Pilot here. I'm floored that a person with no flying experience could put this airplane down without a scratch.
Air traffic controllers are not necessarily pilots, but luckily, this one was a pilot and certified instructor. ATC and passenger worked through a stressful situation to produce an amazing outcome. Bravo!
Listening to the audio of the conversation, it doesn't seem like the passenger has no flying experience...
At minimum they must have spent significant time around aviation or be ex-military.
e: From another comment on Reddit
> Examples:
> The passenger knew what button to press on the yoke to transmit to ATC.
> The passenger knew aviation phraseology and phonetics “333 Lima Delta”.
> The passenger knew where the altimeter was and his altitude “I’m maintaining 9100 feet”
> Passenger was able to identify the transponder and enter a squawk code.
> Passenger knew what the vertical speed indicator was “I’m descending right now at 550 feet a minute passing 8640 feet”.
> My wife, who flies with me regularly, might get one or two of those items, but probably couldn't point out the transponder, much less enter a squawk code without instructions.
I have 30 minutes and 2 touch-and-go’s in my log book. I suck at Microsoft Flight Simulator.
In 30 minutes of the instructor sitting next to me, I successfully landed and took off in a Cessna 172, learned to trim power, elevators and flaps, learned how to transmit and how to “squawk ident”, and what channel to use in emergencies (1202 IIRC).
Operating the airplane was very straightforward. Without the instructor or someone talking to me, I would not have known what to do when, but I can completely see how someone reasonably smart, calm, and able to follow directions could land such an airplane in good conditions.
Flying a single engine prop plane seems easy. Anyone who has played Flight Simulator has thought about this, I could probably land a cessna but not a commercial jet. What I’m sure I would get wrong is stuff on jets like multiple engine speeds, cowling settings etc.
The question is she did not where she was, guess there is no gps map. And more importantly she has to fly the thing.
And in a commerical one you have gps and auto pilot. You can concentrate on those, as long as you have radio. Metuor has a video which is basically just use radio. You basically do not fly the plane. In fact the basic advice is not touched the yoke.
1200 is VFR, which generally means “I’m flying visually and don’t need ATC help”. If you’re squawked 1200 you show up as VFR on their screen, but you still show up. That doesn’t mean null. 7500, 7600, and 7700 are used for various emergency purposes, with 7700 being the most common, and almost always accompanying a mayday or panpan. Those are transponder codes, not radio channels. It’s a code returned by your equipment when the transponder is painted with interrogative radar.
0000 is closer to “null”, but still isn’t quite. 1000 also has some “null” like properties when it comes to ADS-B. Note that what I’m saying is North American centric and not necessarily ICAO nor other areas, which can differ somewhat.
1200 is VFR. That doesn’t mean null. 7500, 7600, and 7700 are used for various emergency purposes. These are transponder codes, not radio channels. It’s a code returned when the transponder is painted with interrogative radar.
This being Hacker News: The reason the digit 7 seems important here is that these are actually Octal. Under the hood this is a digital system, but the user interface is four octal digits ie 0000 to 7777 is a 12-bit value.
Most modern aircraft are capable of providing a lot more data over their radio transponder, including a system unique identifier, but it turns out that "squawking" a four digit code is a useful amount of discretion to give humans. If you could do it over maybe a decimal code would have been better, but too late now.
when you look at all the reserved blocks, that's not a lot of usable address space. the internet says there are roughly 5k commercial aircraft in the air above the us during peak times. i get that these are regionally allocated, but still pretty tight i must imagine.
do modern mode 3 transponders also include tail number or some other unique identifier in a sideband?
Yes, the squawk code is not itself necessarily used to identify individual airplanes and distinguish them from one another and transponders now transmit significant amounts of data on top of the squawk code.
(I don't know how much squawk codes are, or were, used to specifically identify aircraft in the past, but I believe that currently it's not unusual that many aircraft in the same region would be squawking the same number, which would not confuse ATC because of all the other transponder data that's available.)
This depends strongly on the region. The US still has a very old system in use for the center controllers which are the big regions. That system wants discrete codes for each aircraft in each area, so they make flights change code if there is overlap while flying into the next region.
In Europe some areas (but not all) have switched to using the Mode-s/ADS-B identification (which is a 24 bits unique code not configurable by the pilot but fixed to the aircraft) in their systems and setting the traditional transponder code to 1000 for all of those aircraft.
In the long term expect everyone to adopt that approach, but things in aviation move very slowly so it will be many many years before we're there.
I have flown enough as a passenger with a single pilot to know some of those things. While I have held the wheel a bit, I have no formal training and no experience taking off or landing. If I were in the same situation, I would tell ATC, "I have no idea what I am doing" to err on the more useful end of expectations for assistance.
Genuine question, is my experience playing Microsoft flight simulator any use in being able to answer those questions, because it certainly feels like I can say something sensible about them.
Pilot here: It could help with some familiarity but generally in MSFS you can get away with ignoring the gauges and just mess around. The tutorial might gloss over some of it.
Having an unbelievable number of hours in MSFS when I was a kid ... landing a real plane is considerably harder and a ton of instruction time is just focused on getting you to land reliably. I finished my PPL in just over 40hrs which is close to the minimum. Most people will fall into the 60-100hr pool.
I'm dubious that this passenger really had zero experience it takes a good 6-10hrs to get decent at landing (as in not bending metal).
MSFS does however offer a reasonable feeling for the cruise portion of a flight.
Also pilot here (C172 G1000): I personally find landing a plane IRL easier than in MSFS. Much easier when I am able to feel resistance on the yoke, feel shifts in wind and gravity etc. All the MSFS controls are so extremely touchy. Though I agree you need 6-10 hours to get decent at landings :)
I agree. I’ve been flying MSFT since the Sublogic days, using only the keyboard. It was very rare to get a good landing. I have about eight hours in a Cessna, and that was a piece of cake, by comparison.
I play MSFS in VR and have rudders, throttle and yoke... but without any forces on the rudder it's just incredibly hard. I certainly can't fly it very well with the Saitek / Logitech Yoke.
I tried MSFS in VR and it was also much easier because you are somehow much more aware of the surroundings (maybe because you move "camera" around the cockpit so much more). In VR I don't get lost so easily and always have an idea where the landing strip is.
As a teenage air cadet in the 1970's in northern Scotland, I learned to fly in open cockpit gliders and effectively went from scratch to first solo flights in a long weekend (January!) - within a few hours...
This seems familiar - I remember flying with mitten gloves (due to cold!), controls were joystick, rudder, flaps, and an altimeter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slingsby_T.21
I figure it might be an outlier, it takes 6-10hrs to get decent at landing (that is to say reliably) but doing it one time without killing everyone on board can also be attributed to dumb luck - this is with the other assumptions of having maybe been a passenger close to pilot, MSFS etc.
FWIW, I grew up playing 80s/90s flight sims and later went into the military and worked on planes and got the opportunity to use military flight simulators and was able to make my way around the cockpit and takeoff/land pretty much immediately.
I think my key for landing was learning flaps and throttle and getting a feel for stall speeds in sims.
Now, would I want to test that in an actual plane in a life and death emergency? Not really. But I'd wager my odds are good.
Years ago I read that a student pilot at Pensacola (basic flight training for the Navy and Marine Corps) qualified much faster because he played a lot of Microsoft Flight Simulator, to the point that the Navy was going to get multiple copies.
With a better sim (prepar3d, x-plane, etc) and good aircraft models, you can build up a lot of systems knowledge that translates accurately to the real world (instruments, avionics, navigation, fuel system, hydraulics, air, handling failures, etc). But not so much the aircraft handling.
I've got plenty of hours in MSFS in VR, most of it in GA aircraft in the Bay Area where I live. When I went on my discovery flight I felt immediately comfortable in the DA40 and with it's g1000. I knew where everything was in the cockpit. I mostly knew how to start it and the checklist was familiar. I could easily find my house and in general was familiar with landmarks.
My aviation skills were also interesting. I had no problem with coordinated turns and holding a heading. However I almost busted the bravo because my altitude kept creeping and I was so used to using the electric trim tab on my joystick. However in the real plane there are two and you need to hold both. Plus, I should have just used the wheel which I don't have on my HOTAS. My second flight in a 172 was much better in that regard.
The sim doesn't prepare you for the physical sensations. Not just the movement, but the massively improved FOV, contrast, resolution, and frame rate. It was pure sensory overload. I did all the approaches and it just felt comfortable.
My HOTAS is both a blessing and a curse. It's great for VR, but my muscle memory was all messed up. And the input sensitivity and weight is very different IRL. And despite knowing I'd likely be fixated by the instruments, and should be looking outside, I did it anyway.
Hope this was helpful. Can't recommend simming enough. It's what made me want to do a discovery flight in the first place. It was magical.
Got my PPL 2 years ago (almost), and love taking people for rides to various nearby destinations. It's my "Sunday Drive" and a chance to share with others.
These questions often get answered pretty quickly. We get talking on our headsets, now I'm about to taxi, and so I make a call. Shortly there after, when I'm talking to my passenger, there's a nervous 'Can other people hear me??' 'Nope, I push this button right here to broadcast to everyone, otherwise it's just you and me.' 'Where is that button? Is this it? I don't want to push it.'
In a small airplane, any interested passenger will ask a number of questions that help that acclimate. If this guy was a friend of the pilot and flew a bit with him, he had some familiarity.
Is there a full recording up anywhere yet?
I would love to know how fast they landed him. My inclination would be to talk someone through a landing that was a little faster than usual, because you have more control, and don't have to worry about the flair so much. Just drive it gently onto the runway and then slow it down after that. Which works fine for a little plane on a big runway.
They're in a cessna, with one other person piloting. I think spending a significant time around aviation is a given, but I also wouldn't call that flying experience.
It's not like being in the cabin in a commercial airliner, you'd see the pilot doing these things, and honestly as far as plane interfaces go, the Cessna is not bad.
Here's the instrument panel. While I wouldn't say every untrained person can just "figure it out", I think there are a decent number who would at least be able to get an altitude, heading, and vertical speed reading out of that. Especially if you'd spent some time in the last 30 minutes looking at them while your pilot friend is focused on flying.
I've spent a signficant amount of time flying cessnas in MS flight sim and XPlane, but I wouldn't assume that would automatically carry over if I ended up in a situation like that, and I certainly would err on the side of caution and risk ATC thinking I had less knowledge than risk overstating it and risk something going wrong because they end up thinking I'd be confident performing an ILS approach or something.
The dials are in the middle and literally labeled altitude, airspeed in knots, etc. Not a great point from the Reddit armchair scientists but the guy who landed the plane obviously holds up well in stressful situations.
> but the guy who landed the plane obviously holds up well in stressful situations
Thats what you need a cool head when everyone else is losing theirs. Not only that if the pilot had any sense he would give any passenger in the front a TLDR for emergencies just as a common courtesy. TBH I'm surprised the various Aviation Authorities have not mandated some sort of TLDR emergency/safety guide for small planes and their passengers, unless of course they dont really care if one drops out of the sky killing everyone!?!
Not a pilot, but taken control of a biplane, & helicopter, biplane is so easy, doing the nose dives like you see in the old war movies, bringing them up to stalling point etc, the plane even makes the same noise as you here in the movies, but its bloody cold even with your sheepskin coat on.
Helicopters, now they are sensitive and the pilot wouldnt let me do the pedals, but it was a hover test, ie seeing how long I could keep it hovering.
Have flown with ex red arrows doing the same stunts as a passenger, I think they tried their best to get me to use their sick back but they didnt succeed, haven't done any fighter jets yet, or any Air Racing but never say never!
I would imagine the acceleration from a flight deck catapult must be on a par with a Porsche 911 Turbo S on launch control, maybe a bit better who knows?
At our club we had a mandatory passenger briefing but it's simply not possible to convey enough information to get them down safely. So it was basically a "don't touch anything" type of thing.
This is with the exception of auto return to base autopilots and parachute systems like Cirrus's. Those are safe to be operated by passengers. But we didn't have either of those, most of the planes didn't even have an autopilot.
The plane in the article was a Cessna 208 though and probably had one.
> TBH I'm surprised the various Aviation Authorities have not mandated some sort of TLDR emergency/safety guide for small planes and their passengers, unless of course they dont really care if one drops out of the sky killing everyone!?!
