How to land an airplane if you are not a pilot

http://eduardo.intermeta.com.br/posts/2013/1/25/how-to-land-a-plane-if-you-are-not-a-pilot#

by epochwolf • 13 years ago

386 167 13 years ago

eduardo.intermeta.com.br

epochwolf2• 13 years ago

I was surprised that turning the plane is much harder than landing it.

artmageddon5• 13 years ago

I can't see how that's the case. The author indicates that it takes students a good amount of times to do turns correctly, which means: not losing (much, if any) altitude, not overshooting / undershooting the desired compass heading, using the correct angle of bank that's both comfortable and not risking stall, all while keeping a look outside for other airplanes(assuming you're not relying on instruments).

Landing incorporating all of that to set up and execute the pattern, as well as keeping the airplane at a certain airspeed(too fast and you'll land too far down the runway, too slow and you'll stall & crash) and staying aligned with the runway to make sure you actually land on it.

FYI, I'm a private pilot with nearly 200 hours.

chmars6• 13 years ago

I agree: In my own flying experience, landings have remained the most challenging part of each flight – turns are easy in compassion.

iliis5• 13 years ago

Just getting it to turn is easy. Getting it right is hard for a few reasons:

First, instead of the first derivation of direction like a steering wheel in a car the stick/yoke of a plane actually controls the second derivation of the heading, meaning that pushing it a bit to the right not only causes a turn to the right but it will turn right faster and faster. So you steer by pushing/turn the yoke a bit to the right/left and wait until you reached your desired turning rate. Then you move it back into neutral position and wait until you (almost) completed the curve. Then you do push it to the opposite side until your plane is level again.

Second, there's not only the rotation along the vertical axis (Yaw) to consider: You also have Pitch (nose up/down) and Roll (rotation along longitudinal axis). What you actually did by pushing the stick to side was rolling the plane which in turn causes it to make a turn because the lifting force of the wings doesn't point straight up anymore but a bit to the inner side of the rotation. So you loose a bit of vertical lift which you have to compensate for because gravity is still the same. To generate more lift you either have to change your angle of attack or your speed. The second can be done by giving a bit more throttle but chanigng the angle of attack is trickier: Your plane hangs 'sideways' in the air so you need both the yoke and the pedals to get it right.

Third, because the plane makes a turn the outer wing is a bit faster because it has the longer path (sadly, there aren't any differentials for wings) and because it is faster it generates more lift. Yet another force to account for.

And the forth thing that comes to my mind (which applies more for gliders than for motor planes): To fly efficiently (and for other obvious reasons) you don't want to fly in another direction that your noise points at. Eg. you want the plane's longitudinal-axis be tangential to the turning curve. In a car this would be equivalent to skidding and is rather easy to avoid but air offers a lot less friction. Think of driving around in a hoovercraft...

Now a landing is trivial: as long as the debris is scattered in the direction of the runway it's considered ok.

ianstallings3• 13 years ago

And there's a fifth thing - you are turning the craft in a fluid medium that itself is moving. In order to get a perfect circle you have to account for wind movement throughout the turn.

arthulia2• 13 years ago

Is turning with a V-tail aircraft harder/easier/different than a standard tail configuration?

Nrsolis• 13 years ago

I've heard this before:

Any landing where everyone walks away is A GOOD LANDING.

Any landing where you can also use the plane again is A GREAT LANDING.

jsiarto• 13 years ago

Former student pilot here: you literally spend countless hours on "coordinated turns" which involve proper use of both roll and yaw controls (ailerons and rudder). It's much more difficult to do it properly than most people think.

Also, I would describe landing a small plane--and I've heard others describe it this way--as a "controlled crash." You are basically stalling the thing on top of the runway.

run4yourlives3• 13 years ago

I would disagree. Not many people die from a bad turn unless you stall/spin.

js2• 13 years ago

At the very heart of winged flight lies the banked turn, a procedure that by now seems so routine and familiar that airline passengers appreciate neither its elegance and mystery nor its dangerously delusive character. The author, a pilot, takes us up into the subject - http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.htm

venus• 13 years ago

Thanks. Excellent article.

neya• 13 years ago

[Personal rant] - I'd much rather get a parachute and jump the heck out. Probability of my survival would be much higher, then, I guess :D

jevinskie• 13 years ago

The problem is getting your parachute past TSA. I doubt they would buy the "just in case" reasoning. =)

davidw• 13 years ago

The article seemed more about small airplanes. Big ones have a series of people who would probably be in line to try and fly them before "random passengers with no experience". I don't know anything about planes, but "look for a parachute after you've stabilized the plane" doesn't sound like the worst possible idea, depending on the status of the pilot and other passengers.

aplusbi• 13 years ago

Plenty of skydivers and base jumpers travel (with gear) to go jumping. The TSA might look at you funny* but there is certainly nothing illegal about carrying on a chute.

