Can a passenger realistically replace suddenly incapacitated pilots?

Question

Yes, this is a question from the movies.

Assume plane is in flight and in perfect mechanical conditions. All the pilots are suddenly incapacitated.

Can a passenger, without any previous flight experience, realistically save the plane and take it to a safe landing, only by remote radio help.

Answer 1

I guess this is a secret dream of many of you here: You sit on a scheduled flight, and hear in the PA system: "Both our pilots just passed out. Any volunteers to take over their duties?"

Won't happen.

Think of what would happen next: Panic! The volunteers won't even make it to the cockpit. All cabin crew are focussed to keep the cabin calm, so this announcement will never be made.

Instead, one of the cabin crew will take over. That is part of their duties, actually, and some airlines even give them basic training so they have a fair chance when they are in contact with someone on the ground who can talk them through all steps.

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Edit: Thanks to some commenters for pointing out that the question also includes GA traffic. Yes, I did not cover this. Generally, I think a passenger should have an easier time to take over, when he/she is sitting already in the right seat. He/she could watch the pilot before and has a full set of controls available. GA planes move much more slowly, so things happen at a slower pace and much less kinetic energy is involved if the touchdown is not perfect. Much depends on the constitution of the new pilot: Some people will simply panic and not be able to follow even the best remote help. But if they keep their cool, a good landing (meaning one you can walk away from) should be possible.

I had been in the right seat of a Lancair once and the pilot turned the plane over to me on final. The Lancair was so sensitive in pitch that I porpoised the aircraft - I first had to get adjusted. So even a pilot in a new type might not be able to land it immediately when he gets to fly it first time on short final!

Answer 2

Actually, this theory has been tested a few times in simulators and small aircrafts with little twists here and there.

Take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkOT3fbc1O4

Assuming you can get to the controls: This may be possible, but I believe it is very unlikely to be successful. Based on all the videos I see online, people attempting to do it, fail a few times before they get it right. In the video I showed you above: She crashed like 5 times before she managed it like shown in the video. Also, If you don't have autoland and sit in a big, heavy aircraft: The chances are very slim.

I really can't say yes or no to this question. There are a ton of factors that counts to decide whenever this is possible or not. Like weather, type of aircraft, weight of aircraft, self-taught experience with the airplane, and a big load of confidence (especially if you have never seen a cockpit before). If the plane has ILS systems with full Auto-landing options: I'd say your chances are better assuming you know how to program it, or get instructions from air-traffic controllers.

So, all in all: You are likely to survive, but the plane may be badly damaged on touchdown.

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Here are a few more interesting (not directly relevant) examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcrpR1YI1qc - A man learns how to fly a real 737 in just one month. (My personal favorite)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htg0VKt3j_w - A private pilot takes over the controls of a Embraer 190 in mid-flight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJT_CACIZqs - A pilot with no real-life flying hours (only flight simulation hours) takes the controls of a real Cessna 172.

Answer 3

Mythbusters tested this. I can't find a full video online, but they each tried once without guidance and failed miserably. Then they had a veteran ATC assist them and they both landed successfully. So the experiment was tainted just a bit since they got a practice run, but it doesn't seem like they really learned anything from that practice run (they didn't even know what all of the controls did, and IIRC one of them didn't even manage to get the landing gear out), so for all intents and purposes they were doing it for the first time.

More importantly, after having their fun in the simulator, the show notes that all modern commercial jets are equipped with autoland, so all the passenger would need to do is program it, with instructions from ATC. ATC may even be able to program it remotely on current aircraft.

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For the case of a small aircraft without such fancy equipment, the answer is still yes. There's a saying in aviation: "A good landing is one where you can walk away. A great landing is one where you can use the plane again." If you lower your expectations about what a "landing" entails, it's not too hard to land a small prop plane. They can travel surprisingly slowly and don't require much runway length (so you could burn half the runway just trying to get lined up and level and still be fine). Depending on the conditions, a better option might be to leave the landing gear up and skid it into an empty field. With ATC guidance, this is really not too hard.

Answer 4

Somebody calm and with radio communication could land an airliner.

