This video popped up in my YouTube feed and I thought some of you might find it interesting. It addresses the age-old scenario we've all imagined (including me, before I flew professionally).

The scenario: you're a passenger on a passenger jet and the pilots become incapacitated. Could you land the plane?

For this video, the scenario uses a 737-NG and proceeds realistically, with a knowledgeable pilot available over the radio to "talk you through it." They do three approaches into Boston Logan airport. For the first try, full automation is used right down to an auto-land. This one is interesting because it shows that, despite this being an auto-land, there are many inputs required of the pilot to make the automation work.

For the 2nd attempt, the pilot can used the auto-pilot but not auto-land, i.e. he must hand fly the touchdown.

The 3rd attempt is with no autopilot at all.

I'm in with the full auto pilot. I'm awesome at pushing buttons and fairly good at following directions!


Serious question - could you step into any commercial plane right now and land it, including those you've never flown?

In a Boeing, yes. In an Airbus, I would definitely want an Airbus pilot on the radio to talk me through the automation.

I could do it...

Nope, no chance. No way I'm coordinated enough to manage all the inputs and react appropriately and quickly enough.

W0X0F, what about non-commercial aircraft? Know enough about (say) an Air Force plane to have an opinion about whether you'd be able to fly one of them?

Thank you. Remind me to ensure you're on my flight when both pilots become incapacitated!

Comments on the Tokyo collision?

Military planes are certainly sophisticated but to the best of my knowledge they are straightfoward flying machines. I could ignore the weapons systems, contermeasures features, and radar and just concentrate on stick and rudder. I'd like to think that I could manage to get it on the ground without loss of the aircraft, even it wouldn't necessarily be pretty. But there's a non-zero chance that I'm kidding myself.

The reason I singled out Airbus is that I know enough from talking to friends who have flown it that I realize that the Airbus is all about the automation. Whereas we engage the autopilot on a Boeing (and, I presume, military aircraft), the Airbus is essentially always on autopilot to an extent. Establish a pitch attitude and relax control inputs and it maintains that attitude. Same with bank. (At least that's my understanding from Airbus pilots I've talked to.) There are also features of the automation to "save" a pilot from his inputs if the software deems them to be unsafe or incorrect. If you're in the wrong mode, you might find the Airbus initiating a climb even though you are trying to descend. I'm not really explaining it well, but basically the idea of hand flying an Airbus without concern for the automation and the underlying software is not the way it's flown.

I hadn't heard about it and my main takeaway is that it's beyond amazing to me that everyone on board the Airbus 350 survived.

WTF is going on here:

https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/...-tire-2975078/

Plane is going from London to Denver and has a problem (flat tire). So it apparently flies past Denver and lands in Las Vegas?

Why? If it can land with a flat tire in LV, surely it can land in Denver also. And if the flat tire requires a urgent landing, then why go to the farther airport?

Here is a good presentation of what occurred. Obviously runway incursion, but the investigation will determine where the breakdown was.

The only two things I can think of that would make Las Vegas preferable to Denver are lower airport elevation (which translates to lower touchdown speed) and longer runway. 25L at LAS is over 15,000’ long.

It could be that the crew considered the degraded landing performance and chose LAS based on these factors. But I must admit that my initial reaction was the same as yours.

The fault imo lies entirely on the ground/local controller. When I'm told to hold short of an active runway for an intersection departure, they always emphasize it to me very clearly, and will usually add-in "Hold short runway 35R landing traffic" or "hold short 35R traffic on short final" and the a/c should also read back the instructions. If there's no readback, the controller should have made sure he followed those instructions. They should also learn how to speak better english.

If he was the ground controller, he should of noticed the incursion (especially if the instructions weren't read back) and should of had enough time to tell the local controller to send the other guy around, so it looks like he made 3 disastrous mistakes - mumbling an important hold short instruction, not hearing the guy read it back to confirm (he should have repeated it again if there was not read back), and not noticing him enter the active runway with traffic on short final.

That guy should at the very least lose his job if not more. He was totally negligent. The coast guard pilot is also at fault if he didn't read back the instructions.

Re: Alaska Airlines Flight 1282
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...ard-rcna132785
Is it common for this to happen inadvertently?

.

Another question on this incident: The news said that a *Low Pressure* warning light came on, not just on the flight when this happened, but on 2 or 3 prior flights.

What is the SOP for troubleshooting such a warning light?

You don't really trouble shoot it in the air, just gotta head down to at or below 10K feet as soon as possible and put on oxygen masks or it will cause hypoxia which isn't good for someone flying an airplane and I could be wrong but I believe they troubleshoot it on the ground by pumping air into the cabin and someone inside of it lights up a cigar, then he follows the smoke to see if it rushes out anywhere but I'm not sure if that's how the airlines do it.

It seems like they couldn't find the leak in the prior instances so they put it back into service and restricted it to flights over land only (this is in case of a depressurization they'll have somewhere to land, it's not really because they're in danger of ditching it into the ocean if they lose cabin pressure and no one would expect a sealed door to come flying off due to a pressure leak).

The only Low Pressure warnings on an aircraft are for low fuel pressure.

Low cabin pressure is triggered at a cabin altitude of 10,000' and will cause a CABIN ALT warning message on the EICAS, an aural emergency alert, and a flashing red "attention getter" light (one light in front of each pilot; either pilot can silence the aural alert by pressing the the red warning light on the coaming panel).

If not rectified and the cabin continues climbing (i.e. pressure keeps decreasing), the passenger O2 masks will drop when the cabin reaches an altitude of 14,500'.

This situation is covered in the QRH (Quick Reference Handbook which contains checklists for emergency and abnormal situations) but is one of the emergencies that has memory items associated with it. The memory items are the first steps in the appropriate checklist (in this case, the CABIN ALT checklist) but are required to be performed from memory before reaching for the QRH.

In our CABIN ALT checklist, the only memory items are the first two steps:

DON OXYGEN MASKS
ESTABLISH CREW COMMUNICATIONS

With the O2 mask on, the pilots need to select the microphone in the mask for comms. Once the masks are on and good communication established, the QRH is consulted. This will driect the pilots to descend below 10,000' (terrain permitting). If terrain is higher than 10,000, we would have already briefed the quickest heading necessary to fly to lower terrain. This is done routinely when overflying high terrain.

Thank you, and thanks to Playbig2000 for your answers.

I can only wonder if the reporter got something wrong in the story about 2 or 3 prior incidents with the same aircraft. Otherwise, I don't have a good feeling about Alaska Air.

Thank you Captain Obvious...

OP... why would the Pilot of MH370 go thru such an elaborate series of procedures to purposefully crash and kill all of his passengers?

Why not just dive into the side of a mountain...

Saturday, we had an unusual (for here, DEN) wet and heavy snow. It as also coming down at a good rate. While out there moving that slop around, I heard planes taking off, going overhead.

Does heavier (either in water content or inches/hour, or both) snow affect safe takeoffs and landings any more than a "normal" snow?

How much did you get? We got 11 but I don't think that was much more than you.

I would assume the runways plowed the same and the glycol worked better since it was close to 32 degrees?

I can confirm. It really is a struggle to maintain altitude.


But earlier itt I told the story of a sim ride I had with extra time available to us just for grins. I asked to try a dead stick landing (B-757), so we went up to FL350, 90 miles east of SFO, and cut off both engines.

Yada yada yada...safe landing at SFO...on speed and in the touchdown zone.

I get what you’re asking, but there is nothing in any aviation weather reports that distinguishes wetness or heaviness of the snow. Snow is reported as light, moderate, or heavy and that’s measured by visibility.

@AquaSwing, it was about 4-5" total.

Thanks W0X0F.