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Passenger Lands Plane After Pilot Collapses and Dies At the Controls
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "NBC reports that flying instructors at Humberside Airport, near the city of Hull in northeast England, told a passenger who had never flown before how to land a four-seater Cessna 172 after the pilot collapsed and died at the controls. Passenger John Wildey explained to air traffic controllers that he had no flying experience and that the pilot could not control the plane. 'It came down with a bump, a bump, a bump, hit the front end down, I heard some crashing and it's come to a halt,' said Stuart Sykes. 'There were a few sparks and three or four crashes, that must have been the propeller hitting the floor. Then it uprighted again and it came to a stop.' Roads around the airport were closed while two incoming flights to the airport, from Scotland and the Netherlands, were delayed as a result of the incident. The passenger took four passes of the runway, and there were cheers from the control tower when it finally came to a halt on the ground. 'For somebody who is not a pilot but has been around airfields and been a passenger on several occasions to take control is nothing short of phenomenal," said Richard Tomlinson. "He made quite a good landing, actually,' added flight instructor Murray. 'He didn't know the layout of the airplane. He didn't have lights on so he was absolutely flying blind as well.'"
Ya, it's nice that most of the stories don't say a word about the dead guy. He didn't actually die until after the landing, but he was unresponsive before landing.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/512649/20131009/john-wildey-humberside-plane-landing-pilot-ill.htm
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The quote is extended among pilots to "and a great landing is where you can use the plane again".
That said, the aeronautical term for this is called a Pinch-Hitter (taken from baseball). Google brings up many courses (online and off), videos, articles etc of being a pinch-hitter pilot. You'll find most are for small GA aircraft where single pilot operations are common.
If you are a pilot, there are plenty of resources to which you can print out to help your passengers in the unlikely event they need to take over - these sheets include instructions on how to radio for help (basically, how to use the radio) and what to radio for help on. Your passenger briefing that you do before starting up should include instructions on how to work the radio as well.
Actually yes, it IS difficult unless you've practiced it. And most of us who practiced it had an instructor who recovered the plane when we fucked it up. And every pilot fucked this up in training.
Flare too little / late: you smack into the runway. If you're descending too fast you're basically crashing right now. If you're nose down you could snap the front gear. Hit with all gear and you can still snap the front or wheelbarrow if you're too heavy on the front. Good chance you'll bounce too. If you're going too fast that bounce could be high and far, and you may bounce oddly if you didn't hit evenly - throwing you off to the side or what have you. Porpoising is particularly nasty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5ZzktAFJK4
Flare too soon: you balloon upwards and eat up runway fast. If you don't correct or abort you'll run out of runway fast.
Flare too much: you balloon upwards meaning you're getting high and approaching a stall. Stall and you'll slap down rather hard on the runway, potentially from enough height to kill yourself.
A good flare is a continual thing as well. It's not like you just pull back a bit and you're done... you need to keep pulling back to increase the flare as air speed and altitude decrease. Through that entire process you can go too much or too little, causing the issues above.
Oh, and keep in mind that since the plane is in a nose up attitude you can't really see ahead of you very well. You're judging your altitude over the runway largely via peripheral vision. And you height cues vary depending how wide the runway is!
Now try throwing some cross wind into that just to add to your day.
Screw it up and need to go around? There's more than just throwing in the throttle. You need to reduce your flaps, in stages, as you pull out. Slap those suckers full up and you may lose too much lift to soon and plane meets ground rather harshly.
Personally if the idea of landing a plane with zero training doesn't scare the piss out you, you probably don't have a good enough understanding of what you're about to attempt.
He almost certainly did have ILS, actually, but you'd have to be crazy to try and explain shooting an approach to someone who's never flown before. Much better to say "fly at the runway, once you're over it cut the engine and try not to land".
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Actually, it is. It's the hardest part of learning to land, which is the hardest part of learning to fly. It doesn't take much to screw up the flare, and it doesn't take much of a screwed-up flare to royally screw up a landing.
Example: If you're going too fast and you flare, you'll "balloon" off the runway. Now you'll be 15 feet off and bleeding airspeed - fast. Unless you are pretty comfortable with flying, you'll stall up there and drop like a stone onto the runway.
If I were the instructor, I wouldn't even risk it. I'd tell him to come in fast (~75 knots "dirty") to keep him well away from stall speed and just fly it onto the runway. He had plenty of runway (~7200 feet, C172 needs ~2000 to be comfortable) and nobody was worried about damaging the plane so a nice graceful flare is wholly unnecessary. It sounds like this is pretty much what they did, because he had a prop strike.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
IMHO small jetliners are easier to land than piston-engined GA aircraft. Throttle response on turbines is more intuitive, even with the lag. Also, a jetliner will have a full blind landing system, including the all-important glide scope, and a bunch of pilot-assist warning systems to remind you of things you need to do. I'd much rather be at the controls of an unfamiliar 100-seat jet than a 10-seat piston engined GA aircraft.
