Can a passenger land a plane?

[TriplexDread]

Hmmm looks tricky

 

[Ian]

She did it! Although I imagine there would be more screaming, tears and brown pants from most passengers if this was in mid-air .

I wonder if a passenger has had to try and land an airliner before? I imagine most large flights would have someone with some flight experience, although not necessarily too helpful with landing something as complex as this.

 

[TriplexDread]

I thought having a camera in the cockpit accessible via the tower would make things a lot easier.

Eg guiding hands to the correct buttons etc?

 

[ChristopherP]

This is why both pilots don't have the fish for dinner!

It's not hugely uncommon for one of the 2 pilots to be incapacitated on the flight deck, you see it occasionally in the Aviation Herald. Of course both crew members are perfectly capable of getting the plane down safely under single pilot conditions.

I did this scenario when I went to the BA training centre - albeit I know a bit about flying so it was a little different, so I disagree with what the girl in the video says. It IS possible for a passenger with no real world piloting experience to land the plane, and it's even possible without being talked through it. But I would say you need some knowledge about how aircraft work and what the different buttons do as a minimum. I would hope that on an airliner with 200 passengers on board, someone would fit that criteria - and you would hope that they would be the person to stick their hand up in the "does anyone know how to fly this plane" situation.

I think the video should have had 2 halves - one using full automation (as was the case) and just for fun the same scenario without the autopilots or auto thrust in!

 

[Abarbarian]

She did it! Although I imagine there would be more screaming, tears and brown pants from most passengers if this was in mid-air .

I wonder if a passenger has had to try and land an airliner before? I imagine most large flights would have someone with some flight experience, although not necessarily too helpful with landing something as complex as this.

You could take the uncertainty of having a layman pilot on board by practising landing procedures yourself before going on holiday.

Flightgear is a flight simulator application which is open sourcec and available for linux too. It is developed by a worldwide group of volunteers, brought together by a shared ambition to create the most realistic flight simulator possible that is free to use, modify and distribute.

http://omgfoss.com/install-flightgear-flight-simulator-linux/