Who said anything about being at altitude when hitting 100? I said decrease throttle until over water and lined up with shore - then reduce throttle more - putting you down.
“Chop and drop” is a landing technique.
Coordinated turns are not likely to be a concern with a 0 hours pilot in heavy iron - and if it is a coordinated turn, it is just as good as “wings level” re safety. We are assuming VFR here. Either the turn is desired or it does no harm. Where is the t/c on a 737? with all-glass, who knows what display is going to be up by the time you get the dead guy out of the seat
The cabin doors are insanely strong. A friend who is an expert in titanium had a sample of one of the new cabin doors in his office. It is made of a honeycomb of titanium, and specifically designed to resist being broken down by anything in the cabin.
The floor used to be (at least) fiberglass honeycomb - if you aren’t going to carry the weight of a metal floor in the cabin, I’m hoping the flight deck floor is also impenetrable.
I also hope, if the deck is impenetrable, that the plane is on auto by default with some kind of dead-man’s scheme to alert ATC to clear the flight path and pattern.
We can now discuss the pros and cons of having someone on the ground take control of a plane in flight…
Hummm, big airplanes & water… Ask any airline pilot who is currently qualified in the same airplane as Scully was. Will they say that they can do what he did with confidence under the same conditions?
We have the cool passenger in this airplane. Is the crew & passengers going to be calm enough for him to act? Flight 93 in Pennsylvania is very much an exception that can’t be counted on.
Big big problem with a passenger or a private pilot is in dealing with the mass. Add in the pressure of the moment… Not good.
Richard P ( Active big iron pilot ) in another thread gave a good example of the complexity of properly setting up big iron auto pilots. I have over 10,000 hours in small planes & I might not get it right, even with step by step from the ground under that kind of conditions. Get it wrong at altitude, there is time for another try… maybe.
Turning on to approach at a low level comparatively and things are & need to happen much quicker. And do not forget the mass.
OK, miracles do happen, you touch down & have all the wheels touch the runway at the 4000’ marker. You are still going about 140 KTS. Staying on the runway with the smallest cross wind, uneven breaking, uneven revers thrust, which you are talked through much slower than it needs to be done, etc…
Not going to run off the runway, off the end, maybe over an embankment, with engines running all nice and hot and the wings fail enough to spill fuel.
Miracles are nice & even I would try to do something as some humans will do. Some will just sit & scream.
I of course have though of this as I bet most pilot have but as to it being effective, well, forget the ‘well all you have to do’ or ‘they can do for you’ or ‘get an experienced pilot for that type in communication with you before you die’ is very unlikely.
It is a fun thing to discuss but there is so much miss information floating around in these kinds of threads from non pilots as to lead the innocent into false optimism.
Or patch the airport it’s going to land at through to do the talking until they get closer. I don’t see why Area Control out in the middle of nowhere would talk a plane down to a landing hundreds of miles away.
Now whether or not talking one down would work is another matter, but what are they going to do, not try?
I don’t know of a way to patch a telephone line into the radio. That’s not to say it is impossible; it’s just to say that it’s not a procedure that a controller would be able to tell you how to do. If such a possibility exists, perhaps a technician would know how to do it.
Another thing to keep in mind–the radio system is half-duplex, so it can both receive and transfer, but it can only do one at a time. If (theoretically) a phone line was tied into it, it would be transmitting the whole time, so whoever was talking on the phone would not be able to hear the person on the plane.
Because they’re the ones who (under normal conditions) are talking to the plane until it’s about ten miles from the airport and their receivers will be able to get through to the plane. A plane a few hundred miles from an airport will not be in radio range of the radio transmitters at the airport. The radar controller works them all the way in and has them contact the tower in about the last two minutes of their flight time, at which point most of the procedures for descent and landing have already been completed.
If human life was at risk I would do everything I humanly could and deal with the consequences later. However, telling someone how to land a plane is something I cannot do, as I have no idea how to do it.
If the plane has been retrofitted with the new doors, I am going to assume that they have weak spots, on a newer build airplane, i am assuming that its been more planned approach to the architecture.
That being said, I think I would be asking about an oxygen bottle and a flare.