* Of course everything is always at the discretion of the TSA agent, they can prevent you from getting on a plane because they don't like the shirt you are wearing.

neurotech13• 13 years ago

That would have a 99.99% chance of killing the pilot, unless they happen to be flying a T-6 Texan (turboprop USAF trainer) or something, in which case the Martin-Baker ejection seat would help. It would be very difficult to put an unconscious pilot hooked into a tandem parachute.

eddieroger• 13 years ago

I didn't get the impression that neya is too concerned about the pilot's safety, or anyone else on the flight for that matter. Seems like a solo jump to me.

dsl3• 13 years ago

Unless you have an aircraft designed to be jumped out of, you wouldn't be able to open the door at speed.

iliis5• 13 years ago

Some modern small aircrafts (think Cessna instead of 747) actually have a full plane recovery system: a chute for the whole thing :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_Recovery_Systems#Pro...

stcredzero3• 13 years ago

Not all aircraft are built stoutly enough to resist a boot-heel of someone determined to get out. Most are, but not all.

run4yourlives3• 13 years ago

Eh?

Your Cessna 172 isn't doing Mach 1. It's certainly possible to open the door at any speed a light aircraft can achieve. The door/canopy my get ripped off, but that's kind of irrelevant.

saalweachter• 13 years ago

One of Mary Roach's books (Packing for Mars?) also claimed that in a large passenger plane, you're moving too fast to jump out without dying.

mcargian• 13 years ago

There was a bet on another forum. Could someone with only flight simulator experience take off, fly the pattern and land a single engine plane on their first try. I won't spoil it for you, read the thread here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34/other-other-topics/prop...

djloche• 13 years ago

here's the "trip report" for that one: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34/other-other-topics/prop...

epochwolf2• 13 years ago

Thank you, I was skimming through a lot of posts to find that.

revelation• 13 years ago

And here is the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJT_CACIZqs

The trip report will spoil the outcome, so the video is somewhat more nerve-wrecking.

cataflam• 13 years ago

Also the trip report from the pilot : http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=36010398...

(the parent is the trip report from the flight instructor)

Very interesting to see his change of perspective and thought process during the flight, especially :

My confidence level was extremely high prior to the flight, as in I really thought I was a pick 'em to do this, as in even money. 5 to 1, 20 to 1, 100 to 1?? No effing way; I was sure I had a really good chance at success.

(...)

There is really no other way to describe what happened next: I panicked. I did quickly bank the plane right to get it back over the runway, and this was pure habit from the simulator, which mimicked this part of the flight perfectly. But in the immediate seconds after take off, the first thing I thought was, I can't do this. (...) But the nose kept generally pointed forward, and the plane kept its general climb attitude, and I settled down. That is, I settled down from a state of total terror, to just general major concern.

ianstallings3• 13 years ago

It's funny the first thing I thought in my mind was "right rudder, more right rudder!". That's the first big difference I remembered. The plane reacts to torque with incredible quickness. Then you realize that the air is not the calm environment you imagined and is actually a sea of air with "waves" coming from any direction. I'd say x-plane comes the closest to simulating this rapidly changing environment. You really have to be on your toes.

tomsaffell• 13 years ago

One more data point: I was luck enough to go up with an RAF pilot having never flown before (nor in simulators). He allowed me to attempt to land, with instruction. I got close, but he used his controls at the end. I was having trouble correcting for a slight cross wind. By contrast, I did unassisted loop-the-loops (2g, then 4g), and a barrel role. So my $0.02 - landing not so easy..

fsckin• 13 years ago

And here's a video -- not sure if its the same person.

http://youtu.be/jJT_CACIZqs

MattRogish• 13 years ago

Here's Steve's (the Delta pilot from the 2+2) post on FlyerTalk.com where he answers questions, too. Fascinating.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta-skymiles/1035853-ask-de...

hexonexxon• 13 years ago

They did in the movie Battlefield Earth lol

ubernostrum2• 13 years ago

There's an aviation academy that posts various videos of their A320 and 737 simulators, and doing different things in them. Including this one, where they talk someone with no experience (playing the role of flight attendant with an incapacitated pilot) through landing the A320:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkOT3fbc1O4

And one for the 737:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7WMQUDGDD4

(there are some other fun videos in there, like making a water landing, recovering from an engine failure, etc., that I find fascinating just for the sheer number of things that A) have been thought about and B) have had procedures actually decided on and written down in checklists)

pedrocr• 13 years ago

That was great, thanks for the links. I had no idea an ILS landing could be that easy to setup. The A320 seemed easy even, the guy even manufactured an autopilot failure on final approach to make the video less boring. At that point the fact that the "flight attendant" could fly the plane wasn't very realistic as she had gotten no information about what the joystick and thrust levers actually did.

Evbn4• 13 years ago

A few water crashes and people start jotting down ideas for next time.

