F. Baum wrote:
On Dec 13, 12:06 am, "Jim Macklin"
wrote:
What they showed with landing the NASA simulator is that any person with
some level experience with a cockpit display can control an airliner. Most
FAA controllers would not have the experience to describe the cockpit and
give useful instruction in how to manually fly with the autopilot or where
the switches are located, or how to use the radio to even start the
"rescue."

Maybe they should have an in-flight movie before each take-off on how to fly
the airplane, do you think TSA would allow that?

Jim, I caught just the parts of the show where J and A tried to land
the plane with some coaching from the sim instructor (Mainly to see
how the instructor would do this). These portions of the show were
amazingly brief (Possibly for security reasons ?) . The stuff they did
show was scary and I doubt they could have gotten awhay with some of
it in a real plane. I do watch the show for its "Infotaiment" value
but I remain unconvinced that someone could actually be talked down in
an airliner. I think it has been tried a time or two in GA after the
pilot became incapacitated.
FB
The big rub in the equation are of course the variables. They are HUGE
in this equation and any one of them could take out the airplane.
Just off the top of my head, one has to factor in the EXACT aircraft in
the scenario, as each airline has the option to customize their cockpits
to whatever the chief pilot wanted installed at the time of the contract
signing with the manufacturer. This aspect alone might well require a
company pilot completely familiar with the cockpit of THAT specific
airplane, as even in type, changes are made to the cockpit
configurations during a manufacturing run as requested by the front
office, so that you might have one airplane with a switch or lever
"here" and another with it "there".
Then you have the issue of getting this company guy familiar with THIS
cockpit on the radio and in touch with the guy trying to land the airplane.
THEN you need a guy in the cockpit who can not only follow directions
NOW, but follow them CORRECTLY and in real time.
Notice we're talking here about a manually controlled landing. If the
aircraft AND the landing facility are BOTH equipped accordingly,
autoland might be a possibility and negate the manual landing.

All things considered, my vote goes to doing it in the simulator with
the help of the sim instructor but a high risk factor for losing a real
aircraft in the manual mode.
Could be done of course, but I wouldn't want to be a passenger on that
one for sure :-)

--
Dudley Henriques