Having an untrained passenger is no worse than flying solo. The latter is clearly allowed, and should probably stay allowed?
Banning solo flight would make a lot of people unhappy. Having a passenger emergency checklist and explaining where the radio is doesn't sound like an undue burden if it actually makes a difference.
It would be an opportunistic thing that only applies when it's near zero cost.
I believe elsewhere in this thread it was confirmed to have the older gauges, and I don't believe in this example it makes a meaningful difference in the readability of the primary instruments.
Yah. This is something that is always messed up in pictures of cockpits or flight simulators. The eye is pretty wide angle compared to any reasonable looking photograph inside a cockpit.
In the real world, when you sit up straight, you see just fine out of a tricycle gear airplane and see the runway ahead on the ground and the ground below you in the air. And then you slouch a couple inches and look down and have a great view of the bottom instruments.
I reckon I could do most of those things except transmit to ATC and squawk. I suspect I could google the rest or call someone to tell me how to. If there's a manual up there, then maybe that will have info?
Total spit ball here but just “riding” in a small Cessna seems like a pretty intimate experience. I wonder if he had spent a bunch of time in the passenger seat (as a job as a surveyor or ranger or something) and just got to know his way around a bit.
Personally, ATC is your best bet here. I'd say a lot of people who have ever flown a flight simulator can get the plan low and slow enough to not cause death upon impact. I would anticipate a bumpy landing, some injury and a lost plane...so this outcome is pretty impressive imo.
Yeah, it’s just dense. Lots of great info in these things but you should know most of it from memory or only need it on the ground. It’s a legal requirement to carry in the plane but i don’t think I’ve ever needed one while in the air…yet
> If there's a manual up there, then maybe that will have info?
Many (most?) airlines have abandoned printed manuals and paperwork in cockpits and have switched to tablets - often iPads - for weight considerations and because they are easier to just keep updated, and those are usually non-accessible to random passengers. Notable exception are emergency checklists.
All planes are required to have the original POH onboard. However those don't really tell you how to fly the plane it's more focused on things like Vspeeds minimum flap extension speeds etc..
That varies based on the certification rules. My older 182 only had to have the operating limitations and weight and balance info (“O+W” in ARROW), but they did not have to be original.
My later year A36, I believe needs the original AFM/POH. (In any case, I do carry it.)
If you didn’t know how to fly, you couldn’t read enough of the book to figure it out before the aircraft departed controlled flight (if not on at least a wing-leveler autopilot).
As noted, on an airplane without an AFM (Approved Flight Manual) the POH does not need no be on-board, only a placard with the operating limitations. The cutoff for the AFM requirement are individual aircraft that had their first flight after 1 March 1979.
As the owner/operator of an early 1979 build aircraft that does not have an AFM, I’ve had this discussion with maintenance/airworthiness inspectors so frequently that I keep a printout of 14 cfr 21.5 in my POH.
I'm also an owner of an older 182 (1966 - 182K) I agree with you the POH won't really teach someone enough about the aircraft to fly it let alone operate the radios.
Figuring out how to talk on the radio would be easy, even if nobody told you how to do it. And in an emergency situations ATCs tend to be really understanding and helpful. They even read the manual for you.
In any case, landing a real plane in this scenario is even a little easier than in a simulator (though more dangerous, of course). You get all the vectors for the approach from the ATC, they tell all the other traffic to scuttle off and so on.
I feel like the only thing a manual would be good for would be distracting you from flying the plane just long enough to enter some position that you (as someone with no training) won't be able to recover it from.
I have zero experience flying planes (or being near people flying them), but I do have ham radio experience. Sounds like that might actually help a lot. I've even spent some time listening to the ~120 MHz AM aviation bands.
I lean towards aggreing with you. It’s possible he was prior military. I was an AE and worked on basically all of the flight systems in my eight years in the navy.
The fact he knew phonetics just makes me believe he served or at the very least, was heavily exposed in another function.
> The fact he knew phonetics just makes me believe he served or at the very least, was heavily exposed in another function.
This is just one data point, but I'm a random software engineer with no military or aviation background or interests, and I know NATO phonetics. I think it's not that uncommon.
(My main use case is spelling things over the phone.)
I learned the NATO alphabet for no better reason than it seemed useful over noisy communication channels, such as when on the phone in a data center with the HVAC going hard.
And so it has proved. That was maybe fifteen years ago; I'm so accustomed now, that I'll use it reflexively with everyone.
Anecdotally, I have observed that certain professions are inclined to treat those that use it with more respect.
I think most people would be screwed cause there seems to a lot of different ways to get the radio to work in the first place. At least for larger planes.
And pushing the button does nothing. I believe you must hold it.
Considering the amount of Zoom, Teams, Huddles and Google meets meetings I been into over the last couple of years I would be surprised if a majority of people fix this.
Or the pilot would have turned it to some frequency where somebody else was listening, and chances are the guy on the other side could give you instructions for how to get help.
May be transmitting to ATC with proper terminologies was learnt by watching the pilot do it? I assume there's not much to do as a passenger in a small aircraft like Cessna 208?
Btw, This got me curious and looked into Rowan Atkinson's (Mr. Bean) similar plane incident[1] where he supposedly maintained control of the aircraft mid-air when his pilot was incapacitated and the pilot recovered eventually to land the plane. All information on this incident points to Rowan not having any prior flying experience.
Yeah as a former student pilot (and that is all) I was curious about their specific knowledge and terminology.
Maintaining altitude was what I found most difficult as a student pilot my instructor drew a line on the windscreen with a marker to help me. I could vary 1,000 feet or more up or down before the instructor told what was going on.
Knowing how to get the frequency for the tower or just knowing they had to was telling.
And landing is tricky knowing to aim at the end of the runway as if you're going to crash and then flare as if you're going up again. All counter-intuitive to anyone who is not aware that's what's done. Not to mention speed, flaps, rudder control.
None of these observations seem impossible for someone who is able to maintain low stress levels, think rationally and understand the overall general mechanics of how planes fly and what is important - altitude, speed, etc.
As a pilot that was my first instinct as well... it just sounded like he knew his way around an airplane... fully concede he may not have been a pilot, but he was clearly way too familiar with the situation to be described as someone who had "no idea how to fly", imo.
Pilot student here. I’m not floored at all, for two reasons: my own experience, and selection bias.
I once maintained level on a Cessna equivalent with zero training besides video games (I loved flight simulators back in the late 90s), and a tiny bit of model flying (I flew little and crashed a lot). Maintaining altitude wasn’t trivial, but maintaining level was dead easy. I’m sure I could have managed a very slight bank turn safely. Now landing… some years later I got 5 hours of gliding. My first landing went well enough that the instructor didn’t have to take control. If my instructor got sick instead, I would give my former self 30% chance of avoiding injury or death. 75% if a trained instructor with a similar glider could tail me and observe me more closely (and I think there were). Never ever gonna risk such folly of course, but I wouldn’t have been doomed either.
Then there’s selection bias: we hear of this because it is a feat. No question about that. Now let’s not forget about all the people that tried this and died. For those we’ll only hear of the pilot getting sick and the plane crashing. Or just the plane crashing. Those make for less impressive headlines.
Passenger who got to hold the stick for a bit. Flying the plane is easy. Flying it roughly at some altitude in a rough direction you're given is also easy.
Now, landing it? That's an entirely different beast for sure.
It is, but it's not as difficult as you think. PPL students are landing the plane solo within 10-30 hours of flight time, during which they will have landed maybe 40 times.
Ah yes. I think that depends on the individual. Knowing myself in that kind of situation, I'm fairly confident I wouldn't have panicked. I would have been worried enough that it would have affected my abilities. Hmm, maybe 75% with an instructor tailing my was too optimist. I should probably lower that to 60%.
I suspect there is a little more to the story. On the LiveATC audio, he was giving descent rates and asking tower/approach for headings. Didn't speak like a pilot but seemed to know more than a layperson. Maybe some aviation exposure but no flight time? Whatever the case, very well done by both him and ATC.
It seems reasonable that if someone is in a two person cessna they probably have some additional flight exposure, right? I wouldn't know anything about most of that stuff... but I could probably figure out some of it in the moment just because of my technical bent. A lot of my founder friends are pilots, and were able to adapt pretty quickly... so maybe it's one of those things?
> It seems reasonable that if someone is in a two person cessna they probably have some additional flight exposure, right?
I think that's true as you stated it, but this wasn't a little 150; it was a 208 (which seats up to 14). Very common to have non-aviation passengers in something like that. On the flip side, the fact that he was sitting front-right seat could be evidence he had some aviation background (e.g. as a pilot + aviation enthusiast, I would excitedly take that seat if it was an option).
I’ve given my wife the basic heading, airspeed, trim, radio comms briefing and experience. (And also given my older kid the same experience but just for fun.)
If I kicked off in flight on day/good weather, and she was up front, I’m pretty sure that airplane would end up inside the airport perimeter, probably stopped on all three wheels on a runway. That’s not to take anything away from this pax feat, but it’s pretty likely they at least had a pretty good idea of how things work. (And were in a fairly simple airplane.)
The handful of times I've been up with private pilots who took me in their cessna, I did get an if I become incapacitated speech where they showed me how to operate the radios how to squawk 7700 and how to keep the plane level before we even took off.
I heard the story on the radio this morning and they said that not only was the controller a certified instructor but he flew this specific plane so he knew how to direct him to everything on the panel! Really incredible bit of coincidence.
On the contrary the CNN story [0] said the controller was NOT familiar with this specific plane so he got a print out of the dashboard of that model so that he can guide the "pilot" properly. There was also a picture.
I always thought that in such a situation ATC would get a flight instructor with experience on that plane to the mic as quick as possible.
I have a couple of landings in a commercial simulator (A380 and 747). It is manageable in good weather and in proper landing configuration. But I would have no idea how to operate the instruments properly. I'd need someone very familiar with the plane to talk me into the proper configuration.
Idk, I’ve only flown 172s and have only landed a handful of times myself, but I think you could fairly easily talk someone through landing with an at least decent chance of survival if the weather was good. I mean this is not an experiment you want to run, of course. But landing in good conditions is pretty intuitive. You can tell if your angle to the runway is good or bad pretty easily and just adjust the throttle. And those things will stop themselves with plenty of runway left. You could probably land a small plane halfway down the runway, not know how to operate the brakes, and still come to a crawl before the end in most places.
I wouldn’t take an even money wager on it but I don’t think it’s terribly unlikely to have a decent landing. Especially since the pilot likely was showing him the controls in air before going unresponsive.
That’s neat and it does make it a bit more impressive. But an instructor who thought you had a 90% chance of landing without dying wouldn’t accept 10% risk and sign off, so it doesn’t say much about the overall odds.
But I didn’t realize he was flying a turboprop in crosswinds though!
I’ve seen it used as a gender neutral pronoun and some people prefer it to his/her but most people now just use “their” when they don’t know don’t know the gender of the person they are talking about.
With woke pronouns, I feel like an 87 yo man around tiktok - don't care, not going to learn it, not enough time left on Earth to give a crap, happy to glide towards the grave without giving it a second thought. Y'all do you.
It's a phrase Greenspun uses a lot on his blog, mocking excessive concern with gender pronouns. (In between a lot of interesting content, he constantly bangs on about 2 topics: how dumb he thinks liberals are, and how US divorce law discriminates against men.)
"Their" is grammatically plural, even though what it refers to may be singular, plural, or neither (or, in some cases, may be unknown). "You" is also grammatically plural, even though what it refers to may be singular, plural, or neither. (Singular they seems to be from the 14th century, so it isn't really new.)
It is fairly intuitive but my first few landings in a Cessna 150 were not pleasant at all. Granted it was a grass runway but I'd have been in serious trouble without my instructor. I'm sure the tower would have been able to give good guidance on pitch, angle, etc. but there's a lot of juggling going on when you're landing a plane, especially when you're inexperienced.
1) This was a single engine plane w/out constant speed prop. So really the only things to worry about would be throttle, flight controls (maybe trim), and mixture.
2) Looks like it was a steam gauge plane so luckily the student didn't have to learn a fugly glass panel UI
3) The stall speed on these planes is pretty low, so ATC probably had them do a pattern to get used to the distances and then come in a bit hot for the actual landing. Coming in a bit hot in a cessna like that just results in landing deep or a rough landing when you pull the power vs. stalling and crashing (which is much more likely if the PIC tried to do 60 knots on final). If they roll past the end of the runway a bit it'll damage the plane but at least they're on the ground.
