t’s the stuff of action movies. The pilot and copilot of your flight go unconscious in an unforeseen incident that will change your life. You have seconds, minutes at best, to learn how to pilot a plane full of scared passengers. Fortunately, you are assisted by a room of air traffic controllers who all left their stations to follow this one aircraft falling from the sky.
In the end, you manage to land at an airport, and everyone cheers and hugs after the terrifying event ends. It sounds far-fetched, like a script of a Hollywood movie starring Harrison Ford (a pilot in real life), but roughly one in every three Americans is confident they could safely land a passenger airplane in an emergency situation.
The survey
Earlier this year, a YouGov poll revealed that out of 20,063 adults surveyed in the United States, nearly a third said they were “somewhat confident” or “very confident” that they could safely land a passenger airplane in an emergency. They would only need the assistance of air traffic control.
Male Americans seem particularly confident in their out-of-nowhere abilities to land a passenger airplane. 20% of all males were very confident, and 26% were somewhat confident, according to the poll. Females are more cautious, with only 7% very confident they could safely land a commercial aircraft.
According to the survey, black and Hispanic people living in the West of the United States between the ages of 18 and 44 years old are the most confident about landing a plane. The survey also looked at political compass but found that people confident about landing a plane were distributed almost equally between Democrats and Republicans (16% of each are very confident, and 20 and 21% are somewhat confident, respectively).
You can’t land a plane
It goes without saying: without proper training, you are not able to land a plane (unless you’re the Floridan man who landed a Cessna 208 last year in Palm Beach).
As Brett D. Venhuizen, chair of the aviation department at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota, told The Washington Post,
“I think they would have a very difficult time. There are a lot of challenges for somebody who has no flight experience, ranging from entering the flight deck to figuring out how to talk to air traffic control, maneuver the airplane, and navigate to the airport they plan to land at.”
A real story of a passenger landing a plane
It happened last year. In Florida. A pilot on a single-engine Cessna 208 became incapacitated while flying, and the passenger had to rush into action, despite having zero training. The passenger was able to steer the private plane smoothly into Palm Beach International Airport. He received help from the air traffic controller, who guided the passenger through the descent.
As reported by several media outlets, the air traffic controller told the passenger to hold the wings levels and descend at a very slow rate following the Floridan cost. The controller guided the passenger to Palm Beach, the largest airport in the area, “just so he could just have a really big target to aim at.”
This week, a pilot of a Southwest flight became incapacitated shortly after departing from Las Vegas. An off-duty pilot employed by another airline was on the flight as a passenger and was allowed into the flight deck to assist with radio communication. The flight landed safely at Las Vegas.
And you, do you think you could land a plane safely without any experience? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: CNN, The Guardian, The Washington Post.