SRSimko• 13 years ago

I'm sorry these videos are joke and not realistic at all. The instructor is sitting behind her looking at what she is doing and it also helps him describe what she should do. If he was turned around and looking at the wall it would be a bit more realistic. All that said I doubt most people would even figure out how to speak to atc.

Tichy• 13 years ago

The cool thing is, with everyone carrying a labtop these days, it might be possible to train on an emulator on the plane before attempting the landing. Must remember to install a flight simulator before I fly the next time...

goggles99• 13 years ago

How about the 14 year old kid who stole the sesna and landed it successfully (after landing successfully he took off again and hard landed it - oops). http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,159848,00.html

Volpe• 13 years ago

I feel like this is equivalent to: "how to fix a bug when you don't know how to program"... I could write as much as you like but there is an explanatory gap...

artmageddon5• 13 years ago

I can see the connection, but there are "emergency landing" courses that people can take at nearby airports that specifically teach non-pilots how to land an airplane safely if they are ever flying and an emergency happens to the pilot.

whatshisface• 13 years ago

If your life depended on the bug being fixed, articles like that would be justified... (even if they can only help .01% that's still worth it.)

rquantz2• 13 years ago

It's more like "How to recover and redeploy WebApp X after total server/data loss when you are not a programmer or sysadmin." There are a defined set of things that need to be done or could go wrong.

GiraffeNecktie• 13 years ago

Over the years there have been a few joyriders with little or no flight experience who have stolen planes. Some landed ok some not so ok. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1870&dat=19801116&...

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

Just reading that makes me realize how much time has passed.

Can you imagine the criminal prosecution of those kids if they were to do that today? No "three years of juvie max, likely community service". Particularly in Texas.

dendory2• 13 years ago

People who enjoy this type of article may like a presentation I made a while back at http://dendory.net/ALS

Note that this isn't meant to allow you to land a plane, and honestly I doubt many people should try their hands at it by just reading this one article either. I think in most cases it would be better just to have the ATC help you in how to set the autopilot to land the plane for you, when that's an option.

chmars6• 13 years ago

ATC staff is not trained for that. If an ATC can help you with that, it's pure coincidence due to piloting training outside her or his ATC job.

dendory2• 13 years ago

ATC should be trained to get you the help you need if you're a passenger piloting a plane with a disabled pilot. They can get a pilot to come up in the tower, or get one on the phone.

chmars6• 13 years ago

It's interesting that my comment gets downvoted for stating a simple fact about training and knowledge in air traffic control (ATC).

In 2008, there was even a fatal accident in Zürich, Switzerland where the inadequate training of air traffic controllers with regard to piloting an aircraft contributed to the accident (although it was not the cause of the accident):

'The following factors created conditions for the accident or favoured its occurrence:

[…]

* An inadequate understanding within air traffic control of the significance of faults and emergencies on single-engine light aircraft flown by a single pilot in challenging weather conditions.'

http://www.bfu.admin.ch/common/pdf/2146_e.pdf

Swiss air traffic controllers do 25 hours of flight training in small aircraft, so they have a basic idea of piloting an aircraft. In case of a declared or suspected emergency, they will give full priority to the aircraft in need and will try everything to get the necessary support. However, depending on the type of aircraft, it might not be possible to find a pilot or another expert within the necessary time frame to do a safe talk down – and even with a talk down, a safe outcome would never be guaranteed.

neurotech13• 13 years ago

One minor detail, if a single-pilot is dead, disabled or incapacitated, it wouldn't be a urgency, with a "PAN PAN" call, it would be an emergency, and the call would be "MAYDAY".

I know a few pilots who fly medical transfer flights, and sometimes they have critical medical emergencies in the cabin, and can results in the pilot-in-command (captain) declaring a medical emergency, although they may not actually use the word MAYDAY when declaring medical emergency.

Anything that requires EMT trauma response on the runway (eg. life threatening medical situation), Its probably justified in declaring an emergency. A minor scrapes or bruises from turbulence doesn't.

scrumper4• 13 years ago

> it would be an emergency, and the call would be "MAYDAY".

Came here to say this. An untrained person in control of an aircraft most definitely justifies declaring an emergency.

I didn't really like the article. Honestly, if you're in a light aircraft and the pilot conks out you're going to get badly hurt if you survive at all. Landing a plane feels very weird for a very long time. In a big jet you'd have a far better chance: your controller can talk you through setting the autopilot to take you to a big airport, and then have you set autoland. (Of course, that scenario is pure movie fantasy, whereas the first is actually quite likely!)

If anyone is interested in this sort of preparation, I'd recommend taking a $50 intro flying lesson or - better - signing up for the AOPA's "Pinch Hitter" course, which is designed to teach non-flying spouses of pilots how to do just this. It's saved a surprising (alarming) number of lives - a lot of private pilots are fat old men who get heart attacks.

