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...
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.
> 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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] mcargian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neurotech1|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] scrumper|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] run4yourlives|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taloft|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] eduardordm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mvgoogler|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] HeyLaughingBoy|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jamesaguilar|13 years ago|reply
Of course this was not in the spirit of the question but I thought it was an entertaining answer.
[+] [-] hcarvalhoalves|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raquo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmars|13 years ago|reply
(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.)
[+] [-] jrockway|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GiraffeNecktie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsh123|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taloft|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dendory|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ohazi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artmageddon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jpablo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] stcredzero|13 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] dhughes|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] antsam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epochwolf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iliis|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] artmageddon|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] js2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsiarto|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] run4yourlives|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Volpe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rquantz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artmageddon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatshisface|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonhanley|13 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] bsagert|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arthulia|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] relic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eduardordm|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] noonespecial|13 years ago|reply
Mark one datapoint for "would have died".
[+] [-] macleodan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ville|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emillon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neya|13 years ago|reply