4) The landing gear on those planes is really strong. You can botch the landing and the plane will be fine.
Since you mention landing hot --- from the landing video, my take is that the approach was fast, and that the pilot used up a lot of runway before making actual ground contact.
That said, there was plenty of runway available, and on touchdown, the excess speed (if any) was easily compensated for.
The passenger-pilot clearly had general aviation familiarity, and kept a cool head. Both of which help immensely.
(My own flight experience: general understanding of flight controls and theory, pax in a handful of small-plane flights, RH seat. An hour or so of straight-and-level flying. A bit of sim. No formal training.)
I had flight lessons, and after a few hours of training (most of which were unrelated to landing), I was able to land on a short runway, about 2000 feet long.
Landing on a long runway (10001 feet / 3048 meters [1]) as was done here is much easier, as long as the plane doesn't malfunction and visibility is good. So I'm not that surprised that some people would be able to do this given good instructions over the radio / phone. Especially so if the person doing it has witnessed landings from a cockpit before, which may have been the case here.
With such a long and wide runway, if you can direct the plane to fly over the runway and then cut off power, that should be enough to land the plane somewhat safely I would think.
Same, I'd hate to see a novice try to land on a narrow 2000' runway hemmed in by tall trees and a "snotty" 7+ kt crosswind component pushing the plane around.
Lucky they were in Florida with working radios and gas in the tank to reach an accommodating runway. None of that should detract from the emergency pilot's excellent handling of the situation though—bravo!
[edit] Apparently there was a significant crosswind:
The weather at Palm Beach International Airport on the 10’th at 15:53 GMT was: Winds, from the North-Northeast at 11 knots, gusting up to 17 knots. Visibility 10 statute miles. Clouds, some scattered ones at 4,200 and 4,600 feet above the airport ground level. Temperature 26 Celsius, dew point 15 Celsius.
Yes, to be clear I'm not saying that anyone would be able to do this, just keeping cool enough to do anything decent (including talking on the radio) was already a huge achievement.
My point was just that this is feasible a lot of the time with some good radio help .
I have only flown a plane once. Took off and landed it without a problem with an instructor next to me. He said I was really good and complemented me a lot because he thought I was a natural during the simulator class and the real Cessna flight. I just thanked him. Do you want to know my secret? I never told him that I worked a year at MS Game Studios as a dev for MS Flight Simulator.
What do you consider flying experience? I, if given a chance would attempt to land a plane today and have no formal training. Mostly I would want to do it to prove some around me that is is possible. I did however play a million hours of pilot wings though that is hardly a flight simulator it is just to basic. I have dabbled slightly with Microsoft flight simulator but again just to fly around and play never took it seriously. I’ve always wanted to fly and honestly think I would land a plane. I don’t think I would do everything correctly like a pilot but given a moderately sized runway think I could easily bring a plane down safely. I’m confident enough that if given the chance today I would go and try it. Maybe I am just crazy.
Frankly, I’m not super surprised? I had a few hours of flight instruction before I dropped out (it just didn’t fascinate me), and what struck me was that you’re doing a landing during the first lesson.
As long as the landing strip is long enough, you can take things very slowly.
A lot of people in aviation wind up being instructors to rack up flight hours early in their careers. An ATC, A&P mechanic, a charter pilot or any other aviation professional that would have probably had some commercial flying time earlier in their career being an instructor isn't a given but it's also not surprising at all. The fact that they were able to verbalize stuff sufficiently well for the person at the controls to do the right thing is the more impressive part.
Obama administration pushed Affirmative Action into ATC [0], lowering the scores required for "minorites". Candidates with maths and science background are actually being penalized to increase "diversity".
Ironically, most of American industry has long been an affirmative action program for white males - in education, hiring, promotion, etc., they have been given preference to others. That affirmative action program is far larger and has done far more damage than any other; that is the problem.
I'm not a pilot, but isn't this plane like the easiest to pilot and thus land for someone inexperienced? If this was a jet, the passenger in question would probably be pretty screwed?
No, this wasn't a little Cessna 172. This aircraft is a turboprop and likely has a glass cockpit. Still relatively simpler in terms of systems than most jets, but because it's a turbine it wouldn't be your first choice for someone inexperienced to take over.
Interestingly a big jet might be easier. It would likely be on autopilot and autothrottle when the novice took over. ATC would need to talk them through programming a diversion into FMS and some other systems stuff, but if there was an airport nearby with good weather and a suitable ILS, and nothing failed, they could set up an autoland and never have to actually handle the aircraft themselves.
Garmin's got a relatively new system called Autoland that is designed for this exact situation. It allows a plane to land simply by pushing one button. It will pick the nearest appropriate airport, communicate with ATC, and land the plane entirely on its own. It's pretty amazing technology: https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/garmin-autoland-thi...
"Flying cars" made sense to me until I started flying. Now I think "driving airplanes" is the more appropriate phrase for what might be in the realm of possibility.
For example: here's how you'd prepare to visit distant relatives with each vehicle:
Car: load up however much weight you want, turn the keys and start driving. Low on gas? Just turn off at the next exit. Weather looks bad? Just drive slowly and carefully and you'll be fine.
Airplane: visually inspect your vehicle, be careful distributing limited weight around the cabin, get a weather briefing and accept that many days you just can't fly, break out your slide rule (literally!) and plot a course between waypoints, with calculations accounting for wind deflection, magnetic variation, fuel burn, and various other factors. And don't forget to plan out refueling stops and emergency airfields too. Then run through your checklist and (once you get permission from the tower, if any) take off.
I never appreciated how user-friendly modern cars are until flying. And air travelers are spoiled by all-weather jetliners piloted by the pros.
Couldn't most of that be done by computer? Weight sensors in the wheels can determine weight and balance, the computer can evaluate the weather and plot the course taking into account all of the factors you noted, including refueling stops and emergency airfields, and it can even run through the checklist for you.
About the only part of that it can't do is the visual inspection.
Sure, if you trust the correctness of the computer's software with your life and the lives of any passengers. There are popular apps now that do some of what you suggest, especially trip planning.
I've seen enough bugs in my day job to want to at least verify the computer's work and have backup instruments, even if just my own senses. Aerospace software is known for relatively low bug counts[1] but also causing fatal crashes[2].
I trust my car controls to be correct and if they aren't I can brake to a stop if anything else seems off. (Unless of course the brakes stop working!) But since you have to take off to fly, you might not realize you can't control the plane until it's already at dangerous speeds.[3]
3: Amazing story about an airliner that took off not knowing its controls had been reversed (a maintenance mistake). Pilots declared "MAYDAY plane is completely uncontrollable we plan to ditch" but eventually figured out how to fly the reversed controls and landed it safely—super impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIc8Rr-cKd8
I think most of that is done automatically by computers in the case of airline jets. For single engine aircraft it's mostly DIY. Though with the jets the pilots get many hours of training on what to do if the various systems / computers go wrong.
Believe it or not, weight and balance calculations are not automatic even in the most advanced airliners. The airlines have algorithms they use which spit out numbers that are provided to the pilots, which they enter into the aircraft's computer. These numbers are vitally important, and on one flight I was on we had actually taken the runway but had to taxi back off because Delta was too slow at getting the numbers calculated.
Not that your general point is wrong, but I don't think "flying cars" are intended to replace airliners. They're supposed to be for travel within a city. Complicated calculations for route planning and refueling seem much less relevant for that case.
How much weight do you think it would realistically take to alter flight in a plane of this size? For instance, if both the pilot and passenger weighed e.g. 200lbs and sat toward the left of the plane, would that considerably (or perhaps even just perceptibly) impact flight? Same for some of the other variables, is there an appreciable different for things like magnetic variation? Wind, of course, seems reasonable - the others I've heard less about. I don't fly, and have never been in a small engine craft.
Fore and aft weight distribution matters a lot in terms of how the airplane flies. Side to side not as much. (Most single-engine airplanes have more moment arm of fuel weight change in the wings than moment arm of two people sitting on the left side of the airplane.)
Fore and aft changes in center of gravity affect how far the center of mass is from the tail control surfaces and the amount of negative lift the tail has to contribute. I can feel the difference when my (fairly small framed) family moves around in the back cabin.
Aft weight distribution makes the airplane far more sensitive in pitch, reduces drag from the tail negative lift, which slightly increases climb rate and/or forward speed for a given power setting.
Not sure about the plane from the original post; it looks pretty hefty. And lateral weight is so close to the center of mass that it's unlikely to have much effect. What's more of a concern is having a bunch of weight far from the plane's center of mass, where the weight tries to lever the plane end over end, increasing the risk of a stall. I heard about a crash where the pilot's seat adjuster didn't lock, so when he took off his seat slid all the way back (just a few inches) but that was enough to cause a crash. Could theoretically happen to any size plane, but matters more with little light planes like those in general aviation.
I have no idea if "Spirit Airlines weight distribution issue" actually happened, but it's funny so I'll share: https://youtu.be/YvfYK0EEhK4
Magnetic variation in my area is +20° (west) off true north. So if I want to follow longitude line true north I need to fly such that the compass reads 20° NEN. And don't forget to account for the hunks of metal inside the airplane, which can affect the compass differently depending on your heading.
The real reason is that we don't have one-person aircraft that can stop and hover with <300ft stopping distance and is under 10 ft wide. Helicopters come close but they're expensive and I'd hate to see parking for such a model of transportation.
Helicopters aren't really allowed to fly over most areas in cities though, except for police and other emergency helicopters. The noise and danger make it a no go, even if they were smaller.
Helicopters can fly wherever they want, barring the same restrictions that apply to fixed-wing planes. For the most part, there aren't really any helicopter-specific restrictions.
Yes, but this doesn't really help the case for flying cars either way.
Edit to clarify: Presumably you'd want to land your flying car almost anywhere in the city; this is not going to happen anytime soon, for the same reasons that helicopters and planes can't.
Buzzing should emphasize the loud freaking noise these things would create landing, taking off, and flying at low altitude. Annoying to say the least. What we don't need more of is noise pollution.
The autopilot declares an emergency via transponder code and radio calls, which means suddenly everything else in the sky is moved out of your way for you and you're given near-exclusive use of whatever airport the autopilot picks.
A pilot declaring an in-flight emergency gets near authority over the airspace they are in. After confirming the declaration fuel/passenger count, the next question a controller usually asks is "what are your intentions?", ie "what are you going do, so we can get everyone out of your way?"
I've never heard a controller get more authoritative than politely ask the pilot if they'll consider something or are able to do something.
You’re not going point to point a foot above the surface unless you’re over water (calm seas at that). Soviets built a concept plane that did just this, though. Airplanes are more efficient near the ground than a little bit away, but not as efficient as at normal cruising altitudes.
You're probably thinking of Ground Effect Vehicles (sometimes Ekranoplans). The Russians built lots, not just as a concept, if you own a huge lake (not an ocean) they're somewhat practical for crossing it quickly. The Americans and Canadians (who also own some large lakes) have likewise built some of these.
The Ground Effect, as its name suggests, only exists near the ground, so in one sense you're "flying" but if the surface drops away you will fall too. Hence it's good on a lake or possibly open plains, but won't work on normal ground with rises and hills and so on, never mind buildings and trees.
I'd thought that there were only a few prototype Erkanoplans built, though it seems there actually was an operational fleet.
There's a particular larger model intended for defence purposes which saw only a single prototype, now abandoned.
The Soviet Navy ordered 120 Orlyonok-class ekranoplans, but this figure was later reduced to fewer than 30 vessels, with planned deployment mainly in the Black Sea and Baltic Sea fleets.
For water use, hovercraft tend to be more flexible. They still experience issues in rough water, and though they can cross flat unimproved terrain (beaches, swamps, snow, meadows), they perform quite poorly on slopes, particularly laterally, and generally have poor lateral stability, notably with high winds.
Hydrofoils accomplish much the same capability on water. Tracked vehicles on land. Not having to support your mass dynamically also helps. That said, hovercraft remain useful for military marine beach landings. And eels.
3D has the problem is that you can't just stop, wait and think if anything is totally weird. A self-driving car can pull over if it's confused, a self-flying plane can't.
Then again, self flying planes have been a thing since the early 1910s. It's far easier when you can just pick and altitude and heading and you're basically 99.9% in the clear that you won't hit anything.
In a car that approach will get you roughly a few meters forward, so it's incredibly hard to make a working car autopilot in comparison.
Well, usually it can stop, but if it gets confused during road construction where there's no shoulder to pull off to and it just stops in the road, you run the risk of a truck rear-ending you.
It is considerably more complicated. Apart from added axes of movement (not just vertical, but pitch/roll), you also have to contend with the fact that air is the only source of friction. Acceleration and breaking are much slower than something with wheels on the ground. There is a reason why flying a plane in Grand Theft Auto is much harder than driving a car, even with the simplified physics and vehicle controls.
If we could make aircraft that handle in our atmosphere like the spaceship in Descent, then that would close the gap a bit. But I'm not holding my breath.
Garmin's is literally "oh shit the pilot passed out!" and an entirely inexperienced passenger can push a single button, ending up with the plane stopped on the nearest appropriate runway with the engine off. The autoland system in airliners requires a lot of setup by the pilots and continuous monitoring all the way down, plus working ILS (instrument landing system) equipment at the airport.
Yeah, I don't know what button he would have told you to push, but it definitely wouldn't have landed the plane. I don't think there were even automatic wing-leveling systems that far back.
I bet this was a guy raised on video games. I was about to make a joke about it but I'm actually serious.
Once I, a former Houstonian with no experience driving on ice, was driving through the snowy mountains and lost control of my car. Instead of panicking, my video-game-induced laser focus kicked in and I calmly piloted the car until the wheels gained traction and I could park the car on the side of the road.
But learning how to focus in the midst of chaos, instead of panicking, is a technique I specifically had to learn in childhood to beat challenging levels of Super Mario Brothers.
"Moore is suspected of being responsible for approximately 100 thefts in Washington, Idaho, and Canada, including bicycles, automobiles, light aircraft, and speedboats.[15] It is believed that he learned how to fly small planes by reading aircraft manuals, handbooks, watching a "How to fly a small airplane" DVD, and playing flight simulator computer games.[17] One plane he stole was a Cessna 182, FAA registration number N24658, belonging to then KZOK-FM radio personality Bob Rivers, valued at over $150,000.[20] The plane was later recovered from a Yakama Indian Reservation crash site. Though badly damaged, it was rebuilt and is in Florida."
"He became known as the "Barefoot Bandit" by reportedly committing some of his crimes barefoot, once leaving behind 39 chalk footprints and the word "c'ya!". Despite the widely reported nickname, officials said that he more often wore shoes."
I've been nerding out over airplanes recently, and I want to get my private pilot's license.
One thing that has surprised me is that airplanes are actually pretty simple machines. They're not hard to fly, either.
The part that is expensive (besides fuel) and time consuming is all the emphasis on safety. You want to be REALLY sure your plane is working and REALLY sure you know how to fly it.
If you just want to hop in a plane and don't care much about survival... you could probably figure it out. Just like a 14 year old could probably figure out how to drive a car or crash it immediately.
Taking off isn't hard, an airplane will take off on its own. It'll fly straight and level if you simply let go of the controls. It's the landing that's hard, and Moore would crash every time he landed.
He also wasn't landing at an airport with help from ATC. If you put an aircraft down on an unprepared beach/field, and walk away, that was a good landing irrespective of any damage done.
For many pilots, a "crash" must be unintentional. Deliberately putting an aircraft down somewhere other than a runway is "ditching" or a forced landing, but never a crash.
> If you put an aircraft down on an unprepared beach/field, and walk away, that was a good landing irrespective of any damage done.
For his skill level, walking away is a great result. However, there are Alaskan bush pilots who land some pretty remarkable places. Some of them are not official runways and many of the ones that are official (Alaska has a LOT) won't have ATC support. OFC, Alaskan bush pilots aren't representative of pilots overall, but they still show we should be careful about overgeneralizing.
When my father and his friend tipped their plane forward and bent their prop landing on a gravel bar moose hunting, it wasn't a "good" landing, but neither was it "ditching" or a "forced landing" (they were able to unload the plane and trim the prop enough to fly the plane out so it wasn't that bad of a landing either). From past discussion on here, it is a little complicated if it was legally considered a "crash".
Those planes have reinforced landing gear that is much more suitable for landing in those places, as opposed to planes that usually land on paved surfaces.
As the adage goes, "any aircraft landing you can walk away from is a good landing" and "any landing where you can still use the aircraft is a great landing."
Video game experience is absolutely better than no experience.
On small general aviation planes, the feature set is quite minimal and most simulators will replicate all of it faithfully enough, so the only remaining thing is the “feel” of the plane which you can hopefully experience a bit during flight before landing.
In contrast, a big passenger jet has insane amounts of different systems that need to be configured - not only are those typically not fully replicated in consumer-grade simulators (you probably don’t want to spend 30 minutes configuring your plane for takeoff before being able to start a game) but even a complete simulator such as the one used for pilot training won’t be enough to actually learn all those systems - that’s why it takes years of training.
Simulator-only experience for a big plane? No chance. For a small plane? Yeah if there’s no damage or other edge-cases and the weather is on your side you have good chances of making it especially if you have an instructor on the radio to double-check everything.
The biggest problem is communication. The best thing you can have, more than some idea how an aeroplane works even, is knowing how to talk to the ground. If you're talking to the ground, you get both practical benefits (people on the ground know how to fly that plane, and know what you need to do to get it back down safely) and a morale boost.
Chances are if you're taking over in an emergency, the radios are already tuned to a frequency with other humans on it, and you just need to know how to talk (there's a push-to-talk arrangement) and how to listen to what they say back. If you need to tune the radio that's already bad news, but if you happen to be reading this thread you want 121.5 MHz aka "Guard" and once people realise you're serious you should get help quickly.
The big plane can in principle perform the entire landing and roll out at a suitable runway, it's called a CAT IIIc landing. No hand flying is required, much less knowing the full "from dark & quiet" procedures. But arranging for that to happen is going to need communication with the ground. Most scheduled flights don't actually perform an automated landing of any sort since that would leave pilots rusty, and so your intended destination probably isn't capable or isn't set up to do it - but if a non-pilot is now flying a big plane that's not "most scheduled flights" that's an emergency, and so the fact that the only CAT III runway is currently being used for take-offs, or is closed to repair the markings, or is at a different airport on the far side of the city, does not matter. They will do what it takes to get you down safely.
The reason we don't use CAT IIIc landings ordinarily is that unless there was an emergency they don't solve a problem we really have. The CAT IIIc landing puts the aeroplane safely on the ground (good) but leaves it on the runway, where it's a hazard to everybody else. Under IIIc conditions a human can't see a hand waved in front of their face - which is why the landing was automated - so taxiing is impossible. If you're a non-pilot who just saved 200 people's lives that's not a problem, you're down safe now. If you're a commercial pilot with six more commuter jets stuck behind you on a Monday morning it's terrible so we just close the airport to all traffic in those conditions.
I've played a bit of the new MSFS and flying the big jet (737?) is a completely different beast than flying the Cessna. There's so much automation that if you don't know what you're doing you can't even descend to land the plane (because it thinks you want to cruise and will fight you all the way down).
On the other hand, if you know what you're doing - and that is surprisingly little to know, it is a lot easier to land a 737 in MSFS2020 than a Cessna. ILS almost feels like cheating.
(But then, I'm a self-designated FlightSim enthusiast with several thousand hours of documented simulated flight time over the last 20 years, so ...)
No, no, I'm not saying one could actually be a fighter pilot just by flying DCS F-18. But I wonder about the realism. It seems every single knob and button and thingy on the cockpit is clickable. Every subsystem is simulated. The manual is reportedly huge (I don't own it, just watched videos on YouTube). With such a realistic flightsim, TrackIR, a HOTAS setup, and all the gadgets, how far is it from the real thing?
I wonder how far you can go on an actual F-18 with just DCS experience. I suppose a huge detail that is missing is the pressurized suit and the enormous G forces.
(I also wonder how come most of this isn't classified, and is instead generally available to the paying public. I suppose the answer is "because as a private individual, you cannot buy an F-18 with weapons").
The biggest issue is that the physical simulation is still pretty rough in modern games particularly when considering stalls and other "out of true" flight dynamics dealing with turbulent flows. Which is quite important for landing and take-off. Likewise whilst flight models are aiming for accuracy they're still full of fudges, guesses for missing data and mistakes so I'd take any correspondence to real aircraft with a massive grain of salt.
You will probably be able to turn all the systems on in an aircraft of the right vintage though.
That, plus the lack of full sensual inputs (G-forces, turbulence, vestibular experiences, the full outside view) makes it quite a bit of a lesser experience than the real thing.
There's a reason you don't need much equipment for a procedural flight simulator, as opposed to one that can replicate actual flight.
Ive been in the sim world for a while and i guarantee the good DCS pilots could make the move to real life flying with no problems. Combat, fitness, and the organization of the military would be the difficult part.
I could turn on a real F-16. Zero chance I'd try to fly one irl. I just don't think the knowledge/skill transfer is very good for actual flying without any sort of (realistic) haptic feedback for how the plane actually feels to fly. Maybe if you shat money and could afford a 6DoF rig and trained on that?
I think a big part is also to be able to operate under pressure and not panic. It's one thing to operate a complex machine from the comfort of your office chair, it's another thing to operate the same machine when any small mistake could mean death.
I've been a fairly serious flight simmer for about 20 years now, including 13 years of DCS, and have flown the DCS F-18 since it's initial release 4 years ago. This topic gets discussed a fair bit within the flight sim community, and we mostly conclude that we'd likely get the F-18 into the air, but would most likely kill ourselves: either passing out from lack of tolerance and training to handle the G forces, lack of familiarity with the sensation of flight which can wreak havoc on your inner ear and result in vertigo, dizzyness, nausea, or paying attention to any of the hundreds of small details and checks that real pilots do that you don't do in DCS (is the OBOGS working properly? cabin pressurization working properly, icing, etc). Simulator pilots would also not likely be able to handle any inflight emergency or problem in the air. Then, assuming we didn't already kill ourselves during the flight, we'd at best damage the aircraft during the landing, or kill ourselves and destroy the aircraft at worst.
Still, DCS offers a tremendous value as a low cost training platform. The DCS A-10C module was built for the US Air National Guard to use as a training simulator platform to train A-10C pilots, and other countries and airforces are increasingly using DCS to train their pilots. A Spanish company built the Aviojet C-101 module for DCS because it is used in the Spanish airforce and they wanted to use DCS as a training platform. A Chinese company built the JF-17 module for DCS. An Italian company is currently building an MB-339 module for DCS.
You can search online and find images of Chinese fighter pilots using DCS for training. There are a ton of things you can train to in DCS very cost effectively - practicing communications, tactical formations, administrative tasks and procedures, weapon switchology, etc. It doesn't completely replace real flight training of course, but it sure can help countries and militiaries with limited budgets stretch their training budgets.
> I also wonder how come most of this isn't classified
All of the "good stuff" is very, very classified. Particularly electronic warfare, radar performance, modern beyond visible range tactics, modern weapons performance porifiles, nuclear weapons delivery profiles.
A lot of the "nuts and bolts stuff" and basic training materials is unclassified and readily available. If you read through and study all of these documents you'll be well on your way to being a fairly competent virtual fighter pilot:
https://www.cnatra.navy.mil/pubs-pat-pubs.asp
Most of the topics discussed there are fairly "traditional" fighter pilot stuff that have been discussed by airforces for over a hundred years now, so aren't really secret, even though they're being flown in a modern jet trainer like the T-45.
First of all, thanks for the awesome and comprehensive reply, I really appreciate it.
> Particularly electronic warfare, radar performance, modern beyond visible range tactics, modern weapons performance porifiles
Do you mean in, say, DCS F-18 the ECW systems and things like AIM-120 performance are fake, either because the devs don't have access to the real performance data or because they are under obligation not to make it too realistic? (That is, I would not be able to use the AIM-120 in real life in the same way it's used in DCS, because its performance is not the same?).
Regarding BVR combat, the other day I was watching a video teaching this on DCS F-18. The author explained the radar modes, explained what the radar of the F-18 was capable of and how many contacts were actually sent by data link from a nearby AWACS, also explained the tactics of firing the missile BVR before doing a sharp turn and trying to maintain the maximum angle between the nose cone and the target without breaking radar lock, then deployed countermeasures just in case, etc.
Give or take minor details, in this not the right BVR tactic in real life? If this person (from YouTube) had the required physical stamina, would he be able to shoot down a hostile aircraft by following the exact same steps? Or is there some classified step or tactic which is purposefully not being simulated in DCS?
Thanks for the reply. First, while I probably have a few thousand hours in the F18 in DCS, and a few thousand takeoffs and significantly fewer landings, I'm just a flight simmer, with no real experience in military or civilian aviation. Everything I say is just my speculations and guesses.
> Do you mean in, say, DCS F-18 the ECW systems and things like AIM-120 performance are fake, either because the devs don't have access to the real performance data or because they are under obligation not to make it too realistic? (That is, I would not be able to use the AIM-120 in real life in the same way it's used in DCS, because its performance is not the same?).
A bit of everything. First, everything in DCS is of course "fake". It's just a video game, and all physics, CFD, and electromagnetic waves are just simulated, and there is no way that DCS is doing high-resolution CFD and simulation of real radar returns in a real time game engine. Everything in DCS is approximated and faked. Everything. Some aspects better than others. The F18's radar performance uses a simple degredation factor to reduce the detection range when an object is below you, so many miles for so many degrees for example. Both simplistic, and incorrect.
> either because the devs don't have access to the real performance data or because they are under obligation not to make it too realistic?
I can only speculate of course, not being privy to the private deals Eagle Dynamics and subsidiary/parent companies may or may not have made with militaries. But both: real missile performance, especially for the modern AIM-120D is classified. There is absolutely zero chance that Raytheon/Lockheed/Hughes is going to give classified missile performance to Eagle Dynamics for a publicly consumed video game on the promise that they won't make it "too realistic". Second, even if there is a military grade classified version of the simulation somewhere, at least from the US perspective, they wouldn't be too worried about modelling the exact performance of the latest AIM-120D, for the simple reason that the AIM-120D is not a missile that the US navy or US airforce expects that they will have to defend against in a shooting war. It's their missile!
They would be more worried about modelling their latest estimates of the Russian and Chinese air-to-air missile performance. And, when it comes down to actually developing tactics to counter these threats, you don't necessarily need to do it in a real-time game engine. You can look at energy performance, range, etc, and determine ranges and work out a BVR timeline to defend against that threat.
Then, when you say, "AIM-120", do you mean the AIM-120 A,B,C, or D, or any subvariant, or export variants? For AMRAAMs, the F-18 in DCS has the AIM-120-B and the AIM-120-C-5 (along with the AIM-7M (and AIM-7MH) Sparrow, and AIM-9L/M/X). Whos to say if they're modelling all of these missiles correctly, as you'll be hard pressed to find an unclassified source of all the missiles characteristics and seeker/sensor performance.
As for the BVR timeline tactics, there is a lot of info out there. If you do a google search for various combinations of the terms like: BVR, Commit, Meld, Skate, Bonsai, Crank, Notch, F-pole, Short Skate, you will turn up various resources developed by both the flight sim community, and retired fighter pilots. These tactics were real BVR tactics at one point, but whos to say if what's trickled out to the flight sim community is accurate, and keep in mind a lot of these come from the F-14, or F-15 communities which were more focused on pure air-to-air.
Additionally, a lot of the material out there now is developed by flight simmers who are tailoring the tactics/timelines to do well in DCS! Not against real threats!
What the exact tactics are today for F-22s, F-35s and F-18E's going against Su-27s and Su-57s in a modern high threat environment? I have no idea.
> sent by data link from a nearby AWACS,
A big thing that DCS does not simulate at all is working in a modern high-threat ECM environment, particular detection and jamming. A radar pulse transmitted can be detected at much further ranges than it can get useful information from the return. Turning your radar on, or your datalink on to both tx and rx, is a huge liability in the modern battlefield - you tell your enemy exactly where you are. Jamming is another aspect - how well does datalink work in a modern environment against a peer threat when they can jam you? What if the AWACS aircraft gets taken out, what if the AWACS has to go EMCOM to protect itself? None of these are simulated at all in DCS (aside from the AWACS being shot down of course).
Anyway, I could go on, obviously I have a lot to say.
If you made it this far, here is a youtube video of a BVR engagement against AI aircraft in the F-18 with our virtual squadron.
We had the support of a human Airborne Intercept Controller (AIC) using the LotATC software, and were doing a BARCAP (barrier combat air patrol), to protect an airspace so that other members of our group could attack ground targets. We had just had two previous BVR engagements, and were low on gas and trying to get to a tanker, when the AIC notified us of a new threat.
In the video we are following a BVR timeline to try to meld/sort at ~40NM, shoot at 30-35NM, and skate at 23NM, against AI Mig-29s with the russian equivalent to the AIM7M.
When I did my private license 20 years ago, my instructor asked me whether I had previous experience playing flight simulators. She said that people who had usually required more time in the cockpit to unlearn all the bad habits they had acquired from games.
Maybe things have changed since the days of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000.
They haven't - unless you are playing in VR, then at least one can be averted.
One of the bad habits is looking at instruments all the time, while you should be looking out the windows. VR on the other hand encourages you to look out (because it's fun, and it feels like you are really looking out). Head tracking is a very distant cousin, but may help a little.
The rest, I don't think you can avoid. No force feedback, no chair pressure (even if you have pedals you may not know you are uncoordinated), you can't feel the aircraft, and so on.
But bad habits are just that. In a life and death situation like this pilot incapacitation story, I'd rather have some bad habits but understand what's happening and what should be done, versus not even knowing which button to push to talk to ATC, and how to keep the plane flying.
> but even a complete simulator such as the one used for pilot training won’t be enough to actually learn all those systems - that’s why it takes years of training.
Pilot here, the simulator is absolutely good enough. It's not uncommon for the first time landing a real jet after sim training to be on a normal passenger flight, just with a training captain next to you.
Learning systems takes about two weeks and is done in a classroom + computer based training (usually an ipad app).
What takes "years" in the US is the requirement to first fly 1500 hours in a small single engine plane before you get to the airlines. This requirement does not exist in Europe, here you can go to that simulator + classroom training right after getting your commercial license.
>About 1 hour and 15 minutes after takeoff, Russell died by intentionally crashing the aircraft on lightly populated Ketron Island in Puget Sound.
I suppose it may not count if it was an intentional crash, but who knows if he would've landed it safely if he didn't want to crash it.
Pretty interesting that he managed to pull off maneuvers like that without having any experience flying:
>Near the end of the flight, the aircraft was seen performing a barrel roll over Puget Sound, recovering a mere ten feet (three meters) over the water. A veteran pilot said the maneuver "seemed pretty well executed, without either stalling or pulling the wings off."
>[Horizon Air CEO Gary Beck] said the aerial maneuvers were "incredible" and that he "did not know how [Russell] achieved the experience that he did." During his conversation with air traffic control, Russell said he "[knew] what [he was] doing a little bit" because he had experience playing video games.
While I do not condone the actions of this guy - I have little doubt he could have landed the plane, given the proficiency he has shown. Unfortunately, after landing, life in prison awaited him. In a way, he was tasting the freedom of flight, for the first time, and for the last time. It has a certain poetic touch to it.
Sometimes the ground service people are allowed to move the planes on the ground for repositioning, when no passengers on on board. It's not uncommon for them to at least know how to turn the systems on and move it. And if you know that, takeoff isn't incredibly more difficult. Landing, on the other hand, is more difficult, but that didn't seem to be among his objectives.
fun fact: i was on a flight to seoul out of seatac that left only minutes before that. what a crazy experience to land in incheon to a flurry of texts asking about our safety and arrival.
PMDG just released their 737-700 plane for the new Microsoft Flight Simulator. It has incredible fidelity, including a nearly fully functional FMC. Some real world 737 pilots have released reviews on YouTube in the last couple of days.
A long time ago when I downloaded a simulator I naively assumed it would faithfully simulate the inner workings of the plane (and even run the actual software that the real flight computers ran) - if I pull this circuit breaker, what happens? If I flip it 10 times quickly, does it mess up the network and break everything? I was rather disappointed that it just blanked the screens and they came back up instantly as soon as the power bus was re-powered.
Another way to say: don't let me into any airplane's cockpit - not just because I'll crash it, but because I'll manage to break it on the ground before it even has a chance of flying.
I’m pretty video games saved my life while driving, too. Once I was driving down the highway at 70 miles per hour and the car in front of me stopped on a dime. I always maintain a good distance from the car in front of me but I knew for sure if I would have just hit the breaks I would have hit him. I wound up swerving into the next lane with a reaction time of under a second only to drive by a six car pile up which included the car that had been in front of me. It is one of the scariest incidents I have ever had in my life while driving.
I had a similar experience which was pure luck. I was driving home from a night class and going 80 or 90 down the freeway. I realized I was about to rear end a car and I shifted into the right lane only to see another car there and I shifted back into the lane that I came from narrowly missing the original car and the one in the right lane. I probably should have died that night.
To be honest I didn’t know if a car was on my right, but a front end collision is the most dangerous car crash you can get into. I still think it was a safe choice.
The backside of your car could have hit the frontside of a car next to you, causing you to spin, causing you to be t-boned on the driver-side.
Always have an "out": appropriate stopping distance, or a clear lane next to you (you have to make sure your mirrors are set-up properly so you don't have a blindspot, and you have to maintain situational awareness).
Too many people fixate on the car in front of them, and don't look at the traffic down the road. Too many people have their side-view mirrors set-up, creating blindspots.
In a multi-car pileup, the car immediately in front of you literally stops in an instant, much faster than if it were to fully hit the brakes. It's much faster than any driver could realistically expect. It can happen so fast, you may not even see brake lights turn on. It's why these pileups can get so surprisingly large.
Indeed. This is why you can't drive around just looking at the back of the car in front of you, you need to look way down the road. The distance to the car in front of you needs to be large enough that you can react if that driver steps on the brake, but will never be enough should they impact a stationary object. You need to see stuff like that much earlier, and if you can't, you're driving too fast.
I'm constantly baffled that these pileups happen, since it's obvious these people were driving much, much faster than is justifiable under the conditions. They should all lose their licenses.
They're so rare that most drivers can't even imagine it happening to them. Combined with the fact that most drivers don't even understand what it is they should look for.
Really? The need to look far down the road is literally the first thing that comes up if you google "where should I look when driving":
* In order to avoid last minute moves and spot possible traffic hazards, you should always look down the road ahead of your vehicle.
* Your attention should be focused on the road ahead, following your intended path of travel. It would be best if you allowed a visual lead-time of at least 20-30 seconds.
* Scanning the road ahead while you’re driving is one of the best safety tips you can employ when you’re behind the wheel! Generally speaking, you should look ahead 15 to 20 seconds or an eighth of a mile when driving in the city and 20 to 30 seconds or about a quarter of a mile on the highway.
When a person first gets their licence they may google the content you describe. Then they drive to work and home - down the freeway - every day for years.
They quickly learn that leaving too much space in front means people keep jamming in front of them. And the vehicle in front is the one you react most to - when it slows down or speeds up a little. So they pay attention to the car in front rather than down the road. Why look down the road? It hasn't been relevant for XYZ hours of driving so far...
Eventually they confirm to the norms of traffic. And why not? They haven't seen an accident in ages and if they have, they likely drove past it after the fact without knowing how the accident happened and believing it to be a "freak thing". Thus the deviation from what they should do is rationalised and then normalised through daily use.
Then an accident happens and a multi-vehicle pile up occurs because the "norms of traffic" are NOT what people should be doing.
Sadly most people do that. While continuing to believe that their initial conscientiousness (first impressions!) - since slackened/eroded - means they are an above average driver.
And I too am subject to this human behaviour as much as I try to be conscientious about it. I know I will have some bad habits learned in similar fashion. But I don't know what they are because I have rationalised all my actions to myself. I should go do some training again...
Just to quantify this, the shortest 60-0 stopping distance for a "consumer-grade" car (meaning not a formula one vehicle) is the Porsche 911, which can do it in 27m. This is nearly 6 vehicle lengths. Usual safety guidelines are to stay about 3 car lengths behind whoever you're following, so even world's greatest brakes are not gonna save you if the vehicle in front stops in 0m because it hits an immovable pile of already stopped objects itself.
