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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

#221

Post by ManBlanket »

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…

Man I'm making a big assumption here but for someone who hasn't experienced a plane crashing into their home you seem to have a lot of angst for something that doesn't affect you in the scheme of things. Are you self aware enough to ask yourself if you're foisting your own baggage onto the shoulders of people and things you view as outsiders? Let me be the voice of reason here, my man. You're the only person that has the power to make you chill the fuck out. If you want to represent whatever tribe you hail from as better than conservatives, the elderly, or small planes I guess, you gotta change your attitude. The only thing launching into a weird tirade about airplanes, lead, and the elderly over an article about a guy landing a plane makes you seem kinda narcissistic, entitled, and maybe even a little bit mentally ill yourself. Your life would only get better the second you decide living in a haze of anger over shit you can't change is no means to an end. If you're so focused on that anger, you're not focused on the things you can change to make your world better. Please, chill out, go pick up trash in the park or something. I promise it'll make you feel better.

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

#222

Post by AtNightWeCode »

whimsicalism wrote: post #172
civil_engineer wrote: post #13

Pilot here. I'm floored that a person with no flying experience could put this airplane down without a scratch. Air traffic controllers are not necessarily pilots, but luckily, this one was a pilot and certified instructor. ATC and passenger worked through a stressful situation to produce an amazing outcome. Bravo!

Listening to the audio of the conversation, it doesn't seem like the passenger has no flying experience... At minimum they must have spent significant time around aviation or be ex-military. e: From another comment on Reddit > Examples: > The passenger knew what button to press on the yoke to transmit to ATC. > The passenger knew aviation phraseology and phonetics “333 Lima Delta”. > The passenger knew where the alti…

I think most people would be screwed cause there seems to a lot of different ways to get the radio to work in the first place. At least for larger planes.

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

#223

Post by coldpie »

vhodges wrote: post #44

Wow... They should make a movie about that. For you youngins out there... this is a joke, there were several Airport 7X movies (including an episode of The Incredible Hulk (Bill Bixby series) where Banner/The Hulk had to land a plane) in the 70's.

> For you youngins out there... in the 70's.

People born in 1980 are turning 42 this year :)

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

#224

Post by topher515 »

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…

It seems like you're conflating two issues here:

1. Old people like to fly small planes and crash them more than others [citation needed?]

2. Small planes emit toxic chemicals that are slowly poisoning everyone

Personally I'm horrified that we allow issue (2.) to continue given all we know now about the dangers of lead poisoning. But I don't particularly care about issue (1.) since I generally think people should be allowed to risk their own lives as they see fit.

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

#225

Post by asdfman123 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #36
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…

"Moore is suspected of being responsible for approximately 100 thefts in Washington, Idaho, and Canada, including bicycles, automobiles, light aircraft , and speedboats.[15] It is believed that he learned how to fly small planes by reading aircraft manuals, handbooks, watching a "How to fly a small airplane" DVD, and playing flight simulator computer games .[17] One plane he stole was a Cessna 182, FAA registration n…

I've been nerding out over airplanes recently, and I want to get my private pilot's license.

One thing that has surprised me is that airplanes are actually pretty simple machines. They're not hard to fly, either.

The part that is expensive (besides fuel) and time consuming is all the emphasis on safety. You want to be REALLY sure your plane is working and REALLY sure you know how to fly it.

If you just want to hop in a plane and don't care much about survival... you could probably figure it out. Just like a 14 year old could probably figure out how to drive a car or crash it immediately.

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

#226

Post by Sakos »

the_af wrote: post #92
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…

I wonder about DCS "study sims" of combat jets. No, no, I'm not saying one could actually be a fighter pilot just by flying DCS F-18. But I wonder about the realism. It seems every single knob and button and thingy on the cockpit is clickable. Every subsystem is simulated. The manual is reportedly huge (I don't own it, just watched videos on YouTube). With such a realistic flightsim, TrackIR, a HOTAS setup, and all t…

I could turn on a real F-16. Zero chance I'd try to fly one irl. I just don't think the knowledge/skill transfer is very good for actual flying without any sort of (realistic) haptic feedback for how the plane actually feels to fly. Maybe if you shat money and could afford a 6DoF rig and trained on that?

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

#227

Post by mastax »

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…

The FAA has been dragging its feet certifying lead free aviation fuel.

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

#228

Post by InitialLastName »

mbreese wrote: post #178
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?

In the event of a pileup, it doesn’t really matter how much distance you’ve left. If you end up hitting the car in front of you, you get cited for failure to maintain distance. Because, if you had left enough distance, you wouldn’t have hit the car in front of you. It doesn’t matter if you left 50, 75, or 100m. If you hit the car in front, you didn’t leave enough space. And the risk of someone else swerving into that…

> In the event of a pileup, it doesn’t really matter how much distance you’ve left.

For legal liability, that might be true. In reality, if you've left yourself a safe amount of distance, you have more opportunity to react to events in front of you in such a way that you minimize damage and loss of life (thus mattering).

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

#229

Post by asdfman123 »

xhroot wrote: post #217
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…

There was a guy who made a forum bet he could land a Cessna 172 - first try - with nothing but MS Flight Simulator experience. Here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34/other-other-topics/pro... And outcome: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=35915547&p...

There's nothing magic about flying. At the end of the day it's relatively simple.

The difficult part is being absolutely certain you're trained well enough to not crash the thing.

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

#230

Post by hellisothers »

WalterBright wrote: post #160
sandworm101 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Moore is suspected of being responsible for approximately 100 thefts in Washington, Idaho, and Canada, including bicycles, automobiles, light aircraft , and speedboats.[15] It is believed that he learned how to fly small planes by reading aircraft manuals, handbooks, watching a "How to fly a small airplane" DVD, and playing flight simulator computer games .[17] One plane he stole was a Cessna 182, FAA registration n…

Taking off isn't hard, an airplane will take off on its own. It'll fly straight and level if you simply let go of the controls. It's the landing that's hard, and Moore would crash every time he landed.

If it is trimmed correctly, and knowing where the trim control is or what it does is not obvious :)
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