Not on your life... I want to be landing the aircraft that comes over the fence the SLOWEST as possible. Jets are usually NOT slow on final. The problem is that during landing a lot of things happen between short final and full stop, you want to have as much time to think and react as possible and the faster you are going when you cross the fence the shorter time you have. So I want a slow aircraft and a LONG runway that's preferably wide.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
"after some practice able to land a cessna." Aye! And good weather/good visitibility, this guy did it as it was mostly dark, and Humberside Airport is notorious for having nasty bumpy air around it. It's very hilly around there, with just the runway the flat bit. For a long time the only reason the airport remained open was to support the North Sea Rigs, and it mostly handled helicopters. Occasional flying sheds from HUY to Amsterdam to get to somewhere useful, wasn't much going on. When it did expand and get the larger planes/holiday makers, it got well known as being bumpy on the last minute of descent, and winds coming in from the NW appeared to catch a few new pilots out, never saw so many aborted landings for the first few weeks of the bigger planes landing. That's commercial pilots being caught off-guard with the winds. No doubt about it, guy was lucky, kept his head on, did a good job not to make a mess of it.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Any light aircraft, when trimmed correctly, will continue to fly quite well if you leave it alone. Line it up on the runway (yes, it sort of steers like a car), and gently pull the power back (eyes to the end of the runway :-). With plenty of runway, it will land itself. Example - Lady Be Good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Be_Good_(aircraft)
This is the very reason I do some basic flight training with anybody in the right seat when I have time. I explain the radio, even let them make radio calls when possible. I let them take the controls and run them though level flight, basic turns, power and trim adjustments to an airspeed. It takes about 5-10 min or so of flight time to get them to master concepts and knowledge needed to land the aircraft. (At least for what I I fly..) I also try to explain what I'm doing when I'm not too rushed, like calling out target airspeeds, altitudes, power settings and check list items. I'm not saying I can teach you how to land in 10 min, only that I can introduce you to all the controls and how to use them. It usually takes a few hours of training to get good enough skills to be good at landing but armed with some basic knowledge, somebody could talk you through it fairly easy.
My goal is three fold. First, I hope to remove any fear they may have and help them feel comfortable. Second, I'm hopefully imparting a love for flying by teaching them as much as I can. Third, something I say or some skill they develop may save their life. Not to mention, I like teaching.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I guess the one thing you need to know about the radio is the international distress channel of 121.5?
In an emergency, the best frequency to use to report that is the frequency you are already talking to ATC on. You don't need to change anything, you have zero chance of screwing up the radio settings, and the guy you're talking to already knows who and where you are (most likely). This guy will know what airports are near you and which way you need to turn to get there. He can pick up a dedicated phone line to neighboring controllers to arrange your clear passage and brief them on your situation if he needs to hand you off.
If you're going to need to land right away, you'll probably be able to stay with the same person all the way to the ground. If not, then at least you started by letting someone who is within the system know you are in trouble and don't have to be so frantic in switching to the right frequency to find someone. You'll also have someone on the other end who can probably instruct you on how to change to another frequency if necessary.
Yes, if you've been flying without any contact with ATC and don't have any clue what frequency to call your closest controller on, by all mean, 121.5 MHz is where to go.
For a more complex aircraft, maybe the next thing is a pencil and paper to copy some checklists?
For a non-pilot, a checklist is worthless. Having to write down instructions is a waste of time and distracts from the task at hand. "When you get to X, push this and then this..." Much better for the guy who is probably watching you on radar, or taking to someone who is watching you, to say "ok, NOW push this..."
Thanks for the tip about trimming up ASAP for passenger's benefit. Yeah, the further I get, the more I appreciate trim - and I thought I appreciated it plenty! My instructor (I think deliberately) let me struggle through a few landings without trimming every attitude change. I certainly learned my lesson - if you don't touch the trim after midfield downwind, by short final you need so much back pressure you have a hard time rounding out and flaring. This gives you heavy hands, which makes you more likely to over-control, etc. But it creeps up on you, so you don't even realize how much you're fighting the plane until you get trimmed up and it just goes where you want it, no hands. My problem was I was thinking of trimming as an extra thing I had to do - really, it means you have less to do.