3 car lengths seems way too close to be following at highways speeds. Assuming a car is about 16 ft long, that gives you less than half a second of reaction time at 70 mph. Even at 25 mph, it's still less than 1.5 seconds.
I very much prefer to be 3 SECONDS behind the person in front of me. It's a nice metric that works at basically all speeds above 30.
According to the Utah government's Drivers Handbook[0] (printed page 27, or PDF page 36), they recommend a 2 second distance on clear dry roads:
following distance
Watch when the rear of the vehi-
cle ahead passes a sign, pole, or
any other fixed point. Count the
seconds it takes you to reach the
same point (one-thousand-one,
one-thousand-two.) You are
following too close if you pass that point before counting
two seconds. Slow down and check your new following
interval. Repeat until you are following no closer than two
seconds.
Always increase your following distance on slick roads,
when following large vehicles, motorcycles, or vehicles
pulling a trailer, at night, in fog, in bad weather and when
following vehicles that stop at railroad crossings (transit
buses, school buses or vehicles carrying dangerous mate-
rial.)
> Usual safety guidelines are to stay about 3 car lengths behind whoever you're following
Uh, no. Usual safety guidelines are to stay a speed-dependent distance behind whomever you're following. The one I've heard most often quoted is one car length per ten miles per hour, so at 70mph you should be a minimum of seven car lengths behind.
Three lengths is comically short for those kinds of speeds.
That is why you should always leave enough space in front of you so that you can react and safely come to a stop if the car in front were to suddenly hit a pileup.
Then I just maintain the gap to account for them. I have never been unable to do this. It does mean sometimes I drive 1-2 kph slower than the average speed.
The braking distance at 70mph is a huge 75m, which is about 9 London buses. Add your reaction time, and do you aee why distances of over 100m between cars are slightly unrealistic?
In the event of a pileup, it doesn’t really matter how much distance you’ve left. If you end up hitting the car in front of you, you get cited for failure to maintain distance. Because, if you had left enough distance, you wouldn’t have hit the car in front of you. It doesn’t matter if you left 50, 75, or 100m. If you hit the car in front, you didn’t leave enough space. And the risk of someone else swerving into that gap doesn’t mean you’re not at fault, it just means you’re both wrong now.
> In the event of a pileup, it doesn’t really matter how much distance you’ve left.
For legal liability, that might be true. In reality, if you've left yourself a safe amount of distance, you have more opportunity to react to events in front of you in such a way that you minimize damage and loss of life (thus mattering).
Even if you still crash, the extra second of braking time can take off ~10-15 mph [0], which at 60 mph V(t=0) is ~40% of the energy that would otherwise dissipate into your car and the cars you hit.
No, at 70mph (31m/s) you travel 100 metres in 3.2 seconds. I was always taught 3 seconds on the highway is a safe following distance, and 4 seconds in adverse weather conditions like rain.
> Allow at least two seconds' following distance behind other vehicles in good weather and road conditions (three seconds on a highway).
> Slow down for poor weather conditions or uneven roads and increase your following distance to at least four seconds. Remember that the distance required to stop increases in wet or slippery conditions.
... and trained enough to handle any possible combination of inflight emergency, equipment failure, change of weather, safetly handle any last minute directive or change by ATC, etc.
Quite a few years ago, a buddy of mine got an incentive ride in the back seat of an F-18 while he was in the Navy. The pilot handed over the controls to him and started to walk him through some aerobatic maneuver when my friend just executed whatever it was (I don't remember the specifics).
The pilot was astounded that a novice flyer would perform the maneuver so well and asked if my pal had any simulator time. His response: "I played F/A-18 Hornet on my Mac a lot."
My wild guess is a barrel roll or aileron roll. Both are pretty easy to walk a novice through, and not something where you'd be particularly worried about the consequences of them getting it seriously wrong.
I spent some time on a Cessna 172 Flightgear sim to get an idea for the plane and its controls (to get some background for some fiction that I'm writing). With the virtual cockpit it's possible to learn where all the controls and indicators are and what they do, as well as get an understand of the basics of takeoff, landing, and level flight. Radionavigation and the autopilot system were also interesting items that I didn't know much about until I tried it out in sim.
Obviously this isn't a replacement for real training and experience. But someone with sim experience who knows how to read the instruments and control the yoke, rudder, and throttle would likely have a much better chance surviving than one who would freak out just trying to comprehend the instrument panel. They would probably be under much less stress as well during the event.
Based on how common it has become for people to tailgate and then twitchily bail out of their lane at the last second before they rear end the person in front of them, I'm very 50-50 on how well video games prepare our reflexes for the real world.
I believe Formula E and various other racing series have had huge success with hiring drivers out of e-sports. If you’re fast in a sim, you only have to add the physical prowess and stamina to race. That’s much cheaper than spending a decade in minor racing series.
You must be thinking of a series other than Formula E (or at least, it's not what I'd call "huge success"). All of their current drivers had pretty normal feeder series careers (often including brief, unsuccessful stints in F1) and I don't see any that have notable sim accomplishments.
WEC has made some amount of noise about hiring sim drivers (including a tie-up at some point with Nissan and Gran Turismo), but the same applies for the drivers in their top two classes.
Even your source doesn't care to mention any drivers who have gone from sim racing success to what anyone paying attention to motorsport would call "huge success" in top-level racing (two of the GT Academy drivers did have a successful one-off drive in LMP2, with a factory team and a much better-established teammate).
Yeah, games are so misunderstood. It's not just for kids, and it's not just entertainment, it just happens to be that way because of the stigma. They are interactive experiences with software and that could be virtually anything. The learning and training potential is huge if companies started making proper games again (where the experience is priority) and not fancy theme park pay2win casinos for children.
Games are just rich interactive models of some synthetic, emulated, or simulated system. They can be perfect for building intuition about complex systems that are difficult to represent linearly as in text or video. Games could be a very promising future for education & training but they still carry an old stigma with them & the f2p ad driven game wasteland of the app store only helps reinforce that stigma.
I wonder how this would generalise. Especially on VR.
I have a VR headset, and have played through Half-Life Alyx and a bit of zombie mode in Pavlov VR. My first headcrab in Half-life Alyx was horrible. I panicked, forgot which button to press to release the magazine, fumbled the insertion, forgot to load the gun after having inserted the magazine… but by the end of the game, those head crab didn’t trigger any fear, only a reflex of pulling out the gun, pointing, shooting, and reloading quickly became a reflex. Oh, and I became much better at quick aiming. I’m no speed shooter, but I do land a couple shots per second.
Then I tried Pavlov VR. First the shooting range to get used to the slightly different mechanics. And then the zombie mode. This time the zombies were fast. And what do you know, I panicked again. Though I didn’t fumble with the reload this time (I had no spare magazine), and my aiming was okay, I massively overshot.
That’s when I thought that people who unload their entire charger really aren’t necessarily vengeance driven bloodthirsty warmongers. They may just lack training. Anyway, I trained a couple times more with the zombies, and it got better.
Here’s the thing though: I now have trained VR games to shoot at moving humanoid targets, some of which shoot back, some of which just try to close in to melee range. So now I wonder: if all goes to shit and I’m handed a loaded gun, and suddenly 3 angry people with knives close in on me with visible killing intent, what are the chances that my VR training may cause me to shoot them in the heart by reflex, instead of panicking, running, or negotiating?
Can confirm. I once, with perfect calm and focus, steered into a bad slide on long slightly-downhill curve covered in ice. I'd never, ever done that in real life before then, in 15+ years of driving. I didn't think about it, didn't even worry for a millisecond. I'd 100% for-sure have hit a parked car if not for all the semi-realistic-but-still-arcadey racing games I've played.
"We've got a story, now, about a mid air scare that _none_ of us would _ever_ want to face"
My joke was going to be "Half the lurkers on r/flightsim enter the chat...". I lurk on that sub, and I feel like half the people fantasize of being able to "save the day!" when something goes wrong on the plane. Not fanticizing that something goes wrong... but if it did... the flight would be fortunate enough to have them there to save the day.
Though, thinking of having the tower talk someone down always reminds me of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" ~ "What could possible happen to an Old Fashioned?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWoCLqMq8qM
I feel kinda stupid. I played a lot of video games growing up, including a binge on MS Flightsim 4 (I think). When I took flying lessons as an adult, the hardest thing for me was mastering landing. Something about it just wouldn't click for many hours. OTOH I never really mastered landing in the sim either - I didn't really care about that back then and didn't have any instruction at all.
OTOH I helped out for years at Young Eagles events and some kids fly for the first time quite naturally, and when asked they tend to say "Yeah, I leaned on the computer".
> the hardest thing for me was mastering landing. Something about it just wouldn't click for many hours ... some kids fly for the first time quite naturally
There's probably a big component of natural ability here. Some people are just better at certain things. If you're not one of them, you may be able to train yourself to a competent level of performance, but you'll never be as good as a "natural." It's somthing that takes a bit of self-awareness and humility to admit, and some people never do.
This reminds me of a man who told in some Dirt Rally 2.0 Youtube-video comments how spending hundreds of hours on that game saved his family on motorway. Some incident happened before the car and the man was able to avoid the danger safely with fast reactions and driving experience. This is the story I tell my wife whenever she questions my sim-racing hobby :)
If they made a film of this or a similar style story, it would be interesting to do it in a slumdog millionaire style where the character picks up some things playing video games, some from a case where the nato phonetic alphabet is used, some from watching aircraft investigation shows, etc.
As someone who grew up in an area that gets a lot of winter driving conditions and has a bunch of car handling training (dry, rain, and winter specific): you didn't "calmly pilot" anything, friend.
You hit ice, you're a passenger until you're no longer on ice. The car is mostly a 2D projectile unless you're on studded tires. You were lucky, that's it.
And, I might add: you lost control of the car. There's a whole chain of failures that led up to that point: not being aware of forecast weather, not being aware of changing conditions, and so on. Folks experienced in driving in winter weather know how to watch the road for signs of icing, how to test for traction that's getting worse, how to be smooth with controls, and how to recognize that a control input is starting to cause the car to lose traction. You fully lost control.
It is a common joke among instructors teaching car handling skills that the worst students are the ones who have played driving video games. They're overconfident. They don't actually know much at all about car handling techniques. They have no motor skills that good, fast driving requires. No "butt sense" - reading how the car feels, sounds, and acts as it approaches or exceeds the limits of traction.
"I safely handled losing control of my car in icy weather because I played Super Mario Brothers decades ago" is almost but not quite the best example of Dunning-Kruger effect I've seen in an HN comment in quite some time.
completely agree here. As someone who has done a fair amount of snow and ice driving in some quite unpleasant conditions never once have quick reflexes helped: low speed, correct use of controls (copious use of engine braking, starting in higher gear etc.) and the ability to make small measured corrections have seen me all right.
Even then I've come close to crashing three times (would have been a small crash though) twice due to slopes that weren't safe to descend given the conditions and once because a family of deer crossed the road in front of me, i was not able to correct course to avoid them or use the brakes - doing either would have led to me losing control - luckily i was doing < 15 mph and the deer stepped out of the way at the last second.
I've made worse landings with a CFI sitting next to me in the cockpit when I was starting out. Landed a bit long but otherwise looked like a soft touchdown and a straight roll. Very impressive!
To my noob eye, it seems that the person did absolutely no pitching to shave off the speed. That's the hard part, in my very limited experience with simulators. Dunno if this plane does usually need pitching, but I guess they were very lucky to have enough of the runway.
Yea. On the ATC recording they say how they are sending him to the largest nearby airport, which has runways big enough to land jumbo jets, so he'd have plenty of space. I'm sure making sure he'd have enough space to bleed off speed without any experience was on their mind.
Not so much lucky as planned; they were sent to PBI because it had a long runway. Also you don't pitch to reduce speed, you reduce power to reduce speed. Then pitch up to maintain glide slope and altitude. That's how you land if you have a feel for it but for someone inexperienced there's the risk they too slow, pitch too far up, and stall. Better to come in a little fast if you have the runway.
Mythbusters once went to a commercial airline simulator to test the idea that a passenger with no training could land the plane. Without ATC help, it wasn't a great outcome. With ATC, they faired much better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ8K-hOcRHk
Years ago I had the opportunity to "fly" an A320 simulator (the type they use to train pilots) at Miami International Airport. Yes, with instructions, I was able to successfully land the airplane, and found it easier to do so than with Microsoft Flight Simulator. It was just setting a few controls, and on a small monitor in the middle of the dashboard, keep the plus sign in the square.