Not a good one for a jet. Landing in the water is a really bad idea. At least using an ILS and autoland you end up on a nice smooth bit of tarmac. Landing in the water is more likely to result in deaths. The Egypt Air jet that got hijacked, ran out of fuel, and landed in the water resulted in deaths, most due to passengers inflating their life jackets before they got out.
Look, this question comes up every 6 months to a year on these boards and my opinion on the feasibility of a passenger landing a commercial jet changes each time, probably depending on whether I’ve had a hard or easy day at work. Sometimes I finish the day bored out of my brain and wondering if I could train my cat to fill in for me (of course not, he doesn’t have the dexterity in the paws), other times I wonder if I myself am worthy of being out there in charge of 100 lives or 10 tonne of freight. The fact I am there wondering would suggest I am worthy, but the point is that the job can be very challenging or it can be very straight forward, it depends on the day.
IF you have a jet with autoland (fairly common) and IF the runway has an ILS (also common but I regularly fly to ports that have no ILS) and IF the weather is suitable for an autoland and IF everybody does everything right, a passenger should be able to get the aeroplane on the ground in one piece.
The thing is everyone thinks they would be the hero who could do this. But I know of plenty of pilots who couldn’t land an airliner safely the first time they tried (and many others who could but that is beside the point). I regularly see experienced pilots make minor mistakes handling the autopilot that are a non-event when experienced pilots are at the controls but would result in death for all if the only person there was someone relying on radioed instructions.
For it to all work out the following would have to happen:
[ol]
[li]The cockpit door is unlocked for some reason. Either the pilots died gradually or they just forgot to lock it, it happens.[/li]
[li]The right passenger for the job is the one who actually ends up in the cockpit. You could have the person who wants to be the hero and volunteers their services be the least capable for the task. Meanwhile someone sitting quietly who underestimates their worth may have the perfect combination of skills. My suggestion: Find a leader first who won’t be the person doing the flying but who can coordinate the different skill sets of various people and who can get the quiet understated chap/chapette who can actually do the job to volunteer their services. [/li]
[li]Someone manages to get the radio working without disconnecting the autopilot. I’m sorry to blow some illusions but if you think cabin crew are trained to use the radios you are mistaken, at least in my company. They are there to assist in a foreseeable emergency (two pilots dead is not one of those) and to serve the passengers. The transmit button is right by the autopilot disconnect button. Hopefully you find the right one.[/li]
[li]You can find someone on the radio who knows the aeroplane. This is probably the easiest bit. As long as you are flying a B737 or A320 or other common Boeing/Airbus types it is highly likely that there is another aircraft of the same type on the same frequency. Those pilots would be able to offer assistance much quicker than getting a pilot on the ground to a tower. (As has already been pointed out, the tower doesn’t even talk to pilots more than about 10 miles from the airport.)[/li]
[li]Once all that is sorted out, you have a passenger in the cockpit manipulating the autopilot and flight management computer under instructions from an experienced pilot, you are most of the way there. By the way, have you ever tried to explain to someone who doesn’t know computers how to do something on a computer over the phone? (“Click on FILE”, “I don’t see FILE anywhere”, “Up in the top left of the screen”, “I don’t see it, I see DELETE, I’ve clicked that, is that ok?”) Now consider what it might be like trying to tell someone how to operate an aeroplane over the radio. The next steps are to get the FMC programmed, the ILS frequency tuned, and the autopilot set to intercept and capture the ILS. This could be difficult or easy depending on the aeroplane, how much was already done before the pilots checked out, how quick the passenger is to learn new stuff etc.[/li]
[li]Once all that is done, you’d want to get the aeroplane descended early, slowed down early, and configured (gear and flaps down) early. The plan would be to fly level and fully configured to intercept the ILS localiser (controls lateral path of the aeroplane) and then to fly level into the glideslope (controls the vertical path of the aeroplane). You need to be going to an airport that has flat terrain because otherwise you might not have the option of descending early, you may need to stay above hills, and getting on the ILS at the last minute would be tricky for a novice.[/li]
[li]Once on the ILS with gear and flap down there is not much else to do. I assume other types are similar to the Avro RJ that I fly in that autoland is something that happens automatically if the autopilot is left engaged all the way down an ILS. Luckily you can actually autoland off any ILS, you can only do it legally off specially certified ILSs but the system will work with a normal ILS as well.[/li]
[li]Hopefully you are in something modern with auto spoilers and auto brakes. If so, wait for it to touch down, the aeroplane will stay on the runway centreline until it gets too slow for the rudder to be effective and it will slow it self down. You will need to keep it straight with the tiller and bring it to a complete stop with the brakes, but if you’ve got this far you should be able to do that.[/li][/ol]
Here are some things that you should not do.