FireBeyond• 13 years ago

"I didn't really like the article. Honestly, if you're in a light aircraft and the pilot conks out you're going to get badly hurt if you survive at all. Landing a plane feels very weird for a very long time. In a big jet you'd have a far better chance: your controller can talk you through setting the autopilot to take you to a big airport, and then have you set autoland. (Of course, that scenario is pure movie fantasy, whereas the first is actually quite likely!)"

That, and a commercial jet is going to have a co-pilot in the cabin, and possibly at least one person more familiar with a cockpit than you flying in a jumpseat. If it's an international flight, then there's usually going to be another flight crew on board, too.

vacri3• 13 years ago

I've done only a couple of hours past first solo a long time ago (money ran out...), but as a neophyte pilot reading this article, the two things that stood out in my experience in inexperience were the PANPAN/MAYDAY thing already mentioned (besides, what layperson will remember PANPAN?), and that landing a plane is hard. Taking off is trivial, flying straight and level is easy, almost easier than finding the radio comms to the tower, but landing is really difficult for an untrained or inexperienced person - there's a lot of things that need to be done at the right time in the right order.

I did find the comment about stalling somewhat amusing. Non-pilots really have no idea what pilots mean when they say 'stall'. When I intentionally stalled in training, I thought the plane would roller-coaster like a paper aeroplane does. Some people think it means the engine loses power. An actual stall is much more subtle and you have to know what you're looking for to notice it.

I did like the comment about the subtle touch needed for the controls though - in my limited time, I never really mastered this.

artmageddon5• 13 years ago

>If anyone is interested in this sort of preparation, I'd recommend taking a $50 intro flying lesson or - better - signing up for the AOPA's "Pinch Hitter" course, which is designed to teach non-flying spouses of pilots how to do just this. It's saved a surprising (alarming) number of lives - a lot of private pilots are fat old men who get heart attacks.

I suggested this in another comment, but I wanted to thank you for mentioning it as it should get more visibility.

jff• 13 years ago

Well, it depends on the light aircraft. A small, 2-person airplane, the kind flown by fat old private pilots? If you can get it coming down toward the ground at a slow enough rate and get the nose up as you're just about to touch down (flaring), you're in pretty good shape. They're light, they can handle a rough landing, and you're just trying to get down without dying.

frenchman_in_ny• 13 years ago

There's a significant amount of work involved in an autolanding [1], and unlikely that a non-pilot would be able to land a big jet successfully.

[1] http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/

eduardordm7• 13 years ago

This can be changed from country to country due to PANs amendments, but at least in the countries I flew mayday is used in immediate emergency that requires immediate landing (immediate means right now, wherever you are)

vacri3• 13 years ago

An inexperienced person at the controls could very easily lead to an immediate landing.

But really, when all is said and done, I think everyone would forgive inexperienced people for not respecting differences between countries when it comes to correctly using MAYDAY and PANPAN.

run4yourlives3• 13 years ago

First thing I thought too - Dead Pilot? That's a damn emergency if there ever was one. You want everyone and anyone listening and nobody talking.

mvgoogler4• 13 years ago

You're _technically_ absolutely correct.

In reality, ATC is going to treat a plane with an incapacitated pilot and an un-trained person at the controls as an emergency regardless of the terminology used.

taloft3• 13 years ago

The call sign Lifeguard is used on the radio to make everyone aware of this. No need really to explicitly declare a medical emergency unless you're not getting the priority handling from ATC that call sign is meant to provide. When I was flying air ambulance, we met ambulances at the airport for patient pickup and delivery and they were nearly always going from ICU to ICU.

That said, it's an incredibly demanding job but can be rewarding whenever you make a difference. And it keeps things in perspective. It's difficult to complain about working at 4am, when a kid is fighting for her life behind you with a parent sitting nearby.

HeyLaughingBoy4• 13 years ago

I would really love to know if anyone without training besides reading instructions has ever successfully recovered from a spin (or any unusual attitude) in a real airplane!

The first time I spun an airplane it was by accident (OK, all of them were!): my instructor let it happen so I could learn and for the first few seconds it was like "what the fuck did I just do and how do I get out of it?" Even though I "logically" knew we were in a spin, the disorientation of G-forces, the screaming from the stall warning, and rapidly rising engine RPM made my lizard brain very slow to react. Never been happier to hear "I've got the airplane" coming from the right seat :-)

OTOH, after that first time, "unusual attitude" training became fun. Amazing what a tiny bit of experience does to the brain.

saraid216• 13 years ago

Not having any pilot training whatsoever, I gotta ask:

"attitude" or "altitude"?

I could believe the former, but I want to check.

rquantz2• 13 years ago

Attitude -- that would be, the alignment of the plane to the ground.

dbaupp• 13 years ago

I'm not a pilot either, but I'm fairly sure it is the former. I believe "attitude" refers to the angle of the plan with respect to horizontal (so pointing up or down very steeply is an "unusual attitude").

