Could passengers land a passenger jet?

Momento Mori wrote: »

It would depend on the size of the aircraft though. A 747 possibly not.

What has the size of the aircraft got to do with it? Is a 747 inherently more difficult to land than say a 737 or A320?

You cannot underestimate in my opinion the learned skill of elevator for speed and throttle for height/rate of decent. They are both counter intuitive and somebody who had never flown before would find it very hard if not impossible to harness them. As both are the largest components of a manual approach I'm going to say that any chance of a passenger making a manual approach is very very slim. If asked to speed up because they are slow on the approach and they knock the throttle in, the nose pitches up and you may have stall city......talking them through stall recovery at approach altitude would be quite impressive and warrant a special one of a kind LeftBase bought pint.;)

Autoland perhaps.

Bearcat.... Yep, he holds the rating and is current, he was also a qualified F15 pilot and has flown as a mission specialist in the space shuttle

smurfjed

boeingboy wrote: »

Not a chance!

Thrust Lever on Jets,

I was always told that a Throttle lever is on the Boeing i.e auto-throttle moves forward and aft during use and a Thrust lever i.e an Airbus stays in whatever detent it is selected??? Yes I know your giving a Thrust input to the FADEC/ECU etc etc but still!!!

A320 wrote: »

I was always told that a Throttle lever is on the Boeing i.e auto-throttle moves forward and aft during use and a Thrust lever i.e an Airbus stays in whatever detent it is selected??? Yes I know your giving a Thrust input to the FADEC/ECU etc etc but still!!!

Personally its always been a throttle for me (at it too long to care simply a wage) but since my new conversion course I was chewed up and spat out for calling them that!!! And by an "instructor" who has never flown anything else except the sim. Got to love em!

Who cares I was only jesting.

Lustrum wrote: »

I think Leftbase has hit the nail on the head, the biggest stumbling block would be making contact with the ground. Imagine what would be going through your head if you enter a cockpit with both pilots passed out, you can hear voices in their headsets but they can't hear you? I think 99% of people would flip out.

I spend my days at the moment showing people how to fly full motion 747 sims. With help from the ground, I think anyone could get the autoland set up and land. Without help, or without an autoland, I think the professional pilots here will tell you that the ground comes up awful quick from 50ft, and I would imagine the touchdown would be something similar to the crash programme last week - hardly anyone I bring in remembers to flare, even when you're telling them "do it now" as they just freeze. And landing a 747 is completely different to landing a C172, so even PPL holders struggle

I agree that if they could be instructed to get the auto land set up with auto brakes on touch down that it could be very successfully done (assuming they manage to contact the ground!!).

Due to a lack of depth perception, landing on water is even difficult than land. I learned to fly floats with Kenmore aviation in Seattle, landing on glassy water was almost a controlled crash as the procedure was a shallow descent rate and no flare.

smurfjed

I hate to rain on the flight simmers parade however...........

By the time that Sally realises we have both become incapacitated then more than likely it is to late. But assuming that luck is on your side and we become incapacitated whilst in the cruise with loads of fuel and the automatics working as they should with a perfectly serviceable aircraft then you have to consider:-

- how do you plan on lifting out the dead weight of one or both of us from our seats? You can't land a modern jet from a jump seat or crouching down behind the centre console.
- in order to get us out you must be awfully careful not to bump anything or deselect any radio frequency
- assuming you get us out and you strap yourself in then presumably you will need to know how to operate the radios. The cabin crew if you are very lucky might be able to make an educated guess as to which knobs to push but more than likely won't have the foggiest
- if you do get in contact with someone, what is our callsign? Whats our squawk, maybe you will get lucky and ATC will have direction finding equipment so will quickly be able to locate your position
- but where will you land and how will you descend? How much fuel do we have left and how do you find it out? How much do you need to land safely at xyz airport?
- how will you engage the aircraft into autoland mode? ATC won't have a clue how to fly the aircraft - it isn't their job and they don't do a type rating for it. You might get lucky and find a guardian angel flying in the same airspace on the same frequency that might be able to talk you down but maybe not.
- then what about after you land, assuming you managed to do an autoland without disconnecting anything prematurely and departing the runway or missing it altogether. So how do you come to a stop, where are the brakes? How do you shut down the engines? You can't go down the escape slides with the engines running as they tend to suck up things.

All in all the odds are greatly stacked up against you. Best hope there is a rated pilot on board going on their holidays.

Just as an aside here. A year or so ago I was flying back from the the states(MCO - BOS BOS - DUB). In MCO I saw the FO hop out when the aircraft arrived and run up to a small pizza stand in the Departure lounge and buy 2 slices of pizza. When we were boarding both pilots were doing there pre-flight while eating their slice. Besides the fact that eating pizza while doing pre-flight or any checks in not a great policy it occurred to me that both pilots were eating the same thing(reasonable chance both slices were from the same pizza) and they could now BOTH get food poisoning(it was a small stand run by a short hairy man...)

I thought that a little bit of a violation of common sense...nevermind airline policy or regulations...

There's a possible scenario for you right there!

martinsvi wrote: »

I think with food poisoning pilots will be running to WC on shifts but they still won't allow passenger to step in and take their place. I think we should only consider scenarios when pilots actually are passed out...

only thing that comes to mind with food - if they both have a fish and get scombroid poisoning (its histamine poisoning, histamine develops in fish when you refrigerate it twice or more or freeze the fish long time after it's been dead). this can actually knock you out. But I guess worse thing that a hairy pizza guy can give you (we're looking at poisonings that develop quick symptoms/reaction) would be salmonella. Pilots should be able to land the plane using toilets and paper bags in shifts

I wouldn't imagine that is in the SOPs!

Could you land a 160-passenger jet without any training and just an Air Traffic Controller to help?

'Course ya can - just watch how the lovely Natalja does it here.


N.B. watch it all the way to the end . . . .


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZRPDBef-JM