Discussion on answer by Therac: Can a non-pilot realistically land a commercial airliner?

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02:12

A: Can a non-pilot realistically land a commercial airliner?

Most people will have no idea what frequency to use to talk to the ATC, since it changes by area. Assuming they have established contact, the person in the cockpit will have to be guided on every step, and execute the instructions precisely. The term is "talkdown landing", which have been done wi...

Therac

Talkdown landings have happened. But autoland doesn't do all of the work, there are still manual steps.

@TypeIA OK, I'll clarify. I'm not saying it's likely, just that it's possible. There hasn't been a lot of chances to test this out, except by hijackers, which are rarely highly capable.

@TypeIA There aren't any instances of unsuccessful airliner talkdowns either. This situation just hasn't come up. At least one given the OP's condition - that they can communicate with the ATC.

Peter Kämpf

I don't understand the downvote. People, once again: Downvoting is there to supress low-quality answers, not to show disagreement.

Carsten S

Very good to point that all of the interesting questions are moot if you cannot get radio contact. Anyway, another of those videos: youtu.be/AbTDzPUDxqY

SirHawrk

Man Helios 522 was such a tragic case. The story of the one flight attendant waving at the f16 pilots is just sad.

Dave Gremlin

Just FYI, Andreas Prodromou the flight attendant in the cockpit of Helios 522 had a commercial pilot's licence and even he couldn't do anything.

OrangeDog

02:12

@PeterKämpf wrong answers are low quality. So if you disagree that it's correct, you should downvote.

user3067860

121.5 ...then you can negotiate changing frequencies if needed.

Doryx

This may be worth adding to the answer: washingtonpost.com/travel/2023/05/20/…

Hannah Vernon

"Out of 4 people, 2 failed and 3 succeeded." Is this an AI generated answer?

mack

All such attempts have failed in experiments above, as well as in real life except for Out of 4 people, 2 failed and 3 succeeded. This doesn't even make sense.

Doryx

I think it was an honest copy and paste mistake from making a summary of the study: "He chose four men and two women, ages 19 to 67. Four people had zero pilot experience. However, three members of the group (Patrick Miller, Meloney Linder and Daku) had played around with flight simulators, and one (Alexa Vilven) had watched YouTube videos of pilots landing planes. We also had two pilots on board: Aaron Prestbo, a physician and recreational pilot from South Dakota, and Brian Dilse, a former airline pilot who worked for a major carrier in Dubai and now teaches at UND."

Therac

02:12

@HannahVernon AI answers look different ) I was re-summarizing based on what I could find, first excluded the commercial pilot, but then decided to include them. Trying to find the original study, since the WaPo article doesn't seem to say anything about the 6th participant.