HeyLaughingBoy4• 13 years ago

Attitude. An "unusual attitude" refers to the aircraft being in a configuration that is not normal in controlled flight (e.g., flying inverted). I think that's close to the FAA definition.

sootzoo2• 13 years ago

Spin awareness is definitely weird at first, and I wholeheartedly agree that it's less scary after a bit of experience. Question: did you cover spin recovery? I was under the impression this was basically never done until CFI or CFII.

asynchronous13• 13 years ago

I think it depends on the instructor, and the instructor's assessment of the student. My instructor put us in a spin and said "your plane"! The 2nd time she did that I knew exactly what to do.

lutorm3• 13 years ago

My instructor, an old F4 pilot, put us in a spin shortly after practicing stalls in our C152. First we did plain stalls, no big deal. Then uncoordinated stalls (which easily rolls the plane full over on its back). After that, he demonstrated a spin entry and recovery and had me do it. I probably had ~5h at that point. (But easily hundreds of hours in desktop simulators.)

mats_rauhala• 13 years ago

At least in finland and with gliders (GPL) it belongs in the curriculum to practice spins.

cbracken• 13 years ago

In Canada at least, spin training is a mandatory part of the private pilot licence; at least it was when I did mine (1994). I suppose this varies by country. http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/publications/tp13747-s...

btgeekboy• 13 years ago

In the US, you don't have to do any sort of spins all the way up until your CFI. All you have to know about (and be able to explain to your examiner) is "spin awareness" - essentially how it happens, what causes it, and how to get out of it.

HeyLaughingBoy4• 13 years ago

It's not required for Private Pilot which I was training for at the time (early 90's), but my instructor planned to practice it. I lost interest in flying after about 45 hours, so we never got around to it. We did some unusual attitude recovery under the hood as part of my introduction to Instrument flight (the bit they do so if you accidentally fly into a cloud you can stay in control long enough to fly back out), and that was really a lot of fun.

marvin2• 13 years ago

I took a very hard-spinning glider out of a spin on the first try, using nothing but the theory books. Wasn't really a problem. The worst thing (and likely thing) that could happen is that you freak out.

pavel_lishin2• 13 years ago

> the disorientation of G-forces

Speaking personally, this is the point at which I start vomiting and panicking, not necessarily in that order.

gnu8• 13 years ago

To turn the plane 180 degrees, wouldn't it be easier to use the compass than try to find a reference point on the ground?

jcoby2• 13 years ago

It depends on the turn. With training you can do gentle turns (std rate, 15° bank) with the artificial horizon, turn coordinator, and watching the compass. When doing standard rate turns I watch the nose on the horizon, the turn coordinator, the compass, and the vertical airspeed indicator.

Once you get into 45° and 60° banks the forces are disorienting and it's far easier to look out the window at the ground and the real horizon.

Training or not, it's far easier to look out the window to make turns. You can see if the horizon is starting to move. If you sit there and watch the compass you can easily enter a stall or a dive without realizing it. Especially since your turns are not going to be coordinated (you won't be using the rudder effectively so the forces on your head will not be what you're used to).

serge2k• 13 years ago

Compass lags, trying to keep a heading via the heading indicator is trickery than it sounds. Ground references are the way to go.

iliis5• 13 years ago

It can even do the opposite and precede your actual orientiation.

ianstallings3• 13 years ago

I won't get into how inaccurate a compass can be in a plane because I understand your meaning - we can turn a plane accurately using instruments. But keep in mind that the first step is to learn how to fly visually using ground references.

eduardordm7• 13 years ago

Not really, because by looking outside you would also control the angle and atitude instinctively, you could do it using the compass too, but if you are flying visual you better be looking outside.

lsh1232• 13 years ago

Compass is one of the most complicated instruments to master in the aircraft because it behaves differently depending on many factors: where you are, where you turn, and are you going up or down:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_compass_turns

However if you do, then you have a backup instrument that never fails.

ohazi4• 13 years ago

What the hell kind of airplane are you flying where you add power to recover from a stall? Unless you're flying something with a very high thrust to weight ratio, you should nose down to break the stall, then add power afterwards.

yan2• 13 years ago

Adding power is one of the first things you learn when covering stalls during the private pilot license progression.

jcoby2• 13 years ago

Pitch, power, airspeed, attitude. Nosing down is the first move.

scrumper4• 13 years ago

In a regular single piston engine aircraft it's nose down, then add power. You always fix angle of attack first. Same applies to a power-on (eg takeoff) stall: nose down.

