How to land a 737, like if the pilots cark it

[johnm]

your lucky ? dutch ...................... you fly them

 

I think its every pilots dream to be called up front to take over - however, upon your advice and consideration - I'll just return to my seat and wait for the crunch

 

 

[Captaincoop]

I love these "How to land a passenger jet if the pilots die" videos.The average non-pilot person watching this video would be lucky to retain 1% of the information in it, and almost guaranteed to recall none of it at all in the stress of a "omg the pilots have died can anybody land a plane?" moment.

 

The problem even with flying these things on autopilot is that to get it on final approach to the runway in the landing configuration, a bunch of things have to be done in the right order. Miss a step, hit the button next to the actual one you want, dial the wrong setting into an autopilot mode, and you can get yourself in all sorts of trouble.

 

This happens in real life (more often than you might think) to pilots with thousands of hours on type. It's just that it only lasts a couple of seconds before you realise and correct it, or your colleague points it out. No such luck for Joe Average who has little or no flying experience and is there by himself!

 

Even the very interesting video of the B737 instructor talking a girl through landing the simulator shows how much taking and explaining needs to be done, under controlled conditions where she has no fear of consequences. Now throw in a petrified passenger trying to fly it under remote instruction, some turbulence, some calls from the cabin, some missed radio transmissions. Then see what happens!

Well said. I think Hollywood has a lot to answer for.

 

 

[Captaincoop]

I've had countless times when a hostie has asked how to work the radios in case we are incapacitated. I give to detailed instructions on how to do that and then tell her that ATC will say "Try and revive the pilots, or you will die". !!!

 

 

[dutchroll]

- however, upon your advice and consideration - I'll just return to my seat and wait for the crunch

Lol....I didn't say "give up and die". I just said there's more to it than these videos make obvious!

 

 

[facthunter]

Giving instructions over the radio, to operate it with automatics is hopelessly complex. Those who do it every day get used to it, but I have seen people in training situations get totally stuffed up, flying on automatics. (and they have done all the courses and simulator and local (Base) training, by the time the are doing line training).

 

In any case you would need someone to assist you to locate every switch and knob by describing it's exact location and making sure it is operated totally correctly. Flying the plane is not too difficult if you know the speed and configuration to be in at the appropriate time, on the approach profile. Believe it or not you do actually have to fly these things to one knot, and your target speed is based on actual weight plus allowances for wind and gusts. There's a lot of trim change generally , especially as you slow up prior to flap extension..Nev

 

 

[dutchroll]

I've had countless times when a hostie has asked how to work the radios in case we are incapacitated. I give to detailed instructions on how to do that and then tell her that ATC will say "Try and revive the pilots, or you will die". !!!

I have no problem with explaining how stuff works.

However I know that the probability that the explanation will be retained for longer than 5 minutes (that's being generous), is close enough to zero.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Folks I took the video as being rather tongue in cheek.

 

 

[Robbo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqcXstB7UJ0No biggie.... apparently.

I dunno the point of these videos...

 

 

[turboplanner]

I love these "How to land a passenger jet if the pilots die" videos.The average non-pilot person watching this video would be lucky to retain 1% of the information in it, and almost guaranteed to recall none of it at all in the stress of a "omg the pilots have died can anybody land a plane?" moment.

 

The problem even with flying these things on autopilot is that to get it on final approach to the runway in the landing configuration, a bunch of things have to be done in the right order. Miss a step, hit the button next to the actual one you want, dial the wrong setting into an autopilot mode, and you can get yourself in all sorts of trouble.

 

This happens in real life (more often than you might think) to pilots with thousands of hours on type. It's just that it only lasts a couple of seconds before you realise and correct it, or your colleague points it out. No such luck for Joe Average who has little or no flying experience and is there by himself!

 

Even the very interesting video of the B737 instructor talking a girl through landing the simulator shows how much taking and explaining needs to be done, under controlled conditions where she has no fear of consequences. Now throw in a petrified passenger trying to fly it under remote instruction, some turbulence, some calls from the cabin, some missed radio transmissions. Then see what happens!

Agree with you totally; I had my moment of truth sitting in the LH seat of the old 747 parked at Longreach. Realised there was no way I would manage the round out and touch down height, and attitude of the aircraft from that high perch.

 

 

[facthunter]

You just imagine you are doing a low flypast. There's a synthetic voice calling the heights based on the radio altimeter ( but that should only be a back-up confirmation of your good judgement.) Nev

 

 

[rgmwa]

We'll that's it! I'm giving up on the airlines and taking my own aircraft from now on, even if it takes me a bit longer to get there. I can accept that I have no hope of landing an airliner, but there's no way I'm risking flying with some other passenger who thinks he/she can.

 

rgmwa

 

 

[Robbo]

These videos are nothing like the real thing, factor in passengers screaming and panic in the cabin (if they know) and the power of stress you have got a slim chance of landing the aircraft successfully.

 

Take a look at the doco on John Wildey and he was only flying a Cessna.

 

 

 

[cooperplace]

they also don't mention how you get that slumped over pilot out of his seat. Imagine trying to pull 100kg of dead weight up and out, when you're standing behind and to one side, difficult I'd think.

 

 

[onetrack]

I could well imagine that even someone with good basic PPL skills would be struggling in any heavy to get her down in one piece - let alone a complete novice.

 

I don't think there has ever been an instance where a heavy has been landed successfully by an unskilled pax.

 

I do recall a story where an older lady was flying with her Hubby in a four seater (can't recall what type it was now, too many stuffed memory cells!) - and Hubby collapsed and died at the controls.

