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.
