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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a pilot. But with the fact that "somehow" they got airborne, I give them the benefit of doubt re: landing.
My flight simulator experience taught me that landing a big airplane is extremely more difficult than taking off, specially if unassisted by airport instrumentation.
Wait, this is somehow a mystery? Two people who had no experience flying 727s fueled up a plane, somehow got it airborne, and flew out over the Atlantic Ocean never to be seen again. Oh, and 727s require three people to properly fly them. There's no mystery here. They crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.
Planes equipped with newer Category Three navigational equipment can land on autopilot, even in the worst weather. Pilots never even have to touch the controls.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1998-02-12-980212...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a pilot. But with the fact that "somehow" they got airborne, I give them the benefit of doubt re: landing.
Getting airborne is pretty easy. Landing is far harder. That said if the pilot has any experience in similar sized aircraft and has the checklist for landing it should be doable so long as the weather isn't terrible and nothing out of the ordinary happens. If you're just trying to land on some particular miles long section desert then that makes things a lot easier. Trying to drop out of the sky onto a short runway i…
Wait, this is somehow a mystery? Two people who had no experience flying 727s fueled up a plane, somehow got it airborne, and flew out over the Atlantic Ocean never to be seen again. Oh, and 727s require three people to properly fly them. There's no mystery here. They crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.
The state of 727's five years before this event: Planes equipped with newer Category Three navigational equipment can land on autopilot, even in the worst weather. Pilots never even have to touch the controls. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1998-02-12-980212...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting airborne is pretty easy. Landing is far harder. That said if the pilot has any experience in similar sized aircraft and has the checklist for landing it should be doable so long as the weather isn't terrible and nothing out of the ordinary happens. If you're just trying to land on some particular miles long section desert then that makes things a lot easier. Trying to drop out of the sky onto a short runway i…
News reports and Wikipedia article mention that Ben C. Padilla was an American pilot and flight engineer and had a private pilot's license.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a pilot. But with the fact that "somehow" they got airborne, I give them the benefit of doubt re: landing.
My flight simulator experience taught me that landing a big airplane is extremely more difficult than taking off, specially if unassisted by airport instrumentation.
Trying to land and failing spectacularly may be the most likely outcome, but it's also the only one we can conclusively rule out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a pilot. But with the fact that "somehow" they got airborne, I give them the benefit of doubt re: landing.
My flight simulator experience taught me that landing a big airplane is extremely more difficult than taking off, specially if unassisted by airport instrumentation.
Landing is nowhere nearly as difficult as people make it out to be.
I do not have a pilots certificate, but I've flown real planes a lot in training situations. Granted, that was in a small single engine aircraft, and I've easily spent 100x as much time in simulators.
Thanks to flight simulators, I was able to fly the Cessna used in training alone all the way from engine start to engine stop, including taxiing, takeoff, cruise, 2-minute, 1-minute, and 30-second turns, landing hold pattern, and landing again on my very first time behind the controls. The instructor did not believe that flight simulation games could teach so much until I made that flight.
Instructors are not supposed to let newbie pilots do this, and he was ready at at the controls the entire time.
Anyway, landing is nowhere nearly as hard as people think.