Large aircraft are one thing, but most folks could land a light aircraft most of the time in good weather with barely any training. But most is like 80% and there's probably a 10% chance of dying or at least badly damaging the aircraft.
Not nitpicking because I agree with you, but in an emergency situation like this if you can walk away from the airplane, the condition of it is irrelevant. So I think at least 85-90% of the time (in good weather with a crosswind component below 7-8kts or so) everyone would be okay.
And absolutely agreed on the large aircraft part. I'm a private pilot, but no instrument cert yet, with only piston single experience - not even a high performance or complex endorsement - and I'm pretty sure if I had to land a widebody commercial airliner the only difference between me and someone with no experience is I'd sound better on the radio. I think the end result would probably be the same.
I think the first obstacle for a layman to land a plane is to not panic and figure out how to work the radio (without pressing the wrong thing and accidentally shutting down the engines or something equally disastrous) so they can then follow the instructions calmly.
I’d expect most people that would fail would fail at this stage - if they can get past that, their odds improve a lot.
That's exactly right. This pilot on YouTube did this test with a layperson and the main issue was getting comms up. It took like 20 minutes if I remember correctly, but after that the landing itself went alright.
It's less of a disaster than you'd think. Even if you shut off the engines the plane can glide for a long time. So if you don't panic you will have time to turn them back on.
You're right, but in this situation - a non-pilot is in a piston single with a pilot who becomes incapacitated - what are the odds they're not already panicking?
Similar thing happened to Doug White in 2009 while in a twin-engine King Air 200. He had limited flight experience on single-engine Cessna 172s, but no flight experience on a King Air 200.
If you've learned how to glance at airspeed, how to pitch for speed, and when to flare, you're 90% of the way there. Those are the hard parts you need practice for. Right? And everything else, ATC can talk you through. I mean, a King Air is going to have dual engine controls, but you only operate them both in sync. It will have manual gear, but you just need to find the control and activate it. I'm not that surprised an experienced cessna pilot could land a complex twin engine.
I thought they must be reposting this landing when I saw the headline! It's a great video though. I look forward to a new one from this landing in the near future.
Looking at the ATC transcript, the passenger couldn't figure out the transponder, change frequencies or give out his cell phone number. At least he was able to get the microphone working.
Likely he eventually picked up the phone number ATC gave him and they took it from there.
The video shows ATC got him to a really long runway, a good portion of which he overflew. No flare on the landing, but the Caravan is a tough bird, the descent rate was gentle and the attitude was just right.
An excellent landing is where you can use the airplane again (without repairs).
From the transcript it looked like the passenger had a lot of trouble giving out his phone number as well as getting the phone number from ATC. I wonder if it would make more sense for him to dial 911 on his cell phone instead given the emergency situation and have dispatch deal with routing him to the necessary help.
My dad (Air Force) said that sometimes a mechanic would decide he knew how to fly, and would take off in a military plane (this was long ago). They'd fly around a bit, and then realize they have no idea how to land.
They'd get on the radio, and the tower would talk them down. Meet the mechanic on the runway, and escort him off to prison.
For you youngins out there... this is a joke, there were several Airport 7X movies (including an episode of The Incredible Hulk (Bill Bixby series) where Banner/The Hulk had to land a plane) in the 70's.
That is actually an interesting concept for the Hulk. In a small plane, if he were to go green he would immediately cause a crash so Banner would have to calmly listen to instructions while fighting the stress.
My very first flight with a CFI had me do everything but the radio - the landing is perhaps the hardest part but if you have someone to talk you through it, and you can get vectored to the longest possible runway around, it's not that hard (you can basically fly level above the runway and slowly bring back power, which will eventually touch down).
I've listened to a few recordings of similar situations online and if there's no flight instructor there, and the plane has enough fuel to keep circling for a while, they often call one up to come to the airport and help while keeping the amateur in a safe pattern until they arrive.
I think more typically (if there is such thing for these scenarios) atc tries get hold of some instructor or even a pilot it no instructor is found instead of instructing themselves.
A Cessna Caravan airplane does not land itself. It's a thoroughly manual process. As a pilot, I'm in awe of the controller and passenger for being able to pull this off.
Personally, I would perhaps allow this turn of phrase in reference to take-off and cruising, depending on equipment and assuming VFR, but I'm not sure I would ever say this about LANDING any plane.
If the weather conditions are favorable, there isn't much needed. This would have been a very stable aircraft on its own. If the controls are setup properly in advance of the runway, it will descend and "land" with little input. In all likelihood they used a long approach, strait-in, to an airfield totally cleared of all other traffic. He would have had a strait shot in from many miles away.
The important decision was to keep him following the coastline. A random aircraft over florida land would be a nightmare to locate and deal with on radar, even if the transponder was functional. Keeping him following the coastline would have made the fix much simpler.
Not necessarily, but pilots usually fly those manually because a) they’re the exciting parts b) a certain number of manual takeoffs/landings per year are required to stay certified. (EDIT: This was about airliners, a Cessna is definitely 100% manual!)
As far as I understand, takeoff and landing requires manual control in the same way, or for the same reason, Tesla autopilot requires hands on the wheel. It's mostly liability and trust issues.
So, if I spent 1000+ hours playing Falcon 4 and IL2-Sturmovik, would they classify me as "no idea how to fly"? I mean I have never control a plane in real-life but I wouldn't have much difficulty following flight instruction from ATC guy verbatim, right?
Sort of begs the question, why don't commercial airliners have remote-fly capabilities? Hook it through a hardware interlock and keep one pilot on call somewhere in the country at all times.
> Morgan learned the passenger on the line had never flown a plane -- but had been around aviation and seen other pilots fly.
If they've been around planes like this before, I don't think it'd be that difficult to land in one piece with guidance (and the ATC seemed to be a CFI as well). But what do I know, I'm still working on my PPL.
Hopefully the passenger got his logbook signed for his first solo
Ah very true :) Joking aside, I don't want to make it seem like I am discounting their achievement. It's a very high pressure situation with a lot of potential for a bad outcome, and they handled it extremely well.
We can probably assume it's a small passenger plane. I'm not a pilot but I've landed them a few times in flight sims.
It's a matter of getting the right level of descent and setting a few knobs and switches correctly. I could probably explain to you how to do it if you were playing a video game.
The real impressive thing is they were able to keep calm and go through the steps, or figure out how to use the radio, without freaking out. Not everyone is capable of that.
Flying a small plane like this really isn't all that hard as long as a) the weather is good, b) the plane itself is working normally, and c) you have a basic understanding of how the controls work. When people are learning to fly for their private pilot's license it's not terribly unusual for people to solo (be competent enough to fly alone) after 5-10 hours of instruction. Granted many people do take longer, but it's often because their instruction is very spread out. At typically > $150 per hour many people can only afford a few hours of lessons per month.
It's not hard, if they had spent time around aircraft they provably had a rudimentary understanding of the controls. The dicey part is staying calm during the final stage of landing. You need to stay slow but not too slow and not panic and do something crazy as student pilots occasionally do early in training (going too fast, trying to force the plane to land but just porpoising down the runway, freezing, flaring too early and holding the flare, etc)
I once took a gliding plane lesson with an instructor. I had never flown a plane before but was able to do the whole flight including a winch start, circling up in a thermal and landing on my own just by the instructor telling me what do. So I don’t think it’s hard if you have a good instructor and stay cool enough to listen and do what you are told to do.
That being said I, with no aviation experience, definitely would feel more comfortable attempting to land a Cessna than an Airbus even if it were more manual operation
Most commercial airliners have the same system. It's mainly used in bad weather when the visibility is below minimums for a manual landing. CAT IIIc autoland (the highest/most advanced) is certified for zero-visibility landings.
Passenger-jet autoland systems still rely on a lot of prior configuration such as dialing in ILS frequencies, setting the right autopilot settings, etc.
While I think even the colossally tone-deaf FAA wouldn't try to prosecute this guy under these circumstances, there's an odd gray area here, where a certificated pilot can deviate from any regulation to meet the need of an emergency [1] -- so I think a twist of logic would allow a non-pilot to be allowed to deviate from the "must have a pilot certificate" rules to meet his emergency the same way while acting as pilot-in-command of this plane.
Not a lawyer, am a flight instructor, I think 91.3 is how this non-pilot gets to use pilot regs to get out of pilot jail :)
One might argue that if he's specifically following the direct instructions of the ATC, who is a licensed pilot in this case, that the ATC is "the pilot," and his allowing of a non-pilot to push the buttons on his behalf was a necessary deviation to handle the emergency and land the plane.
I’m far more familiar with operation under Part 107 (sUAS, i.e., drones <50#), but this seems consistent with how the FAA has it structured.
I let kids fly my quadcopters regularly. Legally, I’m the “RPIC” - “remote pilot in command”. The fact that someone else is physical operating the controls is irrelevant. I’m responsible for the safe operation of the aircraft. Because it’s remote, there is a requirement that I be able to take immediate control of the aircraft if necessary; standing next to the person with the controller is sufficient to meet that requirement.
That's an interesting twist -- I really hope nobody at the FAA gets such a wild hair to try to pin a certificate action on the ATC controller (here or ever, in any situation), but --
There is a SODA precedent for what you describe. As I understand it, a deaf pilot can get an instrument rating if they have a translator onboard to run comms for them and translate to ASL in-cockpit. So this is sort of the same situation you're contemplating, with a different chair position -- "translator" in the ATC room instead of the right seat.
I do feel the regulations allow all sorts of circuitous logic, that any "outcome" could be achieved with enough incentive. ATC is the last place on earth where I feel cooperation is the inviolate rule of the day, so I'd hate for some maverick prosecutor to throw ice water on the pilot-controller relationship in a witch-hunt for blame.
there's absolutely no way the controller qualifies as PIC for this event - to be PIC of a non-unmanned aircraft you would have to be onboard the aircraft.
This is why prosecutorial discretion exists. Yes, he could, but mitigating circunstancies can and often are considered, and local prosecutors or responsible regulators (the FAA in this case) simply decide not to file charges. Police often do the same in smaller cases. Example; if someone breaks a car or house window to save an occupant that's trapped from a fire. That's vandalism, but rarely prosecuted if it happens as far as I know.
Luckily, the FAA has a regulation for that. 14 CFR § 91.3 (b):
(b) In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.
But seriously most likely there are laws that allow you do things in emergency and not be prosecuted. In the UK it is called the doctrine of necessity. The example given was that only a doctor is allowed to give an order to use “prescription only” medicine. But in emergency situations where there is no doctor and you need to save a life, then it would be ok to do by anybody else as long as he has at least some idea what he is doing.
In some situations illegal things become legal. Like how it's illegal to stand on the street and stop the traffic. Except it becomes legal if you are preventing drivers from driving their cars of a collapsed bridge.
it's not a criminal offense, and the FAA has no authority except to revoke a pilot certificate, which the "pilot" does not have.
Basically, the FAA really can't do much, and nobody else has authority to punish the person who landed since they didn't cause any personal or property damage.
IANAL but:
- Wouldn't be surprised if general legal doctrine allows neglect of law in emergency
- Clearly no intent to violate the law/regulations
- Good luck getting a jury to convict
- What's the penalty, loss of pilot's license the guy doesn't have?
Mythbusters did something like this, but it was just using one of those big commercial training simulators instead of a real plane if I recall correctly, and showed that it was possible.
Configuring an autopilot is not that difficult when someone is telling you exactly what to do. It's also more likely to have a good result vs. relying on underdeveloped stick and rudder skills.
In a situation where a non-pilot is pressed into flying an airliner because of pilot incapacitation, tiny municipal airstrips without ILS aren't really an option, anyway.
Also a throwback to the infamous "barefoot bandit" who learned how to fly a plane by:
"It is believed that he learned how to fly small planes by reading aircraft manuals, handbooks, watching a "How to fly a small airplane" DVD, and playing flight simulator computer games."
I picture this scenario every time I land that stupid Cessna in ms flight simulator.
It’s not going to happen, at least not until I follow someone up in an actual Cessna. But I’m not too worried about the landing by now at least.