They would need to be able to use the Mode Control Panel, possibly the FMS, perform an ILS capture (likely controlled entirely by the STAR in the FMS), autobrake settings and be able to control flap settings and gear.

If in the cruise, the flight management computer (FMC) could fly from TOD down to a long final with ILS capture, flap retraction, drop the gear and maximum autobrakes using flight level change (FLCH) and speed control.

All this could be explained over the R/T.

Answer 5

Unfortunately, in real life they would probably try to get the steward to land the plane, rather than try to find in a pilot among the passengers.

For a completely untrained person it would be hard and would take hours of practice, so a lot would depend how much fuel the plane had.

In theory it is possible, as long as you have a long runway, because you can land it on a really shallow glide slope, which takes a lot of potential problems out the equation. As long as the guy has it lined up right, configured correctly and is going the right speed, the plane will more or less land itself. It's just a question of how many times he has to go around before he lines it up right.

Don't forget the Barefoot Bandit who stole a bunch of planes and "landed" them multiple times successfully using only the information in the operator's manual. Not pretty landings, but, hey, he landed and walked away each time.

Answer 6

OP is asking if it’s POSSIBLE, not if it’s likely.

To answer your question YES it’s possible. Actually it would be fairly “easy,” if you were talking on the radio to someone from that airline, who knows the aircraft type, layout, and systems.

• First you would need to be able to talk to a controller.
• In order to do this, you would need to know that you can’t just start talking into the microphone. When you do this and the aircraft has a interphone lock switch, you would likely hear your own voice, and so you would think the air traffic controller (ATC) would be able to hear you. This is false as you have to “toggle” the switch. My aircraft type (747) has 3 such switches: one next to the radio, one on the steering column, and one on the hand microphone. The two on the radios and steering column have two settings, one is for the interphone and one is for the radio. So you would have to switch it in the right way as well.
• Once you actually talk to ATC, you would possibly be connected to someone from the airline who knows the exact layout of the panels, as each airline can order different configurations and extra options etc. Most of the primary flight displays are usually the same, but there are minor differences.
• They would talk you through setting up the aircraft for a fully automated landing. This would include:
  • descending and navigating to a location where you could “attach the aircraft systems to the runway landing system” — intercept heading for an ILS (instrument landing system) approach
  • setting up the autopilot and FMS (flight management systems) for that approach
  • set the autobrakes etc.
• This would require a lot of patience and time, but I do think it is possible, once the aircraft has landed it would automatically brake to a full stop and keep rollout guidance (stay on the runway).
• If any extra abnormality occurs it would be highly unlikely the person would be able to solve that
• I think the most important factor here is time, patience and the ability for the passenger to listen and not panic. Time = fuel, so that’s always of the utmost importance.
• Given it happens more than 100 NM (nautical miles) away from the airport you would land on you would have to switch multiple times from ATC centers. Just hope you would be able to do that and get in contact with the new center. So let’s hope we’re all wise enough to have you talk on 121.5 (international emergency frequency) and stay there.

Also, if this happens over, for instance, the ocean you might be talking on HF, very bad radio quality and most probably not the radio which is selected at that time, so getting in contact with ATC might prove difficult.

As for getting into the cockpit, with a bit of ingenuity or help that should be fairly straightforward, even with all the new cockpit doors etc.

If you’re smart, you would call the airline with a credit card phone from the cabin first if absolutely no one including stewardesses, who don’t know how to operate the radios etc., knows what to do.

Answer 7

An interesting question. I am fairly certain that a modern figther jet would be a lot easier to land than a typical airliner, due to not having quite as much automation.

I worked with a simulator for a fighter jet and at least one pilot thought we (the IT guys working on the sim) would be able to land the real plane if it came to that.

On the other hand, when we had random clients try landing the sim when flying it for the first time, it almost always worked when someone talked them down, standing by their side, using ILS. You don't have that luxury in a real plane, nobody can point to the controls for example. If people would have tried on their own, I think fewer than 1 in 5 would have made it. I mean with no help even from the radio, henve no glide-slipe to guide the landing.

