Co-pilot gets sick, stewardess helps land airplane

"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
On Jun 17, 2:44 pm, Mxsmanic wrote:
GrtArtiste writes:
Given this set of circumstances, what types of assistance would a
commercial-rated pilot be able to offer assuming she is not rated on
this type aircraft? I would guess-communications with ATC primarily.
What else?

The same things any non-pilot could do: move levers and buttons when the
captain asks her two, read checklists, communicate with ATC, etc. It helps
a
bit if she has piloting experience, but that doesn't mean that she will be
doing anything that _requires_ piloting experience.

This is absolutely correct. At no time was this attendant actually
flying this aircraft. She came up front and sat down in the right seat
acting as an extra set of hands to select, push, pull, and turn, any
and all switches and levers as asked for by the Captain. She acted as
an "assistant" and that's all.
Not to take anything away from this lady who performed as asked to
perform under trying circumstances, and indeed she personally appeared
on national TV this morning to "set straight" all the hype being
presented about her acting in any other capacity than that I have
stated above.
It helped certainly that this nice lady had flying experience but it
was by NO MEANS essential to what she was asked to do or what she
actually did in the cockpit.
Had the Captain opted to, he most certainly could have completed the
flight to a safe completion from the left seat without assistance. He
might have had to extend his reach a bit at times, but nothing earth
shattering for sure.
All in all, this was a class crew and they did a class job, right down
to the stew who very classily and politely deflated the media hype on
her role in the completion of this flight.
Dudley Henriques


I find it interesting that no one has raised the subject of CRM. This seems
to be a great example of the PIC assembling and using effectively all the
resources available. I am confident that the PIC would have received
extensive CRM training which probably included dealing with similar
situations. I suspect that the PIC provided the FA clear direction as to
the tasks she was required to perform as well as carefully monitoring her
performance in the same way that the regular co-pilot would be.

The entire crew deserves a 'nicely done'.

Happy landings,