artmageddon5• 13 years ago

The author has it wrong, and I hope he corrects it. If you hear a buzzing noise, that means the airplane is going to stall if it loses more speed, but there's a chance that the speed is too low given how high the nose might be. Adding too much power at that moment, depending on the exact level of the nose, will cause the plane to lurch upward, which would definitely increase the chances of a stall. The right step would be to lower the nose to get more lift over the wings, and slowly add additional power as more airspeed is gained.

eduardordm7• 13 years ago

Not really, what could happen is a wing stall on single engines, but chances are that wont happen. :D That's a procedural recovery that fits most airplanes, put the nose down on a king air and depending on your altitude, you are doomed.

jpablo• 13 years ago

Wasn't that what caused Air France's 447 crash?

teamonkey• 13 years ago

From what I can recall, AF447 was stalling but the fly-by-wire system was stabilising the stall. Normally the FBW system wouldn't let the pilot stall but an earlier event caused it to enter some kind of unusual mode. That same event also made the pilot mistrust the instrumentation for the remainder of the flight. Because of this and the stable handling (+ bad visibility, lack of training and a whole load of other contributing factors) he didn't believe his speed was low enough to be stalling.

arthulia2• 13 years ago

Hopefully this is a fixed-gear aircraft...

noonespecial• 13 years ago

During my first flight, my instructor let me try what I could. I was well on my way to crashing short of the runway when he informed me that I was done.

Mark one datapoint for "would have died".

maaku• 13 years ago

Why isn't this posted in cockpits?

jamesaguilar3• 13 years ago

I have a friend who is a small-plane pilot -- think Cessenas, things like that. I asked her, "Would you be able to land a 747 if the pilot died and the copilot was incapacitated or something crazy happened?" She said, "I think so. Get on the radio and ask tower where the autopilot switch is. They can land themselves."

Of course this was not in the spirit of the question but I thought it was an entertaining answer.

hcarvalhoalves• 13 years ago

ILS is amazing, it can really land by itself depending on the condition.

iliis5• 13 years ago

Indeed. It also has an interesting and hilarous history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams

"The Battle of the Beams was a period early in the Second World War when bombers of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) used a number of increasingly accurate systems of radio navigation, developed by Johannes Plendl, for night bombing in England. British "scientific intelligence" at the Air Ministry fought back with a variety of their own increasingly effective means, involving jamming and distortion of the radio waves."

"Thus the beam was "bent" away from the target. Eventually, the beams could be bent by a controlled amount which enabled the British to fool the Germans into dropping their bombs where they wanted them. A side effect was that as the German crews had been trained to navigate solely by the beams, many crews failed to find either the true equi-signal or Germany again. Some bombers even landed at RAF bases, believing they were back in Germany."

icarus_drowning• 13 years ago

Honestly, this is what I expected the article to be: "Step 1: Turn on ILS. Step 2: Have a beverage and flip the fasten seatbelts sign on-- here's where it is on the instrument panel."

raquo• 13 years ago

Assuming you somehow learned that they actually died... and you didn't die for the same reason... and you could open the cabin door...

ShawnBird• 13 years ago

And that whatever killed them did not damage the radio and/or auto pilot.

chmars6• 13 years ago

What made your friend think that air traffic controllers would be able to give instructions on how to land an aircraft?

(As a rule of thumb, they don't. And even most pilots couldn't help, only pilots who know the aircraft in question and if auto land is an option at all.)

vacri3• 13 years ago

You can keep a plane flying straight and level while they go and find out. They know that there's a plane in distress and can route traffic around it, and get someone on the horn.

defrost• 13 years ago

It's still the right thing to do to contact them and ask for advice, they have emergency services to arrange, traffic to clear, and many have flight experience of some kind or another. More to the point they are at the twitching heart of the airport and can get on the phone or handball the task of patching through to a pilot that does have the relevant experience.

Even small airports have a surprising breadth and depth of experience hanging about the associated flight schools and maintenance sheds, the chances of finding a semi retired 747 (say) pilot lurking about with the older mechanics working on a light aircraft or custom built car are surprisingly high.

jamesaguilar3• 13 years ago

Specified "747" in the original question, and in my comment. I'm sure ATC could come up with someone who knew how to fly one.

drakeandrews• 13 years ago

They will however be able to call Boeing/Airbus/whatever and get them to talk you through it.

mvgoogler4• 13 years ago

Sure, it would be unusual for a random individual controller to be able to give instruction on landing a 747.

But I can guarantee you that they would arrange for someone who did to help you. For immediate help, there would likely be another pilot in the sector that that controller could ask to help keep you in the air. While that is happening, other controllers or supervisors would be calling the airline to get a type-certified pilot/instructor on the radio to talk you through the landing.