[ol]
[li]Use a glass of water as a makeshift artificial horizon. If it’s visual conditions, use the natural horizon that’s out the window! If it’s not visual conditions the autopilot will keep it straight and level as required, if you find yourself hand flying this whole thing then you are in big trouble. If you had a glass of water in that case, I’d be drinking it, might be the last one you get.[/li]
[li]Rely on cabin crew for anything special. The cabin crew are under paid and under appreciated in my opinion as they work a whole lot harder than anyone else on the aeroplane on a normal flight. That said, they don’t get training for scenarios that have, as far as I know, never happened, ever. They are trained for medical emergencies, disgruntled passengers, hijackers, evacuations etc. The one thing you might get from the cabin crew is a leader who can get things working on a personal level (getting the right person in the cockpit for instance), but don’t expect any technical expertise.[/li]
[li]Try and land on water. It’s a really bad idea. Consider this, if you land on land and are knocked unconscious you will eventually wake up (if not burned to death) and get out. If the same happens in water you will drown. The Hudson landing worked because the river was calm, there were heaps of boats available to help, and the pilot was a pilot.[/li]
[li]Try and find an axe to break through the flightdeck door. Here’s a hint, there is an axe on the aircraft but if you have access to it then you don’t need to open the flightdeck door! you could have a go with fire extinguishers or something but remember that the entire purpose of the secure flightdeck door is to prevent access from a highly motivated passenger.[/li][/ol]
That’s about it for now. My feeling is that it could be done by the right people on the right day in the right circumstances. Unfortunately if you find yourself in that situation you are long way away from the right day and the right circumstances. Murphy’s law would suggest that the day both pilots die on the aeroplane you are on, the weather will be crap, the airport will be surrounded by thunderstorms, and it’ll be dark. And cold.
A note about time. You might not have a lot of time. Fuel costs money and you burn fuel to carry fuel so we generally load the minimum fuel that is safe for the day. Different rules for different countries but we are required to land with 30 mins fuel in the tanks. We usually have another 30 minutes on top of that. Once you get down to 40 minutes left in the tanks on the BAe146/Avro RJ you start getting caution lights and should change the way you fly the approach, different flap settings and so on. What I’m saying is that you can afford to dick around for about 20 minutes, after that things are going to get complicated. That’s on a nice day. On a crap day we will have more fuel, but you don’t want to be dealing with this on a crap day. If the passenger was really on the ball, they’d find out the fuel state and the rate of fuel consumption. They would then work out a time line for when things need to be done by. If the experienced pilot on the other end of the radio was on the ball they’d do that as the very first thing after confirming the aircraft was on autopilot and the flight path was stable.
A final note about the right person for the job. I think in the past on this message board I have down played the applicability of playing flight simulator games to real world flying. That view only applies to hand flying an aeroplane. If you could find a passenger on the aeroplane who spent time flying some of the very detailed and accurate flight sim aircraft of the same type that had the dead pilots, they could be very valuable. Some flight sim add-on aircraft have very accurate cockpit layouts, flight management computers, and autopilots. When it comes to pushing buttons this would be a good person to have either at the controls or advising from the jump seat. This is only if they have spent time with good quality add-on aircraft. I used to play with a Dash 8 300 add-on for MS Flight Sim 2004 and the autopilot/FMC stuff was really good, the way it actually flew was all kinds of wrong though.
