How to land an airplane if you are not a pilot

No way is that guy a flight instructor.

Oh yeah, I commented.
 
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Yeah. Point the nose at the threshold and pull power to maintain airspeed!

That MIGHT work (but I doubt it). Pointing the nose at the threshold tends to make the airplane either very fast or very slow, and either way, you can easily run out of throttle.... I witnessed my 7 year old son do a (simulated) T&G at over 300 KIAS in an F-18 that way. Good thing it was in a lab, or that might have been really ugly.

I don't think that guy is a pilot, let alone an instructor.
 
No way is that guy a flight instructor.

Oh yeah, I commented.

You mean your CFI never told you to "start pushing buttons until the plane shut down"? And who doesn't know that you put your hands "in" a yoke. And pattern altitude is the altitude at which you see cars and colors but not their make or model. Just make sure not to use the altimeter if it is set to standard pressure!
Oh and how the hell does "as high as a pole" describe 30m?
 
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Bahahahaha, he deleted my comment.
 
Didn't Mythbusters actually do this? (A CFI was aboard to keep an eye on things)
 
Didn't Mythbusters actually do this? (A CFI was aboard to keep an eye on things)

They did it in a sim on a Boeing or Airbus. They failed miserably when they both tried to wing it. Then they got a lesson/walkthrough and you could have used the plane again.
 
They did it in a sim on a Boeing or Airbus. They failed miserably when they both tried to wing it. Then they got a lesson/walkthrough and you could have used the plane again.

Hmm - must have been a different show that I'm thinking about. The one I remember was somebody cramming on MSFS with a CFI for a day, then hopping into a 172. In the plane, the CFI kept quiet and let the guy handle it himself.
 
Its not that bad of an article...
I agree. It's not good piloting technique, of course, but the guy was looking for simple instruction that someone without any prior aircraft experience could remember and follow. Get the plane down with a chance of survival.

Ron Wanttaja
 
I quit reading when I noticed that the guy seems to expect non-pilot readers to know what "angle of attack" means.
 
I quit reading when I noticed that the guy seems to expect non-pilot readers to know what "angle of attack" means.

A surprising number of non-pilots intuitively get that concept without any training, I've observed in casual conversations from time to time.
 
I agree. It's not good piloting technique, of course, but the guy was looking for simple instruction that someone without any prior aircraft experience could remember and follow. Get the plane down with a chance of survival.

Ron Wanttaja
THAT WAS NOT SIMPLE INSTRUCTION. I would need a third person in the plane, reading it all out loud to me, while I tried to do it in a state of emotional freak-out about my apparently dead husband in the left seat.

I lean more to one of the commenters: "You're telling someone who's suddenly thrust into the role of PIC, with little or no flight experience and faced with the task of land-successfully-or-die-trying, to think about altimeter settings, gps, spin recovery and declaring a PAN? Absolutely ridiculous. Keep the airspeed in the green. Get on the radio and say whatever you want to say about the situation. Find a place to land, aim for it and keep it in the middle of the windscreen. Pull the power when you're close to the ground."

But in my heart of hearts I absolutely know that unless I actually LAND the plane WITH an instructor at some point BEFORE I become an emergency PIC, I'll never get it right.
 
A surprising number of non-pilots intuitively get that concept without any training, I've observed in casual conversations from time to time.

The meaning is rather inherent, and I too have heard it used as a non-aviation term. Now, do non-pilots know the physics behind it and how it pertains to the flight and the stall characteristics of the aircraft? Probably not. Is it necessary to know this to land the plane? Probably only a bit more so than spin recovery techniques. Is this author's first language English? I'd say that's probably a negative.
 
The meaning is rather inherent, and I too have heard it used as a non-aviation term. Now, do non-pilots know the physics behind it and how it pertains to the flight and the stall characteristics of the aircraft? Probably not. Is it necessary to know this to land the plane? Probably only a bit more so than spin recovery techniques. Is this author's first language English? I'd say that's probably a negative.

No Doubt.
Note to self: Refrain from placing Neophlyte in aircraft and advising only, "Watch your AoA!"
 
I had no clue what angle of attack meant before I became a pilot.
 
Gee, that was a long landing explanation. Pull power to 1700 RPM a mile or two out and start a mild descent (half to full bar) or 3-400 on the VSI would have made a lot shorter explanation.

As a side note: I call out everything aloud. My son will actually call them out now. Without a crosswind, I'm sure he could land
 
I have actually just had my wife do a non pilot right seat course.. Just in case I become incapacitated during a flight.
2 hours ground school, 2 hours in the air, CFI runs through basic manovours, straight and level, slow flight, shallow banks ect. Throttle control, stall avoidance, possible off airport landing sites, and half a dozen landings at our class D home field.

For a bit of extra insurance to maybe make the outcome of an emergency more favourable I think it was $500 well spent.

And a big plus is she now feels more at ease when we go fly.
 
A poorly written article. Probably a 20 year old instructor who feels he is God's gift to aviation.

edit: I apologize if I am wrong about the writer. It probably isn't fair for me to make assumptions...:nono:
 
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