of the steering wheel, the gearshift etc., as well as the place and time needed for each turn, take very long to get used to? No amount of saying “turn the steering wheel to the left” will tell you how it feels like, and how fast or slow, or how far before it’s too much, because you drive your own car from experience of feel.
And add to that that landing is (according to pilots) the most difficult part of flying.
No, I don’t fly airplanes. I don’t even drive cars. But I had fun trying to steer boats - they never go where you want them to.
There was a case locally with a small plane, where the pilot died of a heart attack and his passenger didn’t have the faintest idea about flying.
The tower talked him down to a semi-controlled crash on the taxiway on the small, local airport. Hubby was the first rescuer on scene. The passenger was ok, the pilot was still dead.
The media called it a crash landing, but the plane was on it’s nose with one wing falling off. (There’s a picture of it on my studio wall) It took 45 minutes to get the guy out.
But, since he lived, I guess he “landed” the plane. :dubious:
There was a case locally, with a small plane, where the pilot died of a heart attack and his passenger didn’t have the faintest idea about flying.
The tower talked him down to a semi-controlled crash on the taxiway on the small, local airport.
Hubby was the first rescuer on scene. The passenger was ok, the pilot was still dead.
The media called it a crash landing, but the plane was on it’s nose with one wing falling off. (There’s a picture of it on my studio wall) It took 45 minutes to get the guy out.
But, since he lived, I guess he “landed” the plane. :dubious:
