The person guiding them on the show was a licensed pilot. That being said, this point has already been addressed: ATC people nest in airports, pilots with flight hours on each common airliner make and model are not altogether uncommon in major airports, a quick and dirty emergency hook-up between the two species is not entirely unlikely.
But what does “failure” mean? Does it mean “everyone certain to have died” or does it mean “plane unrecoverable but X survivors”? Does it mean “plane nose first into the ground at 500 mph” or does it mean “plane lands too hard on its belly going 160 mph”?
I imagine one of the flight attendants who called AA’s customer service probably conveyed the story.
Full motion simulators run at about $1000 per hour here. You’d need to find someone who was willing to run the simulator for you and you’d need a bit of cash. They’re probably cheaper in the US.
I forgot about the most obvious one. Flying through a cloud. Flying on instruments alone can be deadly to non-instrument rated pilots let alone non-pilots.
This PSA from AOPA describes the process that will kill a VFR pilot who gets himself into IMC.
I think it’s over done. There have been numerous VFR pilots who get into IMC and made it out ok, but at least those guys know how to fly in the first place.
Where was it already addressed? It would be pretty quick to get a pilot in, I agree, but seconds honestly can make the difference between landing safely and not. A fairer test would be to have an ATC there for the first five minutes.
They are, of course, limited in how realistic they can make it, since they really can’t send someone up in a real plane with real terrorists and real terror. 
I’d consider it landing safely if there were no loss of lives or serious injuries. I mean, that’s what I’d want as a passenger, wouldn’t you?
Well, as a passenger in one of the discussed scenarios, I’d find it comforting to think that a passenger delivered by an untrained pilot might have a 5% chance of survival rather than a 0% chance of survival. Discussing only “crash” vs “non crash” without elaboration seems to miss the point completely. As a passenger, say, on the mythbuster simulations that “crashed”, what are my chances of survival?
I mean, obviously no one here is suggesting that an untrained pilot in the hypothetical situation should literally give up and stop flying the plane. Right? There is some chance of survival, and it seems like there would be some obvious way of increasing that chance, perhaps by hedging bets and finding a large flat area rather than aiming for a runway that one can easily under or over shoot.
Wait, was this guy’s plane not equipped with an artificial horizon? They show something that looks like one, but it seems to indicate level flight. Maybe I’m unique because I’m a non-pilot who has a morbid passion for reading about air accidents, but man if I was thrust into a pilot’s seat without visibility, my eyes would be glued to my horizon, altitude, and airspeed!
I agree that a small chance of survival is better than none (5% is pretty shitty though), and you’re right that no-one’s claiming that a passenger trying to fly the plane is worse than leaving the plane to fly alone. No need to argue against a point that hasn’t been made.
But the claim the pilot was talking about, and the claim I’ve heard before, is that, thanks to autopilots, a non-pilot can land the plane as easily as, or almost as easily as, a trained pilot.
Since we’re talking about landing the plane in otherwise ideal conditions (no engine failures, no storm, etc), from a trained pilot you’d expect no deaths or injuries - major or minor - or even damage to the plane. So for a non-pilot to land the plane almost as easily as a pilot, then a safe landing would allow for some damage and minor injuries, but no more. Otherwise the claim is meaningless.
Large flat areas will likely have obstructions on the ground that could cause problems with the plane. If you think you’re going to overshoot a runway with landing systems and a specified size big enough for your plane and a controller telling you what speed to be at which height and which route to take to avoid obstructions (knowing those because they know the runway), then landing on a random area is going to be even more dangerous.
If seconds are going to make a difference then the outcome probably won’t be very good anyway. The only real chance a passenger would have is if the aeroplane was flying on autopilot in the cruise or climb. In that case time is pretty much only limited by how much fuel they have and it doesn’t matter if it takes 15 minutes to get hold of a pilot. If a pilot is needed more quickly then someone already in the air should be able to help.
Yep, and you would find that when you’re body is telling you you’re turning but the artificial horizon is telling you you are level, it is very difficult to ignore your body and trust your eyes. Do you think that VFR pilots who lose it in the clouds don’t know about the artificial horizon? This is something that can’t be experienced outside of a full motion simulator or real aeroplane. It’s just not as simple as you seem to think it is. I’ve seen experienced airline pilots in the simulator get a bit wobbly when they’re under pressure, and you’d be under a heap of pressure.
What I mean is, if, in the first few minutes, the ATC controller or the passenger-pilot got something wrong, that could cause problems which are then difficult to fix. The simulation was also about the landing, where perhaps not a couple of seconds but a minute or two would always make a difference, I’d have thought - though you’d know better than me.
I hadn’t considered other pilots in the air - they’d probably be even quicker to get hold of than pilots in the airport. Still not immediately, though.
I’m not a pilot but have recently had to subtitle a load of programmes about air crashes, and it’s been kinda educational. It’s amazing how well some pilots can do even when multiple systems have failed - one landed with no engines or hydraulics at all - but it’s also striking just how few mistakes a pilot needs to make on landing for a fatal crash to happen.
I’ve long thought that Mark Wahlberg is an actual sociopath.
And an interview where he states that he’s awful sorry and that golly he’s learned from his mistakes won’t change my mind.
I find it interesting that he has used guns in his movies, yet he is a convicted felon. A felon is not allowed to touch a gun. Did he use fake guns?
IANAL, but I don’t think using a prop gun in a movie counts towards “possession.”
Breaking News: Giant Douche Acts Like A Douche, People Seem Surprised!
As someone who is a licensed pilot who has had some training in flying on instruments (though not enough to be certified for such flight) using the artificial horizon in actual instrument conditions is much easier said than done. Even using it in simulated instruments conditions in an actual airplane (with a safety pilot/instructor along to make sure you don’t kill yourself) is much easier said than done.
As the Canadians demonstrated, the average life expectancy of a non-instrument trained pilot in actual instruments conditions is 178 seconds. Just under three minutes.
Now a certain number of pilots not certified for instrument flight have survived such encounters because simulated instrument flight for emergency use is REQUIRED to get a private pilot’s license. It gives you enough knowledge to survive a BRIEF encounter with such conditions, long enough to get yourself out of it, call ATC for help, whatever. So saying “oh, that person doesn’t have an instrument rating but they did it” doesn’t prove that a non-pilot could do it, because a private pilot actually has had a sliver of training in operating in such conditions. Even so, it’s no guarantee of survival, it just increases their odds slightly.
The odds of a non-pilot being about properly use artificial horizon/airspeed/altimeter/etc. successfully in actual instrument conditions is pretty much nil.
This is due, in part, to the fact your biological sensory equipment will lie to you under such conditions. It will tell you that you are climbing or turning when you are not, or not climbing or turning when you are. It takes training and practice to learn to ignore what your body is telling you and trust the instruments more than you trust your own senses.
If the choice is to make the attempt or certainly die yes, make the attempt, because, what the hell, what have you got to lose, right? I just seriously doubt anyone is ever going to successfully pull that off.
Half his size? Wahlberg’s not that big. How many times can he kick Tom Cruise’s ass before it get boring?
While I don’t want to diminish the difficulty of IFR conditions (I really get that it is very hard to trust an instrument over your senses), it seems a bit over the top to insist that it is impossible for a human to triumph over their own psychology without having the mentioned training. I mean, I agree I can’t know for sure what I would really do if thrust into this situation. One can never know, and I understand what a mind-fuck it is. But at the same time as know it is a mind-fuck, and I know that I can’t trust my senses, and I know that my only real hope is in trusting the instruments. I would find it hard to believe that I would nonetheless have a near 100% chance of being completely psychologically incapacitated, and end up going against all that I know, and making the same mistakes I’ve read so many accounts of others making. I guess I trust you, but man is that hard to believe!
But all the VFR pilots know it’s a mind-fuck as well, yet they still get caught out. Even experienced instrument pilots can get “the leans” where every fibre in their body is telling them the artificial horizon is wrong. It’s not that it is impossible to do, it can be done, it’s just that you’d need to be an exceptional person to pull it off, what makes you think you’re so much better than the average joe? And it’s not just the instrument flight, basically you’re saying that you think you’d be able to single handedly fly an airliner safely on to the ground. One that requires two highly trained people to fly under normal circumstances. You’d be able to do, with no training what so ever, something that some experienced pilots can’t do when there is someone right next to them ready to take over. I just think you have so little understanding of what you’d face, you don’t even know what you don’t know.