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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

#291

Post by jaywalk »

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?

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.

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

#292

Post by dominotw »

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…

He was also so calm. Making me think he knew there was a way out if got some help.

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

#293

Post by sokoloff »

aksss wrote: post #275
randall wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems reasonable that if someone is in a two person cessna they probably have some additional flight exposure, right? I wouldn't know anything about most of that stuff... but I could probably figure out some of it in the moment just because of my technical bent. A lot of my founder friends are pilots, and were able to adapt pretty quickly... so maybe it's one of those things?

We're all ignoring the possibility that the pilot gave him the, "Now if I become incapacitated," speech before taking off.

I’ve given my wife the basic heading, airspeed, trim, radio comms briefing and experience. (And also given my older kid the same experience but just for fun.)

If I kicked off in flight on day/good weather, and she was up front, I’m pretty sure that airplane would end up inside the airport perimeter, probably stopped on all three wheels on a runway. That’s not to take anything away from this pax feat, but it’s pretty likely they at least had a pretty good idea of how things work. (And were in a fairly simple airplane.)

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

#294

Post by cbm-vic-20 »

shkkmo wrote: post #211
sandworm101 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also wasn't landing at an airport with help from ATC. If you put an aircraft down on an unprepared beach/field, and walk away, that was a good landing irrespective of any damage done. For many pilots, a "crash" must be unintentional. Deliberately putting an aircraft down somewhere other than a runway is "ditching" or a forced landing, but never a crash.

> If you put an aircraft down on an unprepared beach/field, and walk away, that was a good landing irrespective of any damage done. For his skill level, walking away is a great result. However, there are Alaskan bush pilots who land some pretty remarkable places. Some of them are not official runways and many of the ones that are official (Alaska has a LOT) won't have ATC support. OFC, Alaskan bush pilots aren't repr…

Those planes have reinforced landing gear that is much more suitable for landing in those places, as opposed to planes that usually land on paved surfaces.

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

#295

Post by alfalfasprout »

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!

I'm not overly surprised for two reasons:

1) This was a single engine plane w/out constant speed prop. So really the only things to worry about would be throttle, flight controls (maybe trim), and mixture. 2) Looks like it was a steam gauge plane so luckily the student didn't have to learn a fugly glass panel UI 3) The stall speed on these planes is pretty low, so ATC probably had them do a pattern to get used to the distances and then come in a bit hot for the actual landing. Coming in a bit hot in a cessna like that just results in landing deep or a rough landing when you pull the power vs. stalling and crashing (which is much more likely if the PIC tried to do 60 knots on final). If they roll past the end of the runway a bit it'll damage the plane but at least they're on the ground. 4) The landing gear on those planes is really strong. You can botch the landing and the plane will be fine.

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

#296

Post by InitialLastName »

Swizec wrote: post #67
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…

I believe Formula E and various other racing series have had huge success with hiring drivers out of e-sports. If you’re fast in a sim, you only have to add the physical prowess and stamina to race. That’s much cheaper than spending a decade in minor racing series. Sauce after quick googling: https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/video-gamers-new-rac...

You must be thinking of a series other than Formula E (or at least, it's not what I'd call "huge success"). All of their current drivers had pretty normal feeder series careers (often including brief, unsuccessful stints in F1) and I don't see any that have notable sim accomplishments.

WEC has made some amount of noise about hiring sim drivers (including a tie-up at some point with Nissan and Gran Turismo), but the same applies for the drivers in their top two classes.

Even your source doesn't care to mention any drivers who have gone from sim racing success to what anyone paying attention to motorsport would call "huge success" in top-level racing (two of the GT Academy drivers did have a successful one-off drive in LMP2, with a factory team and a much better-established teammate).

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

#297

Post by zokier »

Maursault wrote: post #245
topher515 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> since I generally think people should be allowed to risk their own lives as they see fit. But what if your life was in danger because of this. Because it is, even if the risk to you and your loved ones is low, it is not zero. If there was good reason for accepting this risk, that would be one thing. But there simply is no other rational reason than thrill for flying a small plane around for a few hours and landing…

How many bystanders have died, or even injured, in hobby aircraft crashes?

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

#298

Post by gfosco »

93po wrote: post #288
gfosco wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Man that website is full of awful, awful content edit: lmao you're the CTO. cool site bro

Different perspectives... I don't see anything awful there.

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

#299

Post by lutorm »

jonny_eh wrote: post #102
mhb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure you know what a good distance is from the car in front of you.

In a multi-car pileup, the car immediately in front of you literally stops in an instant, much faster than if it were to fully hit the brakes. It's much faster than any driver could realistically expect. It can happen so fast, you may not even see brake lights turn on. It's why these pileups can get so surprisingly large.

Indeed. This is why you can't drive around just looking at the back of the car in front of you, you need to look way down the road. The distance to the car in front of you needs to be large enough that you can react if that driver steps on the brake, but will never be enough should they impact a stationary object. You need to see stuff like that much earlier, and if you can't, you're driving too fast.

I'm constantly baffled that these pileups happen, since it's obvious these people were driving much, much faster than is justifiable under the conditions. They should all lose their licenses.

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

#300

Post by zokier »

WalterBright wrote: post #170

My dad (Air Force) said that sometimes a mechanic would decide he knew how to fly, and would take off in a military plane (this was long ago). They'd fly around a bit, and then realize they have no idea how to land. They'd get on the radio, and the tower would talk them down. Meet the mechanic on the runway, and escort him off to prison.

Variation of this story? https://fighterjetsworld.com/weekly-article/holdens-lightnin...
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