I don't know of any cases where it has actually happened on a commercial, but there have definitely been cases in light aircraft where the pilot became incapacitated and ATC talked the non-pilot through a safe landing.

gnaffle2• 13 years ago

An ATC will be able to help by quickly getting someone who can help on the phone or in the tower. Finding someone with knowledge of the particular aircraft in question is seldom a problem, especially not at an airport.

jrockway• 13 years ago

I haven't read the manual for the 747, but I'm fairly certain that autoland is not done by flipping a single switch.

jamesaguilar3• 13 years ago

I'm sorry that she didn't say, "Ask for the process for configuring and engaging the autopilot," when she told the story. She probably thought, "Flip the switch" was sufficiently descriptive that I connect the dots myself. I guess she didn't expect to have the story picked apart by people looking for something to argue with.

cynest2• 13 years ago

A few years ago at AOPA I attended a seminar on this. Turns out the success rate is extremely high provided you are able to get in contact with someone on the ground.

scrumper4• 13 years ago

I think this article would have been a lot better if the full word count had been devoted to operating the radio. I don't think the author even mentioned 121.5 (let alone the transponder.) A few pictures of the control yoke PTT button and some common radio panels would help.

dsl3• 13 years ago

Absolutey. Here is a far better version of how to land a plane if you are not a pilot:

STEP 0: Don't touch anything.

STEP 1: Find the transponder. It looks like one of these: http://www.free-online-private-pilot-ground-school.com/image... or http://www.funkwerk-usa.com/funkwerk/trt800h/trt800h-lg.jpg

STEP 2: Set it to 7700 (emergency) or 7500 (hijacking)

STEP 3: Put on the pilots headset and wait, someone will start talking to you and explain how to respond.

STEP 4: If you don't hear anything for an extended period of time try to figure out why the radio doesn't work. Then start to panic and put into practice crazy things you read on the internet.

sootzoo2• 13 years ago

I assume you mean: in a simulator, in a light aircraft (e.g. a small Cessna or Piper or something similar).

In a heavy aircarft, e.g. passenger airliner? Has this even happened?

cynest2• 13 years ago

AOPA is purely general (non-commercial) aviation, so the first point is correct, although iirc the data was from actual incidents.

I don't know if anything like that has ever happened in a heavy aircraft. However, commercial pilots have pretty big health requirements to make situations like that less likely.

HalcyonicStorm• 13 years ago

Flying Flame attack!

cmsmith• 13 years ago

The confusion between 'break' and 'brake' was especially unfortunate here. I was never sure whether an action was going to cause a wheel to fall off or to slow the plane down.

relic• 13 years ago

I use my spare time at work on full-flight military aircraft simulators to fly around and try things like taking off, landing, etc...it was loads of fun, and once you were competent at landing a functional aircraft, you could try doing it with any combination of aircraft faults. I'm fairly confident I could land a [fully functional] C-130 if my life depended on it. My new challenge is trying to hook up with a tanker, during which I've caused many a catastrophic accident.

eduardordm7• 13 years ago

This is how you would crash: you would hit the main gear so hard that the rear would bounce back creating a negative angle of attack, making you do it again until you break the airplane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez64Ba98Fto

Now, if someone instructs you to ignore what you see and hear a GPWS I'm 100% sure you would be just fine.

The first time I landed a larger airplane I hit the ground so hard it I ended up going to the hospital because of a herniated disc (had it before the event) at that time I had 950 hours of flight.

Zak2• 13 years ago

Do modern large aircraft simulators fail to properly account for what happens when you land too hard on the main gear? That seems like exactly the kind of mistake they'd want to simulate accurately.

macleodan• 13 years ago

He forgot to deploy landing gear.

emillon• 13 years ago

On small planes, landing gear is not retractable.

mvgoogler4• 13 years ago

There are plenty of small planes with retractable gear.

The reality is that it doesn't really matter. Landing gear-up is almost always survivable - for the people at least :-)

Distracting someone with trying to find and operate the landing gear would probably be as likely to cause problems as it would be to help.

ville• 13 years ago

He was speaking about light aircraft. Such planes like probably more often have nonretractable landing gear?

stephengillie• 13 years ago

Where are the self-flying airplanes?

stcredzero3• 13 years ago

Mythbusters:

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-da...

Plausible: An instructor could talk you down. However, as other have pointed out, the controllers would just have someone instruct you to turn on the autopilot. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0J1RS8gDinQ/T1bYK4qr7QI/AAAAAAAAAQ...

robomartin2• 13 years ago

Yikes! Horrible article.

I took some flying lessons a long time ago but decided I'd rather let someone else fly me where I want to go on a much larger plane.

I have been designing, building, flying and crashing model airplanes and helicopters of all types since I was a kid. Slow, fast, gliders, jets, three-foot to ten-foot wingspan. I've even done the in-plane FPV camera thing --where you mount a camera in the plane, radio the video down to the ground and wear goggles that make you feel like you are inside the plane.

Flight simulators have never felt real. Never. Even with zero wind. And, if you do have wind, and, in particular cross-wind, landings can be a handful if you don't know what you are doing. And, yes, these are toys --sometimes $10,000 toys, but toys nevertheless-- yet the laws of physics are pretty much the same (save some scale effects).

