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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

#451

Post by inopinatus »

rejor121 wrote: post #428
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…

I lean towards aggreing with you. It’s possible he was prior military. I was an AE and worked on basically all of the flight systems in my eight years in the navy. The fact he knew phonetics just makes me believe he served or at the very least, was heavily exposed in another function.

I learned the NATO alphabet for no better reason than it seemed useful over noisy communication channels, such as when on the phone in a data center with the HVAC going hard.

And so it has proved. That was maybe fifteen years ago; I'm so accustomed now, that I'll use it reflexively with everyone.

Anecdotally, I have observed that certain professions are inclined to treat those that use it with more respect.

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

#452

Post by chopin »

albert_e wrote: post #136
brightball wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard the story on the radio this morning and they said that not only was the controller a certified instructor but he flew this specific plane so he knew how to direct him to everything on the panel! Really incredible bit of coincidence.

On the contrary the CNN story [0] said the controller was NOT familiar with this specific plane so he got a print out of the dashboard of that model so that he can guide the "pilot" properly. There was also a picture. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/florida-passenger-lan...

I always thought that in such a situation ATC would get a flight instructor with experience on that plane to the mic as quick as possible.

I have a couple of landings in a commercial simulator (A380 and 747). It is manageable in good weather and in proper landing configuration. But I would have no idea how to operate the instruments properly. I'd need someone very familiar with the plane to talk me into the proper configuration.

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

#453

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

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…

May be transmitting to ATC with proper terminologies was learnt by watching the pilot do it? I assume there's not much to do as a passenger in a small aircraft like Cessna 208?

Btw, This got me curious and looked into Rowan Atkinson's (Mr. Bean) similar plane incident[1] where he supposedly maintained control of the aircraft mid-air when his pilot was incapacitated and the pilot recovered eventually to land the plane. All information on this incident points to Rowan not having any prior flying experience.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_Atkinson#Plane_incident

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

#454

Post by bryanrasmussen »

kenrik wrote: post #273
hgomersall wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pilot here: It could help with some familiarity but generally in MSFS you can get away with ignoring the gauges and just mess around. The tutorial might gloss over some of it. Having an unbelievable number of hours in MSFS when I was a kid ... landing a real plane is considerably harder and a ton of instruction time is just focused on getting you to land reliably. I finished my PPL in just over 40hrs which is close t…

I figure it might be an outlier, it takes 6-10hrs to get decent at landing (that is to say reliably) but doing it one time without killing everyone on board can also be attributed to dumb luck - this is with the other assumptions of having maybe been a passenger close to pilot, MSFS etc.

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

#455

Post by loup-vaillant »

eachro wrote: post #265
loup-vaillant wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pilot student here. I’m not floored at all, for two reasons: my own experience, and selection bias. I once maintained level on a Cessna equivalent with zero training besides video games (I loved flight simulators back in the late 90s), and a tiny bit of model flying (I flew little and crashed a lot). Maintaining altitude wasn’t trivial, but maintaining level was dead easy. I’m sure I could have managed a very slight…

I think doing this under pressure is what's most impressive.

Ah yes. I think that depends on the individual. Knowing myself in that kind of situation, I'm fairly confident I wouldn't have panicked. I would have been worried enough that it would have affected my abilities. Hmm, maybe 75% with an instructor tailing my was too optimist. I should probably lower that to 60%.

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

#456

Post by nopcode »

jaywalk wrote: post #291
dangwu wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Garmin's is literally "oh shit the pilot passed out!" and an entirely inexperienced passenger can push a single button, ending up with the plane stopped on the nearest appropriate runway with the engine off. The autoland system in airliners requires a lot of setup by the pilots and continuous monitoring all the way down, plus working ILS (instrument landing system) equipment at the airport.

When flying private, my pilot told me: “just press this button when I have a stroke or something”.

Almost 20 years ago.

Ignorance is bliss I guess.

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

#457

Post by bayesian_horse »

travisgriggs wrote: post #340
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…

Got my PPL 2 years ago (almost), and love taking people for rides to various nearby destinations. It's my "Sunday Drive" and a chance to share with others. These questions often get answered pretty quickly. We get talking on our headsets, now I'm about to taxi, and so I make a call. Shortly there after, when I'm talking to my passenger, there's a nervous 'Can other people hear me??' 'Nope, I push this button right he…

FAA will eventually put out a full incident report ...

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

#458

Post by t0mas88 »

schoen wrote: post #412
a-dub wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you look at all the reserved blocks, that's not a lot of usable address space. the internet says there are roughly 5k commercial aircraft in the air above the us during peak times. i get that these are regionally allocated, but still pretty tight i must imagine. do modern mode 3 transponders also include tail number or some other unique identifier in a sideband?

Yes, the squawk code is not itself necessarily used to identify individual airplanes and distinguish them from one another and transponders now transmit significant amounts of data on top of the squawk code. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan... (I don't know how much squawk codes are, or were, used to specifically identify aircraft in the past, but I believe that currently it's not unusual…

This depends strongly on the region. The US still has a very old system in use for the center controllers which are the big regions. That system wants discrete codes for each aircraft in each area, so they make flights change code if there is overlap while flying into the next region.

In Europe some areas (but not all) have switched to using the Mode-s/ADS-B identification (which is a 24 bits unique code not configurable by the pilot but fixed to the aircraft) in their systems and setting the traditional transponder code to 1000 for all of those aircraft.

In the long term expect everyone to adopt that approach, but things in aviation move very slowly so it will be many many years before we're there.

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

#459

Post by bayesian_horse »

tshaddox wrote: post #47
tragictrash wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn’t 3D easier? There sure is a lot more room.

Some factors that complicate the job: Higher speed, more kinetic energy when crashing, aerodynamic lift, uncontrollable regimes...

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

#460

Post by bayesian_horse »

egwor wrote: post #193
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…

I reckon I could do most of those things except transmit to ATC and squawk. I suspect I could google the rest or call someone to tell me how to. If there's a manual up there, then maybe that will have info?

Figuring out how to talk on the radio would be easy, even if nobody told you how to do it. And in an emergency situations ATCs tend to be really understanding and helpful. They even read the manual for you.

In any case, landing a real plane in this scenario is even a little easier than in a simulator (though more dangerous, of course). You get all the vectors for the approach from the ATC, they tell all the other traffic to scuttle off and so on.

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