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

Post by water-your-self » Wed, May 11, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

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…

Post by FartyMcFarter » Wed, May 11, 2022, 7:22 PM UTC

tragictrash wrote: post #39

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...

I've always said the reason we don't have flying cars yet is because people can't drive in 2D much less 3D. This gives me hope.

Post by DocTomoe » Wed, May 11, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

bentcorner wrote: post #189

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'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).

Post by marcodiego » Wed, May 11, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

AtNightWeCode wrote: post #220

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…

This was probably easier than to refuel and successfully land in Top Gun on NES.

Post by TomVDB » Wed, May 11, 2022, 7:28 PM UTC

hgomersall wrote: post #241

whimsicalism wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Genuine question, is my experience playing Microsoft flight simulator any use in being able to answer those questions, because it certainly feels like I can say something sensible about them.