Question. How feasible would it to have an automated landing system for airplanes. So that in case the pilot is incapicitated, you could flip a switch and have the plane land itself.
Apparently there were 2 passengers. I wonder if one of the passengers video chatted with the air traffic controller so they could see what the person in the pilot’s seat was doing?
Listening to the audio of the conversation, it doesn't seem like the passenger has no flying experience...
At minimum they must have spent significant time around aviation or be ex-military.
e: From another comment on Reddit
> Examples:
> The passenger knew what button to press on the yoke to transmit to ATC.
> The passenger knew aviation phraseology and phonetics “333 Lima Delta”.
> The passenger knew where the altimeter was and his altitude “I’m maintaining 9100 feet”
> Passenger was able to identify the transponder and enter a squawk code.
> Passenger knew what the vertical speed indicator was “I’m descending right now at 550 feet a minute passing 8640 feet”.
> My wife, who flies with me regularly, might get one or two of those items, but probably couldn't point out the transponder, much less enter a squawk code without instructions.
I grew up in Florida. It would take all my fingers and toes and more to count the number of times I have seen articles or even witnessed personally from the beach a pilot of a small craft either die naturally at the controls or have some medical event that causes a crash and death.
Why are small planes necessary? Am I wrong to believe what it seems like, that the overwhelmingly popular purpose is entertainment? Is anyone else sick of being lead poisoned?
I am all for scrutinizing and restricting the driver's licenses of the elderly or those with severe medical issues that will inevitably lead to an accident. This goes doubly so for pilots. I know there's a lot young pilots. I take no issue with you. But it seems like most pilots and owners of small planes are over retirement age. It is the entitlement that gets under my skin, the entitlement to poison everyone on the ground with lead as well as put innocent bystanders in danger. Why do we allow this? There are severe problems with conservative ideals, and mainly it has to do with entitlement, a telltale symptom of mental illness, namely, narcissism. Fuck narcissists.
1. Old people like to fly small planes and crash them more than others [citation needed?]
2. Small planes emit toxic chemicals that are slowly poisoning everyone
Personally I'm horrified that we allow issue (2.) to continue given all we know now about the dangers of lead poisoning. But I don't particularly care about issue (1.) since I generally think people should be allowed to risk their own lives as they see fit.
> since I generally think people should be allowed to risk their own lives as they see fit.
But what if your life was in danger because of this. Because it is, even if the risk to you and your loved ones is low, it is not zero. If there was good reason for accepting this risk, that would be one thing. But there simply is no other rational reason than thrill for flying a small plane around for a few hours and landing in the same place. Someone's else's right to thrill does not eclipse my right not to be assaulted by harmful sounds, my right not to breathe harmful chemicals, and my right to not to be killed by a crashing plane.
I was all ready to criticize you for blowing things out of proportion but then I checked the numbers. Damn, small aircraft create 50% of airborne lead contamination.
2020 numbers from the FAA show that while GA overall had 7,600 hours of personal use, there were 11,854 hours of commercial use in non-Part 135 GA. We can assume that single-engine light aircraft are more likely to be in personal use, but they are also the most common category for instruction, which is the most common commercial use at 5,498 hours. It might seem a bit tautological to say that "a major purpose of GA is train pilots for GA," but GA pilots are the beginning of the career path for on-demand and airline pilots, and the current feeling is that there needs to be more to sustain airline staffing. Major commercial uses of single-engine aircraft include light cargo (especially the Caravan, involved in this case), air medical transportation, and aerial surveying and observation (e.g. railroad and pipeline ROW safety inspection, a very common use of light aircraft where I live). What I mean to say is that there are a wide variety of useful applications of small aircraft, not the least of which is instruction---their second most common application.
The phenomenon you get at has more to do with the historical demographics of aviation. For various reasons that boil down mostly to World War II (which had the effect of a massive government subsidy of both aircraft and pilot training), the cost of entering aviation as a hobby or career has significantly increased over the last decades. Very few young people can afford to obtain a pilot's license and operate an aircraft today, compared to say the 1970s. This is of course a major contributing factor to concerns over staffing levels in the airlines. Similarly, the pace of both development of new aircraft and replacement of the existing aviation fleet has slowed significantly since the '70s. This is most obvious in the fact that a huge portion of the GA fleet today, especially aircraft in personal and instruction uses, were manufactured in the '70s. Both the pilots and the aircraft themselves are aging out, and much of the HN dialog around the issue of leaded fuel seems to miss this point. While the FAA's very slow progress in approval on a 100LL equivalent non-leaded fuel is indeed a problem, I think a much bigger problem is the fact that not even flight schools and charter companies can afford to obtain aircraft with engine designs much newer than the period of a decade after WWII. Unleaded and diesel aviation piston engines are in service right now, but certifying them for use in older aircraft tends to be prohibitively expensive, if it's even practical. The cost increase from a used but current aircraft from the '70s or '80s to a newer design more likely to be trusted on unleaded fuel, on the low end, tends to be a difference between sub-$100k and over-$500k. The argument I am making is that the continued use of leaded fuel probably has less to do with the fuel than with the fact that the current market and regulatory situation in aviation has almost frozen the fleet in time.
There are also obviously concerns about medical certification of private pilots, particularly with the introduction of the BasicMed program which, in practice, makes it significantly easier to hold a pilots license with ongoing medical concerns. Reform of the medical certification system is critical, but it's probably more important that we address the underlying phenomenon that entering aviation as a career has become more and more difficult to such an extent that the average age of professional pilots has consistently increased for decades. Mandatory retirement for commercial pilots was raised from 60 to 65 in order to mitigate this issue, but that was only a temporary fix, and the five years it really bought have long since passed.
All of this said, accidents due to medical incapacitation are actually pretty rare. Bruce Landsberg of the NTSB, in a letter to AOPA Pilot, put it at about a dozen incidents per year in GA... out of around 400 fatal accidents. This actually seems to overstate the problem as not all of those dozen are fatal and the NTSB sometimes ends up attributing loss of orientation to medical incapacitation simply because they couldn't find any other likely reason. For this simple reason, "narcissism" of older pilots is probably not a major contribution to aviation accidents. More philosophically, narcissism is no doubt a contributor to common types of serious and fatal accidents like unintended IMC, but if anything the young are probably the greatest offenders there.
What do you think of all the people young drivers kill? Should people be prevented from driving they are a bit more responsible? Maybe around 30 years.
You're entirely ignoring the cost vs benefit view that the original comment brings up:
> Why are small planes necessary? Am I wrong to believe what it seems like, that the overwhelmingly popular purpose is entertainment?
There's much much more positive benefit to the society from allowing young people to drive. It allows them to exercise their independence, socialize, escape bad (home or other) environments, explore the society they're about to enter. I'm not one to say passion (for flying) or entertainment are not good reasons to do something, but they stand much weaker as benefits when compared to the benefits of allowing young drivers.
Poor judgement is not the same as incapacity. We have a framework to deal with poor judgement. What we also need is a framework to deal with incapacity.
That is simply insufficient. Introduce age to the standard and increase frequency of examinations with increasing age. And let's strongly discourage pilots over a certain age where reaction time, eye-sight and cognition is known to become more deficient. Yes, definitely let's discourage and restrict old people from operating dangerous machinery, no matter how rich and entitled and personally insulted they may be.
I think 4 examinations a year for any pilot over 60 is not unreasonable. Because only one examination a year for a 70yo is definitely absurdly unreasonable.
That's very interesting. It sounds like being one of the top destination for retirees might play in this -- Florida is #2 when it comes to oldest population https://www.prb.org/resources/which-us-states-are-the-oldest... and I would bet it's #1 when it comes to oldest pilots (and drivers) who are most likely to "die naturally" when at the controls.
Man I'm making a big assumption here but for someone who hasn't experienced a plane crashing into their home you seem to have a lot of angst for something that doesn't affect you in the scheme of things. Are you self aware enough to ask yourself if you're foisting your own baggage onto the shoulders of people and things you view as outsiders? Let me be the voice of reason here, my man. You're the only person that has the power to make you chill the fuck out. If you want to represent whatever tribe you hail from as better than conservatives, the elderly, or small planes I guess, you gotta change your attitude. The only thing launching into a weird tirade about airplanes, lead, and the elderly over an article about a guy landing a plane makes you seem kinda narcissistic, entitled, and maybe even a little bit mentally ill yourself.
Your life would only get better the second you decide living in a haze of anger over shit you can't change is no means to an end. If you're so focused on that anger, you're not focused on the things you can change to make your world better. Please, chill out, go pick up trash in the park or something. I promise it'll make you feel better.
FWIW, your entire comment is an ad hominem fallacy. You must ignore the person and focus on their argument in order to argue rationally.
> doesn't affect you in the scheme of things.
I have subsonic hearing and I live in a rural area, not particularly near any small or large airport. What drives me nuts are diesel school buses (something about the low frequencies) and those really slow single prop planes that seem to want to linger around my airspace, sound-polluting the entire area with harmful low frequencies. And for what? Entertainment and entitlement. We need diesel school buses right now and until electric buses become available to school districts, so I'll just deal with that. A vehicle gets you from point A to point B. Most of these planes and flights, nearly all of them, leave and return to the same airport a few hours later. They're not traveling anywhere, they're just bored. While I can empathize with boredom, I really don't tolerate being victimized by the bored. It isn't just me. Wildlife and Mother Nature and gravitational potential hates small engine planes.
For one thing, for remote communities, small planes are an absolute necessity, not simply for recreation. You've lumped together all small aircraft with hobby flying.
That aside, I think your environmental argument against hobby flying is interesting, but this other chip you have on your shoulder regarding "entitlement" and "the elderly" and "entertainment" people isn't very persuasive.
Dismissing something as "just entertainment for entitled people" is silly. Hobby flying is far from the only environmentally damaging thing that humans do only for entertainment.
> for remote communities, small planes are an absolute necessity
No problems there, so long as remote means not here, except lack of specifics. What remote communities have an absolute necessity for small planes?
> Hobby flying is far from the only environmentally damaging thing that humans do only for entertainment.
This is Whataboutism, a variant of the tu quoque fallacy, but it also has maybe a bit of Bandwagon fallacy as well. In any event, this is a fallacious argument.
>No problems there, so long as remote means not here, except lack of specifics. What remote communities have an absolute necessity for small planes?
There are plenty in Northern Canada [1]. That is the only area I've been personally, but I imagine there are similar areas around the world. Possibly also of interest is bush flying in general [2].
> This is Whataboutism, a variant of the tu quoque fallacy, but it also has maybe a bit of Bandwagon fallacy as well. In any event, this is a fallacious argument.
The habit of name-dropping logically fallacies and thinking it is some kind of slam dunk is so cliche that it needs it's own name.
I was not saying that we should ignore the impact of hobby flying because something else was worse (whataboutism), nor that you cannot criticise hobby flying because you do other things that are comparable (tu quoque), nor that hobby flying is good because it is popular (bandwagon).
My point was simply that doing something "only for entertainment" is not in itself a bad thing! Most of what people do, besides surviving, is essentially for pleasure. In fact, that people enjoy doing it is a point in favour of hobby flying!
The question is whether the benefits of allowing it (pleasure, availability of trained pilots, freedom) outweigh the costs (environmental, noise, danger).
Thanks. I love that because I live in Virginia. Let Northern Canada have all the small planes they can eat.
> The habit of name-dropping logically fallacies and thinking it is some kind, of slam dunk is so cliche that it needs it's own name.
Oh, we have a had a name for it for millennia. It's called logical argument, aka rational discourse.
> My point was simply that doing something "only for entertainment" is not in itself a bad thing!
But one can't entirely isolate the right of entertainment here as the only concern. No one's right to entertain themselves supersedes the rights of everyone else not to be disturbed by harmful loud sounds, or their right not to be lead poisoned, or their right of safety from falling aircraft. You are correct that there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone entertaining themselves... except when it violates the rights of everyone else.
> The habit of name-dropping logically fallacies and thinking it is some kind of slam dunk is so cliche that it needs it's own name.
It's sometimes called the 'fallacy fallacy': the assertion that because the argument is fallacious the conclusions are also necessarily false (as opposed to potentially true but infelicitously argued).
Air traffic controllers are not necessarily pilots, but luckily, this one was a pilot and certified instructor. ATC and passenger worked through a stressful situation to produce an amazing outcome. Bravo!