Co-pilot gets sick, stewardess helps land airplane

On Jun 22, 9:45*pm, Wingnut wrote:
On Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:45:01 +0200, Mxsmanic wrote:
Wingnut writes:

So, you're sayign that flight experience is irrelevant to flying an
aircraft?

That depends on the experience, and the aircraft. Flight experience in a
Cessna 152

Ah, the Cessna 152 strawman again. I was wondering when that would show
up. First sentence of non-quoted text as it just so happens -- which
means one of my co-workers owes me ten bucks. :-)

Just as experience in driving a Yugo doesn't necessarily help in
driving a Formula 1 car.

Experience driving versus never having sat behind a wheel should make
some difference. It's plain old common sense!

A person with experience in a Cessna 152 still has none in a 747, and so
he will not necessarily be any more useful in a 747 cockpit than a
non-pilot would.

There will be some commonalities. Zero experience in a plane will make
you worse than having had some experience. I don't claim you'd be
proficient; just that you wouldn't actually be *less* capable than
someone who knew *nothing*. Again, common sense.

Pilots of small private aircraft who believe that they could just slip
into a 747 cockpit and fly it are just as naive as non-pilots who
believe the same thing.

First of all, we weren't talking "pilots of small private aircraft", at
least not until you came along and introduced that particular strawman.

Second, they may not be able to do a good job, but the total non-pilot
will surely do a worse job.

Except in your earlier, specific scenario of being talked through a
procedure from the ground, where anyone with basic comprehension skills
will probably do about as well. (Someone with piloting experience might
more quickly be able to find and recognize particular controls or
instrument readouts though, and will be able to understand a more compact
jargon, so he may be a bit faster though other than that only as good as
the quality of the ground instructions.)

I don't think anyone here has claimed that. Though the less someone
knows about operating an aircraft, the poorer their odds.

Yes. I've heard many people claim this, however, and it only shows that
they are uninformed.

Someone who says that "the less experience a person has at a skilled
task, the poorer their odds of completing it successfully" is
"uninformed"? In what universe? In the one where I live there is this
thing called a "learning curve". It climbs steeply at first, then bends
over, but it's monotonic increasing, and it indicates task performance as
a function of experience. Performance improves with experience, slowing
down and eventually plateauing. For some things (e.g. Tic-Tac-Toe) it
plateaus fast and low; for others (e.g. chess) it plateaus much more
slowly and higher, because the thing being learned is more complicated.
But it does not actually dip down at any point.

Since this basic fact (learning curves are monotonic increasing) is
disputed by you, I'm forced to conclude that you're insane and thus not
really worth debating with any further.

Wingnut, I'm going to have to call you on your statement that learning
curves are monotonically increasing activities.

1) I have employees whose 10 years of experience can be characterized
as 1 year repeated 10 times. (That's OK depending on their job of
course.)
2) There are some who have posted here thousands of times and seem to
have learned nothing.
3) There are some here who even after repeated experiences have not
yet learned engaging others in the 'reality vs sim' experience doesn't
add value to the thread.

The major reason a non-certificate holder is one of the most frequent
posters here is because others of us, including me, took part in the
non-learning experience of engaging him on a topic.

It would appear MX's major recreation is sim and engaging in these
debates,other of his posts suggest he doesn't have much of a life
elsewhere. We've all seen literate failures at real life, he is most
likely in that class. Too many of us contribute to his recreation at
the expense of RAP (although these threads are better than the ****ing
contests others seem to enjoy). He is simply a non-pilot who enjoys
yanking on pilot's chains and does that fairly successfully.

You should note that when you simply reply to him, you postings are
also sent to other groups.