This is your captain speaking.
Regardless of how you feel about the rest of the content (there’s a considerable amount of political news and commentary), there’s a really cool column on the website Salon that anyone interested in private or commercial flight should check out.
The column is called “Ask the Pilot,” and author/pilot Patrick Smith talks openly about his professional life (”My landings have been awful lately.”); he answers questions that have crossed our mind and we bet have crossed yours (”Are cellphones and laptops really dangerous to flight?”); and he takes the media to task for poor research and reporting on issues large and small (like the venerable New Yorker calling the Falcon 900EX the “Falcon 9.”)
In one of his posts, Smith examines the at once entertaining and frightening question of whether someone without any training can land an airplane. Admit it, you too have fantasized about raising your hand and volunteering to land an aircraft after pilot and co-pilots have suffered simultaneous heart-attacks or something.
Here’s Smith’s take on the question (also the topic of a “MythBusters” segment on cable TV): “The chance of success: approximately zero percent. I reckon our hero would be highly fortunate just to locate a microphone switch and figure out how to communicate. Keeping the plane upright would in some ways be the easiest part. It’s the small stuff that presents the greatest challenge: working the radios, dialing in changes to the FMS (flight management system) and autoflight panels, changing speeds and altitudes. Dictating such tasks from afar would be difficult enough. For the hapless passenger pressed into duty, getting them right would be even more challenging. ”
Again, a fun and insightful column worthing keeping an eye on.