I would never consider doing what this guy did. Kudos for having the stupidity to try it. I wouldn't. I've seen too many very nice model airplanes in the hands of experienced flyers get trashed on landing. Anyone can take off with a little instruction. Flying, turning, maintaining altitude, lining-up with the runway at the right place, time and speed and flying it in are entirely different matters.

I also have a relative who flew 747's. He couldn't land a model airplane to save his life. I put him on FPV and he'd grease the thing in. Interesting.

eduardordm7• 13 years ago

I decided to delete my last comment because I don't fully understand your point. My stupidity for trying? I've been flying for 20 years! and have been flying models since a kid, my father is also a pilot and taught me to fly RC planes when I was young, at 11 I was flying his (real) cesnna 150 without intervention.

No one could ever take off without some instructions, try to use your left foot to brake your car and see what happens.

robomartin2• 13 years ago

Are you the author of the original article?

I think I screwed up my post. It actually refers to the guy who tried to fly and land the Cessna using his flight sim experience. That was dumb.

As for your article, good attempt but what do you think are the chances that someone will remember all of that without conducting drills once or twice a week? In other words, what you do in flight school.

I have enough trouble having people remember to manage energy and fly --as opposed to "drive"-- a model airplane around. That's why I start everyone with a pure glider (no motor). With such an approach they have no choice but to learn what flying is really about and manage energy at all stages. Flying is a beautiful and complex art.

antsam• 13 years ago

"Don't worry guys, I read about landing a plane once on the Internet."

jasonhanley• 13 years ago

"Landing: This must be the hardest part of flying to teach, because you can understand the concepts, theory, and techniques fully, and still make an absolute mess of a landing. So much depends on the "feel" of it, which varies significantly based on the plane you're in (even of the same type), the weather, and especially the wind."

I wrote this while it was still very fresh in my mind, right after getting my PPL: http://blog.jasonhanley.com/2010/07/learning-to-fly-airplane...

lsh1232• 13 years ago

The biggest thing in flying is not controlling the airplane but understanding that you are in charge and there is no anyone else who can help you. In the story mentioned above (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/34/other-other-topics/prop...) the guy explains clearly that he was panicked to death 30 secs after takeoff. And only the presence of the instructor in the plane helped him to continue. A lot of time during the initial training is spent on teaching the student to make decision, take control over the flight and building confidence in student's ability to fly the plane. Flying the simulator is very different from flying real plane simply because in real life there is no "reload" button.

taloft3• 13 years ago

Absolutely true. The odds of an untrained person safely landing on their first attempt are astronomical, but that doesn't mean you get to throw in the towel. If you are now the pilot, you better start acting like one in short order. First priority is getting the plane straight and level. Pick a distant object and head straight for it. You can't be afraid of the plane or doing something wrong. Of course if its on autopilot just leave it alone, but otherwise you have to take charge and straight and level is the first step. Then get on the radio and ask for help using plain English. But don't delude yourself thinking airplanes land themselves these days. It might make people feel better, but its not true. You are going to need help to have any chance.

dhughes• 13 years ago

When I took flying lessons the hard part for me wasn't the landing or take off it was straight and level flight.

I would often find myself too high or in a shallow dive or a turn so my instructor would have to mention it to me.

It's not instinctive you'd think you would feel it but you don't. He ended up having to draw a line on the windscreen with a marker where the horizon was. I used the instruments but mainly it was VFR (visual flight rules) only.

My instructor was very hands on one day as we were heading for the runway he said "OK you take control and land." I think on my second lesson onward I took off each time.

Once I was landing trying to beat a small commuter jet (coming from the other direction!) and he said "See that?" Not the jet but I didn't see anything else "That over there, 2 o'clock low." Nope didn't see anything. Then I saw it a big purple hot air balloon a mile or two away very low with evergreen trees behind it so dark it blended in. So there I was my first or second landing with a hot air balloon and a jet both in my way.

The flare is the most important part but flaps and speed too of course but if there is anything to remember it's the flare at the last moment. Stare at the end of the runway aim for it as if you will crash there then at the last moment flare (pull back a bit) and you ride the bubble of air.

I can't see how a flight simulator would have helped at all other than the basics of instruments and the radio, nothing is like the feel of real flight.

hakaaaaak• 13 years ago

Quick, someone write a site that indexes all of the most enduringly informative posts to HN, and include this pls.

bsagert• 13 years ago

There seems to be a few pilots on this thread but no one has yet mentioned trim tabs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_tabs). The landing speed of a small plane is slower than cruising speed and the trim tab has to be adjusted or keeping the nose up will take take more strength than realized. That alone would cause further panic to an inexperienced person.

How to land an airplane if you are not a pilot

Related Stories