GusNSpot, if it was you at the controls I would suggest going <click, click> autopilot / autothrottle off, and just fly the aeroplane. Work to your strengths and all that. You’d soon work out whether you could get a feel for it or not. There is a big difference in feel between doing 400 - 450 knots TAS in the cruise and doing 130 knots on approach, but you’d work out whether you were comfortable with it or not soon enough. If not, <click, click> get the autopilot and autothrottle back in. Something to keep in mind. When you are going fast, small changes in pitch result in large changes in vertical speed and therefore altitude. A rule of thumb is that one degree of pitch change is equal to your mach number x 1000 in vertical speed. I.e., if you are doing Mach 0.8 (something the BAe146 can’t do) and pitch down just 1º you will be descending at 800 feet per minute. pitching down 5º would result in descending at 4000 feet per minute, you’re getting into the “plummeting” range of vertical speeds there and you’d be over speeding the aeroplane pretty soon. At light aircraft speeds a 5º pitch change does bugger all.
Thinking further on this, I reckon someone like you, with hands on flying experience, would actually be best in the right seat talking on the radios. Meanwhile flight sim nerd can sit in the left seat and program the automatics. I don’t mean that disrespectfully, I just think that would be the best way to use the resources available. Then if FSN cocks it up and disconnects the autopilot you can fly the aeroplane straight and level until the autopilot is reengaged. A fully automated approach and landing is the safest way out of this predicament. Hands on flying ability (you) would be a backup to get back on track. Exactly the way airliners are flown regularly. Use the automatics to their fullest extent because it relieves the pilots of workload and allows them to monitor what is happening, but if anything doesn’t look right you revert to manual flying, <click click>.
Both in Airplane! and in Arthur Hailey’s Runway Zero Eight, from which the general idea was taken, the ATC’s only call for a genuine pilot to come to the radio to supply the instructions.
You’re off the hook.
Hmmm, On Garuda (Indonesia) Airlines, the flight attendants just go very pale, gather in a small group, talking very quickly, loudly and in their native language amongst themselves, strap themselves in and ignore the passengers completely. First ones off the plane after skidding to a halt - some problem with the landing gear, they knew in advance of landing. There was a significant partial collapse during landing.
In short, I can’t comment about the training, but in practice they were panicing and raising the panic levels of the whole cabin.
Oh yeah, I’m intimately familiar with Airplane and Robert Stack’s performance. However, we were delving into the possibility of that (as in bringing in a real pilot to talk the plane down ) happening in real life and how realistic it really is, and a number of things come to my mind, including:
–Once the plane is immediately out of the airport’s vicinity (pretty much as soon as its wheels are off the ground, in the case of takeoff), it is no longer talking to the control tower, but rather to a radar facility, which is very likely located hundreds of miles away from the airport. It will be then be controlled by a radar facility for the remainder of its journey until it’s about ten miles from its destination airport, at which point it will talk to the control tower there for the first time. Talking to a control tower comprises very little (relatively) of an airliner’s overall ATC transmissions–by far the majority of their transmissions are to radar facilities.
–I work at a radar facility. The planes I’m talking to all day are hundreds of miles away from where I am, and the nearest airport is over an hour’s drive away. Once a plane enters a sector I’m working, it will take it about five minutes to get through the sector (this can be affected by sector configuration, such as if we have two sectors combined and being worked by one person due to low staffing).
–Having a pilot call up and patching the call through to the plane was suggested, and I’m not aware of technology that allows a telephone call to be patched onto a radio. It could exist, but it if it does, controllers are not trained on how to do it. A technician might know how to do it if it is possible, but I don’t know the timeframe for it to happen if a technician had to be called to do it. Additionally, the radios are half-duplex, so a telephone call patched through would be constantly transmitting and would not allow the person on the plane to key up and talk back to the person on the phone.
–To a plane at altitude, a person at the arrival airport would be out of range of both the radios and the radar. The airport’s transmitters and receivers are located at the airport and an aircraft hundreds of miles away would not be visible on their radar or able to hear or talk to them.
–When I ship an aircraft to the next frequency, I tell the pilot what frequency to go to and he changes to it. If it was a novice in the cockpit, I wouldn’t be able to tell them how to change the radio, as I don’t know how.
Again, I’m not saying it can’t happen or it won’t happen. I’m just pointing out some of the many reasons that real life is real life and Hollywood is Hollywood.
