1 in 3 Americans believe they could land a jet

[Slick Goodlin]

Article here:
https://simpleflying.com/1-in-3-america ... emergency/

Okay but will a third of the hundred-plus passengers get into a dock measuring contest to choose who gets to land?

Also, if you had to talk down some doofus flying a transport category jet for the first time do you talk him through eyeballing it on to a manual landing or go through the tedium or programming a Cat III autoland?

[Nark]

Over-Confidence and debt are not in short supply ‘round here.

There seems to be a story every 10-20 years of a passenger landing the plane (or helping). The Caravan in Fort Lauderdale and then Southwest coming back to Vegas just a few days ago.


I train pilots to land a jet, even then some struggle, depending on experience …

Talking to some flight attendants amazes me at the lack of basic fundamentals. Your job is to open the door, not land the plane. The same principle applies to John Q. Public too.

The difficulty with autoland, is that it’s more involved than simply leaving the autopilot on.
Also, assuming the jet you’re flying has autoland capabilities. I’m not sure any of the RJ’s do…


Cue the single pilot and autonomous aircraft debate…

[Colonel]

Dunning-Krueger

people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge

Remember that 50% of people have a double digit IQ and 60% don’t earn enough to pay taxes.

I have 2 ATP’s, 2 jet type ratings, I issue jet type ratings, and trust me when I say that if I tried to land a 737 it would look like an Air Canada “hard landing”. You would need a bulldozer to scrape all the parts off the runway.

[Squaretail]

Not surprising when you know that a non-zero percentage of people think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, think the earth is flat, or believe in ghosts.

That said, depends on the definition of "land" if that bar is only crash it so some survive, well then maybe they're right. Microsoft flight sim has been out for a lot of years after all.

[Slick Goodlin]

I would posit that anyone regularly posting here could land an Airbus in a way that everyone on board survives. It might not be the prettiest arrival but good enough.

[Colonel]

After the Halifax debacle I remember a friend, retired from AC that flew both the bus and Boeings, told me that any day you could wreck an Airbus without hurting anyone, is a good day.

Gimme an hour of sim time and a Vref and I could give it a go. It’s not going to be pretty though.

[Nark]

I’m an Airbus instructor pilot, and I have talked/taught helicopter pilots through a landing. But…. That’s after a few dozen sim sessions and they’re doing OE.

The challenge isn’t really the flare… per se… it’s setting up the airplane that weighs just shy of 145,000lbs and slow enough not to get * alpha prot.

If I’m sitting beside John Q, why is he landing it and not me?

I don’t think I can obtain the SA to talk him through setting up a clean plane to landing config from the ground radar returns.


* airbus lingo.

I do t mind the question posed, because it stirs conversation.

[David MacRay]

I would hope you’re right Slick but I definitely think you guys that are still current would do it much better than me.

I might not bend a medium twin but, I’m not confident about that right now.

Then again there was that lady in India that kept landing a big jet on the nose wheel until it finally had enough…

[digits]

Since you can get a typerating without ever having landed one, the FAA seems to think it's fairly trivial as well

[Colonel]

Well, the FAA hated Bob Hoover and approved Boeing MCAS so caveat emptor.