I made a comment somewhere else on this page to the effect of "don't think time in your home computer sim prepares you for flying". Trim is (IMO) the single biggest reason why - or perhaps the reason you need trim is. It's an afterthought at best if you're actually trying to fly a consumer sim, and certainly not emphasized. Plus, it's an extremely tactile thing (in a cables and bellcranks plane) - both to set up trim (just relieve the pressure) and the feedback of "man, I wish I didn't have to push/pull so hard to keep altitude/airpseed", because there's usually no force feedback. FBW and hydraulics usually are free of feedback too, but by the time you get to those planes you've spent enough time in a cables and pushrods plane to know what you're doing regardless.
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Inacurate comments are for uninformed, and many of them are on /.
Take another look see. You can get a decent little brand new plane for about the same price as a loaded mid sized car these days ($30K-50). Much cheaper ones can be had if you want a more "windy" experience. What you say was true about 20 years ago when the lawyers were spending all their time suing all the light aircraft companies out of existence. That is no longer the case.
General aviation is a young man's game, but only if he can find a job that will pay for the hours. Aviation is so cert heavy now you basically need to pay to work for the first year (the cost of your private/instrument/instructor/commercial ratings), before you can work for free as an instructor, and then work for poverty level wages as a regional/charter pilot. It's even worse if you want to be a rotocraft pilot. Aircraft mechanics make more than many of the pilots now. I should know I am a aircraft mechanic by trade and a pilot for fun. (Though not that young anymore).
FALSE Probably the worst stereotype that exists in general aviation today.
It's expensive, yes, but it's not TOO bad - a reasonable used plane can be had for the low 5 digits, and many, many pilots do split ownership. Or they rent.
All in all, you do want to have a decent income - most pilots are middle income families - not rich 1 percenters. Most pilots also don't fly too much - under 100 hours a year. So split ownership or rental is actually very beneficial - the more an airplane flies, the cheaper it is to run (they want to run - the maintenance and everything goes way down if the engine's constantly turning and burning and such). Top end prices for a fully loaded brand new Cessna is probably around a quarter million.
And that's ignoring the biggest growth segment - light sport aircraft. They're currently expensive new, but the costs are way lower.
Now, if you want to talk jets that cost $1-2M, sure, they're for the rich and famous, but the regular avgas sucking sky-hole puncher is well within reach of someone with a decent salary. In fact, most /. readers working in IT probably make much more than the existing pilot population.
Learning to fly isn't too bad - all in all, probably $10,000 or so. It's cheaper if you can save up and do it in a month, more expensive if you have to spread it out over a couple of years. Or do light sport (you can upgrade it to full private pilot's later).
The benefits are, however, immense. If you could cut down a 10 hour road trip to 3 hours, wouldn't that be fun? And instead of endless highways and dirt, you get to see sights that few ever get to see. Avoiding big commercial airports for the little ones can often put you closer to your destination than flying commercial and dealing with security, lineups, etc. Heck, if you're particularly avid, you can fly into the neighbouring state for breakfast, fly back and have lots of time before lunch (many people do - they're called fly-ins, though the crowds are usually so fun they stay a few hours and end up having lunch as well).
As a career, though, being a pilot generally stinks - learning to fly and getting all your ratings, and you're barely making any rent. Finally get right seat at a region carrier and it's in the low 20s it's a joke. The big airlines aren't any better - most /. people are looking at people with 15-20 years seniority just to get the same salary.
However, if you don't want a career, with its lousy hours and routes until you build up seniority, flying for fun is actually quite affordable. And when the weather's beautiful, there's nothing like popping in the plane, flying to a nearby city and getting takeout for dinner after work.
And if you're a city dweller, night flying is so ... serene and even when you're just 2500' high (I was flying local area), you;re above the light pollution and can see the stars. (And by local, I meant flying to cities that would normally take 40 minutes by car take barely 10 by air - or just when you get up, it's time to descend).
Expensive? It's one of the more costlier hobbies, but you can find golfers and scuba divers who'll plunk down huge cash on their equipment and training as well. Ditto car enthusiasts. Maybe even stamp collectors. Or gun enthusiasts (yes, guns can be had for a few hundred dollars, or many thousands). The only "expensive" stereotype comes from the fact that there's no realy "cheap" option (though many have earned flights by working or volunteering at their local airports). It's I suppose like Apple products - they don't make low end cheap stuff.
Hell, there's always the Coast Guard, and many civilian organizations that can subsidize flight training too (usually for SAR, firefighting, etc). It is a very social thing though - you cannot just fly and leave, you'll need to interact with people.
Actually, that's about the best way to describe it. Keep the nose dead on the center-line of the runway, get your airspeed low and kill the engine once your wheels are over the blacktop. You should now be very near touching the blacktop. At this point, you're on glide-path and forcing the plane to descend... by trying NOT to land under these conditions, the instinct is to pull up which gives the requisite flare to keep from nosing in. Hopefully, you don't pull too hard and force the tail into the ground, but otherwise a very accurate description for a newb.