In article ,
wrote:

Mike Ash wrote:
To be fair, that's a biased sample, as you're working with people who
already have flying skill, so naturally they'll find flying to be the
easy part. Somebody with a whole lot of experience with electronic
gadgets but little experience with flying may not have that same
experience. I'd expect a computer geek who has never touched real flight
controls to have an easier time following instructions on button-pushing
than control-handling, although he may well have a tough time of both,
and I still have little confidence in the ultimate outcome unless
somebody actually tries it and proves otherwise.

There's also the psychological issue that most people think without
constant "tending" of the airplane by both the pilots and air traffic
control, an airplane will fall out of the sky.

Your average person would likely be paralyzed by fear if told they had
to land the airplane.

Yes, I had nearly the exact same thought. Even if (big if) a simmer had
all the knowledge from his PC experience, would he be able to perform
when his life and a couple hundred other lives are on the line?

Really, I think that he probably would. Humans tend to step up in a
crisis more than fall apart. But it's certainly important, and not a
given by any means.

Then there is the practical issue of finding someone who can tell a
totally ignorant person how to find the necessary buttons to push
and what to enter entirely from memory for a given random aircraft
type. There is a reason for type training by airlines.

Yeah, I think the ease of this is overstated. You have to start talking
to somebody on the ground and communicate the gravity of the situation.
THEY then have to figure out who to talk to, who has to figure out, etc.
Eventually you're going to need a team of at least two people on the
ground, I figure, one of whom is an experienced pilot and the other a
person who can translate the pilot talk into something the simmer can
understand. (Experts aren't always good at explaining things to laymen,
even well-read laymen, alas.) And I figure they're going to have to
actually be *in* an identical airplane, or a simulator with an identical
cockpit, so that they can properly remember where everything is. And
then they have to talk the guy down.

All of this has to happen before the poor *******s up in the air run out
of fuel and die. Can even this much be done, much less the actual
talking-through-the-landing part? I'm doubtful myself. If anyone with
airline logistics experience would like to weigh in, I'd love to hear
about the practicality of simply finding the people and equipment from
someone who knows.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon