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Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

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Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#181

Post by exhilaration »

Maursault wrote: post #162

I grew up in Florida. It would take all my fingers and toes and more to count the number of times I have seen articles or even witnessed personally from the beach a pilot of a small craft either die naturally at the controls or have some medical event that causes a crash and death. Why are small planes necessary? Am I wrong to believe what it seems like, that the overwhelmingly popular purpose is entertainment ? Is a…

That's very interesting. It sounds like being one of the top destination for retirees might play in this -- Florida is #2 when it comes to oldest population https://www.prb.org/resources/which-us-states-are-the-oldest... and I would bet it's #1 when it comes to oldest pilots (and drivers) who are most likely to "die naturally" when at the controls.

Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#182

Post by vmception »

asdfman123 wrote: post #26
vmception wrote: post #7

bravo! any idea how hard or easy this is? did the passenger land on an airstrip or where? all details lacking

We can probably assume it's a small passenger plane. I'm not a pilot but I've landed them a few times in flight sims. It's a matter of getting the right level of descent and setting a few knobs and switches correctly. I could probably explain to you how to do it if you were playing a video game. The real impressive thing is they were able to keep calm and go through the steps, or figure out how to use the radio, with…

It says Cessna even in this article, those are small planes. The one detail that it doesnt miss :)

Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#184

Post by runnerup »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #147
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The braking distance at 70mph is a huge 75m, which is about 9 London buses. Add your reaction time, and do you aee why distances of over 100m between cars are slightly unrealistic?

No, at 70mph (31m/s) you travel 100 metres in 3.2 seconds. I was always taught 3 seconds on the highway is a safe following distance, and 4 seconds in adverse weather conditions like rain. It's not at all unrealistic - it's safe.

Where do you live/drive?

Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#185

Post by corrral »

asdfman123 wrote: post #22

I bet this was a guy raised on video games. I was about to make a joke about it but I'm actually serious. Once I, a former Houstonian with no experience driving on ice, was driving through the snowy mountains and lost control of my car. Instead of panicking, my video-game-induced laser focus kicked in and I calmly piloted the car until the wheels gained traction and I could park the car on the side of the road. But l…

Can confirm. I once, with perfect calm and focus, steered into a bad slide on long slightly-downhill curve covered in ice. I'd never, ever done that in real life before then, in 15+ years of driving. I didn't think about it, didn't even worry for a millisecond. I'd 100% for-sure have hit a parked car if not for all the semi-realistic-but-still-arcadey racing games I've played.

Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#186

Post by cecilpl2 »

runnerup wrote: post #184
cecilpl2 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, at 70mph (31m/s) you travel 100 metres in 3.2 seconds. I was always taught 3 seconds on the highway is a safe following distance, and 4 seconds in adverse weather conditions like rain. It's not at all unrealistic - it's safe.

Where do you live/drive?

BC: https://www.icbc.com/road-safety/crashes-happen/speed/Pages/...

> Allow at least two seconds' following distance behind other vehicles in good weather and road conditions (three seconds on a highway).

> Slow down for poor weather conditions or uneven roads and increase your following distance to at least four seconds. Remember that the distance required to stop increases in wet or slippery conditions.

Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#187

Post by gfosco »

93po wrote: post #141
Nextgrid wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video game experience is absolutely better than no experience. On small general aviation planes, the feature set is quite minimal and most simulators will replicate all of it faithfully enough, so the only remaining thing is the “feel” of the plane which you can hopefully experience a bit during flight before landing. In contrast, a big passenger jet has insane amounts of different systems that need to be configured…

Decently sized plane was stolen, did many loops, and flew around just fine for more than an hour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Horizon_Air_Q400_incident All by a guy with zero flight experience but also credited playing video games

Bit of a tribute video (there are many about "skyking") with some video clips and atc audio. https://tv.gab.com/channel/fosco/view/fly-high-skyking-61130...

Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#188

Post by arianvanp »

dangwu wrote: post #180
jaywalk wrote: post #31

Garmin's got a relatively new system called Autoland that is designed for this exact situation. It allows a plane to land simply by pushing one button. It will pick the nearest appropriate airport, communicate with ATC, and land the plane entirely on its own. It's pretty amazing technology: https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/garmin-autoland-thi...

Hasn't autopilot had "auto-land" technology for many years now? How is Garmin's different?

Not really. You need to intercept an ILS beacon and not all airfields have them and you still need to find the intercept.

Garmin allows true auto landing without ground equipment

Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#189

Post by bentcorner »

Nextgrid wrote: post #37
asdfman123 wrote: post #22

I bet this was a guy raised on video games. I was about to make a joke about it but I'm actually serious. Once I, a former Houstonian with no experience driving on ice, was driving through the snowy mountains and lost control of my car. Instead of panicking, my video-game-induced laser focus kicked in and I calmly piloted the car until the wheels gained traction and I could park the car on the side of the road. But l…

Video game experience is absolutely better than no experience. On small general aviation planes, the feature set is quite minimal and most simulators will replicate all of it faithfully enough, so the only remaining thing is the “feel” of the plane which you can hopefully experience a bit during flight before landing. In contrast, a big passenger jet has insane amounts of different systems that need to be configured…

I've played a bit of the new MSFS and flying the big jet (737?) is a completely different beast than flying the Cessna. There's so much automation that if you don't know what you're doing you can't even descend to land the plane (because it thinks you want to cruise and will fight you all the way down).

Re: Passenger with “no idea how to fly” lands plane after pilot incapacitated

#190

Post by whimsicalism »

imwillofficial wrote: post #110
mhb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you could fairly easily talk someone through landing The bad news is that it is 10/28 (east-west) and the wind was reported from the north at 11 knots gusting 17. KPBI 101553Z 02011G17KT 10SM SCT042 SCT046 26/15 A student pilot with 20 hours of training probably wouldn’t have been signed off by his/her/zir/their instructor to operate in that kind of crosswind. From: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2022/05…

“signed off by his/her/zir/their instructor to operate” What does “zir” mean? I’ve seen it around but can’t remember where.

it's an old-style gender neutral pronoun that has mostly fallen out of favor
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