Dear friends and followers, welcome back to my channel. Today´s topic is one of the most ask passenger question, “Can a passenger land a plane?”. There are so many rumours about this question, it´s just not true. So a few facts. My friend Carolin, has no connection to the aviation world besides from flying to holiday once in a while, obviously as a passenger.
Now as soon as she sat down, the hardest part was establishing a communication between her and me, the ATC controller. Carolin was totally overwhelmed with all the switches and buttons, that it took nearly 20 minutes to find the push to talk button. In a real-life situation, if a plane does not respond within 20 minutes, fighter jets will be on their way intercepting the aeroplane as it causes a potential threat to national security, depending which land you´re flying across.
Once communication was established, I had to give her instructions on how to set up the approach phase for an automatic landing, better known as AUTOLAND procedure. The AUTOLAND allows pilots to perform a fully automated landing in bad visual conditions, known as CAT3 approaches. More about that in future videos. Once the approach set up was completed, I had to give her instructions to familiarize with important levers and switches, such as the landing gear lever, the flaps, flight control computer and much more.
Later I guided her via radar vectors towards the airport, constantly descending and reducing the speed accordingly. But see for yourself. My opinion if a passenger can land a plane. I´ll be honest with you! It´s impossible! We needed three attempts to just establish basic communication and Carolin accidentally brought the aircraft into a stall. Don´t ask how! And she was pretty nervous, although she knew it was a simulator. Imagine the anxiety in a real plane!?
I know that there are many videos out there where apparently the passenger landed the plane, but all of the passengers had some kind of flying background. And the likelihood of both pilots being incapacitated is very unlikely. BIG THANK YOU TO TFC KÄUFER for making this video possible such as Lockheed Martin Prepar3D flight simulator, here a few more facts about the used simulation: Scenery ORBX A320 Flightsimlabs Simulator Prepar3D v4.1 I hope you enjoyed this video and where able to learn something from it as well. Thanks for watching, all the best your “Captain” Joe