Land a Commercial Transport Airplane
If you ever end up in a scenario where you are a passenger in a large airplane without any conscious pilots, here's what to do.
Contents
Steps
- Find somebody with flying experience. Even somebody who has been in a glider for one hour probably has a basic understanding of some important things that concern the flight, such as how the radio works.
- Stay calm. An aircraft can fly just fine on its own. Do not start pushing buttons at random, or pull on the control stick/yoke when you are not sure what you are doing.
- Do not try to change the flight path of the aircraft, unless you are sure that you will otherwise crash. Modern airliners are hard to crash accidentally.
- Get help on the radio. The radio probably will be tuned to a station where somebody is listening. There should be a button on the yoke that you have to push to transmit though; it should be in a place that makes sense when you are holding the yoke. But be careful not to press the autopilot disconnect which is also on the yoke near the transmit switch. If nobody answers, you will have to figure out how the radio works. It is usually located in the console between the two pilots, and has displays with numbers between 118.00 and 136.97. Tune it to 121.50; if there is anybody who can help you, they will be listening on that frequency. Inform them that you have no experience flying and tell them which flight you are on (departure and destination cities, scheduled departure time, and company name will help them find your flight)
- Stay calm and follow the instructions you get over the radio. If you made it this far, you will survive this. The air traffic controller will tell you what to do, and he will send you to an airfield where you can safely land. Or better said: where the plane can safely land. Many planes can land automatically, it just has to know where, and once somebody tells you how to do that, it's pretty simple.
Tips
- If you really want to be prepared, get a flight simulator for your PC, and make a few flights with a large airplane, using the autopilot. It'll let you understand what to do initially how to get the aircraft to go where you want it to go.
Warnings
- Find somebody who knows things about flying. There is a pretty big chance somebody in the plane has some experience. It makes life a LOT easier. Learn how to do ILS approaches, and how to use an autopilot before engaging, just in case it is not already on.
- Do not start pulling or pushing at the controls when you don't have a good reason. Large airliners fly most of the time on autopilot, and that's exactly what you want. Moving the controls might disconnect the autopilot.
