Hold on, hero. You might want to get back in your seat for this reality check.
“There’s a zero percent chance of someone pulling that off,” said Patrick Smith, a commercial air pilot and founder of Ask the Pilot Blog. “Do people think they can perform transplant surgery? No. Then why do they think they can land a plane?”
The clinical name for this type of unfounded bravado is the Dunning-Kruger effect. This can be used to explain the results of a YouGov poll conducted in January. Of the 20,063 adults surveyed in the United States, nearly a third said they were “somewhat confident” or “very confident” that they could safely land a passenger plane in an emergency, relying only on air support traffic control.
Almost half of the men who responded were confident they could do it, compared to 20 percent of women.
About 1 in 3 Americans (32%) – including nearly half of men (46%) – are confident they could land a passenger plane safely in an emergency situation, relying solely on the help of air traffic control. Only 1 in 5 women say that.https://t.co/dc1rlBoIQU pic.twitter.com/LI26LtcIZq
— YouGov America (@YouGovAmerica) January 2, 2023
Last year, a study from the University of Waikato in New Zealand used a similar scenario to examine very confident.
The researchers asked 780 subjects whether they could land a small commuter plane “without dying” or “as well as a pilot” if the crew member became incapacitated and they were the only other person on board. . Participants who had a valid pilot’s license or had previously flown or landed an airplane were excluded from the study.
The researchers showed some volunteers a nearly four-minute video of pilots landing a plane. Covering their hands was the view from behind the flight deck. A veteran Air New Zealand pilot dismissed the video as “100 percent useless” as a teaching tool — which is the point. Other participants did not watch the quasi-tutorial.
Members of both groups said they were able to land the plane safely, but people who watched the video had more confidence in both categories than people who didn’t. Men are more self-confident than women “in every condition.”
“Although our video is not intended to be instructional in any way, the fact that we chose a very specialized task in which people have no prior learning makes it reasonable to think that people can develop incomplete or inadequate ideas about how to land a plane. ,” the researchers concluded.
Alas, the ego is not a license to fly.
“I think they will have a very difficult time,” said Brett D. Venhuizen, Chair of the Aviation Department at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota. “There are many challenges for someone with no flying experience, from getting on the flight deck to figuring out how to communicate with air traffic control, maneuver the plane and navigate to the airport they plan to land on.”
John J. Nancea veteran airline captain and TV network aviation analyst, said the likelihood of a neophyte successfully piloting an airplane is “possible, but not likely. A lot of things have to fall into place.”
For starters, the passenger must be able to enter the cockpit, which since 9/11 has become a fortress against intruders. Once inside, you have to adjust the seat so you can reach the rudder pedals. If you accidentally turn off the autopilot, “you’re going to be in real trouble,” he said.
The next challenge was finding the headset, if it wasn’t to cradle the head of the downed pilot. Once found, you need to contact air traffic control for assistance. Nance says one of the biggest rookie mistakes is not releasing the button after speaking.
“I can’t talk to you if you’re holding the button,” he said.
Finding the right radio frequency can be difficult. Your prospects will be bright if you remember the emergency frequency: 121.5. Assuming you can figure out the radio dial, of course, and the microphone is set to transmit correctly. Smith said the primary role of air traffic controllers is to guide pilots to airports; they are generally not qualified to marshal a successive descent. However, they can track down someone who can, as happened in 2009.
That person, one pilot died on a King Air flight from Florida to Mississippi. Passenger Doug White has a private pilot certificate and hours of flight time in a single-engine Cessna. Unfortunately, he was unfamiliar with the two-engine turboprop that carried his family of four. Air traffic controllers found a flight instructor and pilot with King Air experience, who guided White from 11,000 feet to the wheels down at Fort Myers International Airport in Florida.
“You may not have a controller that is knowledgeable about your aircraft,” Nance said. “There’s a lot of risk in finding the right person.”
Once the plane is stabilized, the challenges only increase. You can’t stay in the air forever, especially as the fuel supply starts to dwindle. Earth is calling. To land, you’ll need to configure the aircraft for touchdown, adjust altitude and power settings, and deploy flaps, slats and landing gear — all without crushing like a biscoff cookie.
“Even if you do everything perfectly, you’re approaching the runway at speeds in excess of 160 miles per hour and you’re descending at more than 1,000 feet per minute,” said Michael McCormick, an assistant professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. “You have to have nerves of steel to go through with an approach like this. The ground rises quickly. The runway rises quickly.”
In recent history, no jetliner has simultaneously lost the skills of both pilots. “Two crew members incapacitated? I’ve never heard of that happening,” Venhuizen said. Both are encouraging: Pilots are often in the cabin for personal or professional reasons.
“The reality is that too many pilots are deadheads on flights,” Nance said.
Becoming an airline pilot requires years of training (up to five) and hundreds of flight hours (at least 1,500). Students must obtain a private pilot certificate, instrument flight rating, commercial pilot certificate, multi-engine rating and flight instructor certificate. The final step is the type rating, which a pilot earns for a specific aircraft model. Unlike rental cars, pilots can’t get behind any yoke and fly.
“There’s no easy shortcut path through that process,” McCormick said.
The idea of an unqualified passenger landing on a plane is not a complete Hollywood action-adventure-reptilian fiction. Last May, a Florida man was returning home from a fishing trip in the Bahamas when the pilot of a single-engine Cessna 208 became ill. With the guidance of an air traffic controller and flight instructor, Darren Harrison landed safely at Palm Beach International Airport.
McCormick said the chances of landing a smaller aircraft are much higher than a large jetliner, which flies twice as fast. “The bigger the aircraft and the faster the aircraft, the less likely it is,” he said.
To anyone who says they can land a plane without experience, in an imaginary or real scenario, Venhuizen issues this challenge: “They should try it for a few hours in a simulator.”