Co-pilot gets sick, stewardess helps land airplane

Hatunen writes:

While a heavy jet is a big sucker with a very complex panel
(although lighter aircraft are now sporting some pretty
compicated-looking electronci panels now) the principals are
basic for any one who has flown a plane for even a short time:
keep it level except coordinated turns. To land glide down to
near stall speed, flare at the runway apron and make it stall
just as the wheels tough the runway.

In an emergency, a person who isn't a pilot certified for the aircraft in
question needs to use the automation, not take the controls manually. The
latter can easily lead to disaster.

The problem is that you need actual practice in an airplane in order to become
good at handling the controls, or you need to find an expensive, full-motion
simulator for the same purpose. Having experience in a vastly different
airplane won't help you much.

In contrast, anyone can fly with automation, as long as he has instructions
from someone qualified. And cruise flight and landing are or can be automated
in large jet airliners. So the logical thing to do with an underqualified
person in the cockpit is to stick to the automation to fly and land the
aircraft.

Anyone can turn knobs and move levers, but most people require a certain
amount of practice before they can competently drive a moving vehicle.

If aircraft are similar enough, of course, this doesn't apply. One can fly one
type of Cessna single-engine prop with only experience in other models, and
not make too many mistakes (although retractable gear and pitch adjustments
can complicate things). But these small aircraft and large airliners are not
similar.

Of course, that last part takes some real practice (I failed my
first flight test on the emergency landing). I don't know if
modern airliners can, as they say, land themselves, or at least
if they all can. I m pretty sure that if the plane is set up to
land itself it has to be at a runway set up for it.

Large airliners certified for autoland (which means most airliners) can land
themselves if set up to do so, at airports with the proper equipment (which
means an ILS certified for the purpose, although in a pinch almost any ILS
might suffice). Autolands are not the rule, but in a situation like the one
under discussion, where the airplane might be flown by a non-pilot or a pilot
who doesn't have experience in type, an autoland would be the safest option,
as it requires nothing more than the aforementioned pushing of buttons,
turning of knobs, and movement of levers. No manual flying skill is required,
and manual flying skill is the one thing that you cannot provide to an
inexperienced person in the heat of an emergency.