Mythbusters On Talking Planes Down

[CAP1]

Just stumbled accross this. havent seen the movie airplane so I dont know how that was done, but someone with no experience in a passenger jet, will not be able to land it MANUALLY. That is just not possible.

However, some planes are equiped with an autoland equiped autopilot. To guide someone by RT to programm the FMC (flight management computer) to fly a certain pre-programmed route and follow it by an instrument approach and landing (ILS Cat IIIC) is possible. Airport has to be equiped for this aswell though. The person isnt flying the plane, it simply tells the autopilots (yes it must have more autopilots) what to do.

most if not all class B airports are equipped with these systems.(at least in the US)

[CAP1]

Actually, 3. Normal autopilot operation has 2. If the 2 autopilots parameters are not the same (1 fails), autopilot disengages. For autolanding you need 3 for failsave. Then if one fails, the other 2 override the malfuntional one.

you still need more than switches. you need to program in the climbrate, cruise altitude,and heading. for autoland, i think you need the airport information set in there, so the computer knows the altitude of the airport. i'm sure there's more than this too.

[moose]

Reading the comments of squeekers who think they have any idea what real flying is like based on an airplane game. Especially a complex high performance airplane.
 

right with ya.

although i did solo easily at 4 hours, and if i wasn't an idiot i'd have had my ppl at 40 exactly... not saying that flight sims give you experience, but they definitely help, even if its just mental.

(flight sims do NOT prep you for all the regs and radio work however. biggest hurdle for me.)