 

ATC tried to talk her down with some extensive instruction, but she stuffed it all up, and crashed the aircraft, and killed herself as well.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Agree with you totally; I had my moment of truth sitting in the LH seat of the old 747 parked at Longreach. Realised there was no way I would manage the round out and touch down height, and attitude of the aircraft from that high perch.

Actually you're taught to land the B747-400 based on the GPWS calls because it is difficult to judge flare height sitting that high. In the simulator you do get to practice without them - with mixed results, but the aircraft is pretty resilient!

The "one hundred" is "ok get ready for it soon". The "fifty" is "slowly start your flare just after this call finishes" and the "thirty" is "you should be flaring by now, and pull the power off". The B747 goes on pretty nicely if you just set the right attitude at about the right time (its not a big flare, quite a small attitude change really). You don't need to fiddle with it.

 

You adjust the rate of flare and what you do with the power based on the spacing of the calls. Airbus 330 works in a similar way but the flare is a bit later and more subtle. You almost just give the side stick a little "nudge" backwards. However flying an a330 in any sort of bumpy or gusty wind on final approach is something even seasoned pilots find hard. It can be a bitch of a thing.

 

 

[facthunter]

Not only are you fairly high, the wheels are a long way behind you . (Important when taxiing too). It's all a matter of adapting and forgetting the last plane you flew, if it's very different. You don't have to be Einstein to realise how different it will look from the cockpit and just sitting in it at rest, is only 1/2 the picture as some aircraft have a high body angle at the flare, Concorde as an extreme example. You also have to "land" the nosewheel after doing it on the mains. While this stuff isn't directly about U/L's many "sport" pilots think airliners fly themselves and their pilots aren't real ones, (like Kaz is). Nev

 

 

[Captaincoop]

I think the Helios accident where a crew member was seen in the cockpit with the unconscious pilots says it all.

 

 

[dutchroll]

While this stuff isn't directly about U/L's many "sport" pilots think airliners fly themselves and their pilots aren't real ones, (like Kaz is). Nev

I've found most realise we've usually had other lives before sitting in the cockpit of a big passenger jet, and that getting out of the plane back in those days dressed in green wearing a 9mm semiautomatic pistol loaded with live ammo in a shoulder holster didn't signify the end of a cruisey sector on autopilot before heading to a 5 star hotel.

 

 

[turboplanner]

They used to show photos of the Facthunters with a hostie hanging off each shoulder; what else could you think.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Sorry I didn't mean to leave out the "different other lives" (non ex-military) of my airline brethren. For example, sitting there in the middle of a stormy night on a bank run in a single engine Cessna getting paid a pittance working for a boss who threatened to sack you if you didn't depart despite the standby AI intermittently malfunctioning.....

 

 

[Bennyboy320]

It’s definitely not as easy as it looks, as a checkie I get the second officers with a total of 250 hours for their first 12 sectors after ground school, simulator conversion & base training, thats 12 sectors on revenue flights, the main problem area for them is below 200ft, i.e. fear of ground rush, not maintaing the aim point & wanting to land outside of the touch down zone, late or now flare & trying to put the landing gear through the wings due aim point fixation or over flaring & ballooning as the select idle thrust, so there’s a very small window to correct the errors or take over, at least in the airbus we have auto thrust, add the workload of manual thrust into the equation & its not going to be pretty, fortunately most get it but some don’t & have to find another line of work, so expecting your average PPL to land it MMMMM.

 

 

[facthunter]

Differing training backgrounds. Most of the instructors were ex wartime when I did it . The instruction wasn't perfect but there was discipline. Like props were "live" etc. It's a different generation today. If it isn't digital it's "Passe", No one knows much about physics. I don't know how I would get by without it. They are probably good keen kids but there are a lot of silly ideas out there, and they have to sort the wheat from the chaff.

 

Bennyboy, generally people were behind the plane en route. just rushed and not comfortable for a while. The DC-9 sorted out a lot of piston pilots at command level. It had the speed and performance of a Macchi trainer and the nav system of a DC-6 and was designed for one hour sectors and did Townsville Sydney and Alice Springs Sydney, and even went to Perth till management woke up. You eventually had intake F/O's to take in hand and get experience into. A lot of bloke's hair went white on that plane, and quite a few command failures. Not initial command either. Nev

 

 

[Captaincoop]

Children of the magenta

 

 

[turboplanner]

On the other hand there have been pilots who have pulled of the impossible.

 

Sully Sullenberger

 

The Captain, Co Pilot, Check Pilot who was on board, and maybe one other who successfully slammed an aircraft down with virtually no primary controls, saving most of the passengers

 

Our own Richard Champion de Crespigny

 

All from the jet age, but the piston engined aircraft from the late 1940s to about 1955 were some of the most complicated to fly, requiring a Flight Engineer and Navigator because of the work load.

 

The most spectacular save from an impossible situation was a pilot whose Super Constellation was hit by a light aircraft, shearing off most of the tail and a large piece of one wing.

 

He had no primary controls left, and not enough wing for level flight, but by working the throttles on the way down he managed to get it into a flat spiral with the short wing outwards, and pancaked into the ground.

 

All survived the impact, but one woman was trapped inside by her seat belt. The Captain went back in to try to get her out, the petrol ignited shortly after and they both died.

 

 

[facthunter]

Automation Dependency. Probably can creep up on you or you had no real confidence in yourself at the beginning (or possibly later) Can't plan a descent without an FMS working There Used to be "nervous on a fine Day" syndrome too. add complacency, Boredom. "Too tough to be bothered with that stuff" attitudes and the odd "wrong person for the job" types. who did it because it's quicker than a degree and "Dad has the money to pay for my Flying." Big ego's Ace of the base material. If I was picking pilots, I would put a lot of effort into it. A lot rides on how well you pick and train, your staff. Nev