Lifestyle

Can a military pilot really step in and help land a commercial plane if the pilot is incapacitated, or are there too many differences and security issues to consider?

People have strange ideas about how airplanes are flown.

I am both a airline pilot and a military pilot. If I have a incapacitation issue in my cockpit, nobody is coming from the cabin into the cockpit. Not a military guy and Not another airline pilot. Even on the same type aircraft. Nobody. Except for maybe God or Chuck Yeager.

There are Two of us in the cockpit for a reason. It only takes one of us to fly the jet. The other pilot doesn’t waste time. He immediately takes his fellow pilot to the best place to get the most immediate care. I don’t want or need any help from another pilot. If a cardiologist or a paramedic, then yes get in up here to the cockpit. Everyone else, get in your seat because we’re landing now.

Can he? Sure, with a little guidance from a pilot current on that model on the radio, chances are very good that he could make a survivable landing. I flew the F-15C and the 757, and a good friend of mine ran the 757 sim. I brought some guys from my squadron in and we tried to let them handle it alone, then with guidance. Alone the landings were…interesting.

Not in a good way, lol. With guidance, all five were able to make a passable landing. To a degree, a plane is a plane. If you have some qualified help to explain the differences and give you numbers, it’s at least possible.

But the odds of something like this happening are like millions to one. First, the TWO pilots on the airplane have to be disabled, second no company pilots would be on board, third no other heavy drivers would be on board.

Then there would have to be a fighter pilot on board. The three things most likely to take out both pilots are food, drink, and air, so this fighter pilot would have to have avoided what the company pilots ate, drank, and breathed.

This is a cool Hollywood idea, but in real life, if things reached that point…the plane is probably doomed.

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