You just need to have a feeling for the touchdown, and the only way to get that is practice. Which in this case there is none! Jet airliners are also a lot less forgiving than a smaller plane due to all that inertia/weight, so to be honest I thinka controlled crash is the likely best outcome.

Answer 8

I'm not an expert on this myself, however a former colleague of mine had to do with optimizing the ergonomics of the workplace of German national flight control and they told him that today, the autopilot can fully control an aircraft, including take-off and landing. So all you need to do is basically dial in the coordinates of the airport. And this can be explained over radio. So in case you can operate the radio, you'd probably have quite a good chance of getting that thing down. After that, you could basically get back to your seat and wait until you're down.

The people at flight control were actually pretty humorous and were kidding like: "Why do we even need pilots if these things can fly on their own?" - "Psst! Not too loud! Actually we don't need pilots. ;-)"

Of course that's not true and in case a big aircraft were to come down with autopilot, it would definitely be a rough landing, they'd probably clear the entire airport just in case and the aircraft may even take a bit of damage, but in > 95 % of all cases, all passengers would get down unharmed.

At least that's what I heard. Like I said I have no clue myself, so it may be complete bullsh*t. And of course it's gonna be a lot different for smaller machines (sports planes) which don't have this kind of equipment and will probably be a lot harder to successfully land.

Answer 9

When I first read the question, I thought, "sure, if you're an ex-USAF pilot like I am, not a problem" (every time I fly on an airline, that fantasy occurs to me lol). But then I saw that the question was caveated with "no previous flight experience". Oh well :)

I think the odds would be 50-50 at best whether someone with absolutely no flight experience could land a modern jet airliner without crashing, even with the absolute best radio instructions possible. Maybe even worse odds than that.

Answer 10

I would suggest to use a mobile phone to call a police - that much most of people can easily do. The police should tell the phone number to contact the airport. From there, it may be possible to receive professional instructions how use the radio on the plane, and further professional instructions that I believe should at least reduce the number of casualties. Even assuming the most hopeless scenario, even crashing in remote area away from houses is already something. Maybe it is possible to do something better in comparison to that.

I do not know, maybe at least in some cases an airport may even tell the code to unlock the door. The airport would see that legitimate pilots are no longer responding to the radio calls, the plane is not following the planned path.

Mobile phones generally work from the airplane, while it may be better slow down and descend below cruising altitude. This is probably easier than to land. Also, as noted by @DJZorrow, it may be built - in passenger phones on a plane that are more likely to work.

Answer 11

Let's assume physical access to the cockpit is not an obstacle (flight attendant or someone has duplicate key or access code; a crowbar can be obtained; or otherwise a brute force way to get in can be devised.)

I'm going to say the answer to the question is as follows:

If a passenger has never flown a plane or played with a flight simulator, then there's a very slim chance they will successfully land the plane. There has to be some kind of working knowledge of how aircraft work. This knowledge is crucial and simply can't be imparted by someone trying to talk them through it over the radio. (Can a non-technical passenger even figure out how to use the radio and establish communication with a control tower? Probably not. )

However, if a passenger has played with flight simulators, the probability of success rises greatly. In other words, now it's actually in the "tens of percent" (10%, 20%, 30%) versus hundredths of percentile (0.001%). That's because flight simulators are pretty accurate representations of real flying, and in order to use a flight simulator successfully, you actually have to first learn the fundamentals of how airplanes work (gliding, stalling, dealing with wind, how to line up for the runway, etc).

And if a passenger has piloted some sort of real aircraft, then it increases the chances a bit more, although probably not a huge amount compared to the simulator-only case. At this point, it is a matter of the passenger learning where the minimum essential controls are, how to take the plane off autopilot if that's what's needed. Knowing which are the essential controls and ignoring the rest of the control panel. And knowing how to navigate to the nearest airstrip. Assuming this information can be imparted by someone (control tower people over the radio), then I would say there's a 95% chance of making it to the airstrip and maybe a 50% chance of successful landing. As someone else mentioned, the touchdown is the crucial moment. Someone who has landed a single engine prop isn't going to know how a 737 feels.