En passasjer uten noen som helst form for flyerfaring måtte foreta en nødlanding da piloten ble dårlig.
Men passasjeren fikk satt det lille privatflyet, et Cessna 172, trygt på bakken med hjelp av to instruktører, opplyser en talsmann for Humberside-flyplassen øst i England.
Passasjeren kom fra nødlandingen uten skader. Piloten som ble syk, døde senere, opplyser britisk politi. Dødsårsaken er ikke kjent. Han og passasjeren var de eneste om bord i flyet.
Ifølge den ene av instruktørene gjorde passasjeren en «bemerkelsesverdig» jobb med å lande flyet.
– Han gjennomførte faktisk en temmelig god landing. Han kjente ikke flyet og hadde ikke lys på, så han fløy i blinde i tillegg, sier Roy Murray.
Who, what, why: How hard is it to land a plane?
A passenger managed to land a plane
after its pilot fell ill. How difficult is it to bring an aircraft safely down
without training?
It's the stuff of disaster films - to be left on board a plane mid-flight,
without anyone to fly it. A passenger who found himself in
this predicament after the pilot collapsed has been praised for taking over
in the cockpit of a light plane flying over Lincolnshire.
The passenger was able to land at Humberside Airport on the fourth attempt,
with the help of two instructors who talked through the process. The pilot later
died.
"I felt for the instructors because I could put myself in their position,"
says Graham Stables, an instructor from North London Flying School.
Usually having some sort of rudimentary flying experience is key, suggests
Stables.
Landing an aeroplane would be very hard for a complete novice, he says.
Normally, a learner pilot would spend at least 20 hours before attempting to fly
solo, and even then, the first time a student goes out alone is nerve-racking
for the teacher.
Continue reading the main story
The answer
- Keeping calm is most important factor
- Help from experienced instructors on ground is also key
Stables says that if he were on the ground, he wouldn't
get the pilot to land immediately. "I'd want them to get familiar with the
controls. Then it's a case of briefing them about what's going to happen."
A longer runway would give the pilot a better chance of a successful landing,
he says. "Humberside has quite a long runway, which is important. Anything
shorter than a kilometre would be difficult for a novice."
The airport would have cleared the area, and alerted the emergency services.
Stables says that as a final precaution he would instruct the pilot to use
the mixture lever to shut off the plane's engine just before landing. This is to
lessen the risk of fire. If a fuel line is broken on impact with the ground, the
plane is less likely to ignite if the engine is empty.
Stables says that situations such as the one at Humberside Airport are so
rare that they are not something for which flight instructors receive special
training. However, several schools - including his own - run co-pilot courses
for people who are likely to be frequent passengers in light planes. These
generally consist of several hours in a dual-control aircraft being taught about
the controls and executing a landing under supervision.
Aside from this, the key to a safe landing is the attitude of the person in
the cockpit, and their ability to remain calm, according to former pilot Eric
Moody. "I don't want to make it sound easy because it isn't. Lots of people I
know would go silly, but it depends on how strong your sense of
self-preservation is."
Moody knows what it's like to be up in the air and facing the unknown. In
1982 he was at the controls of a BA Boeing 747 above Indonesia, when volcanic
ash caused all four of its engines to fail at once. At best, he and his
passengers faced a crash-landing in the sea. He believes that his ability to
stay calm got him through. "If something big happens, I slow down and think at
half speed and I see beyond the immediate problem."
Continue reading the main story
Who, what, why?
A part of BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer questions behind
the headlines
With oxygen running out at high altitude, Moody put the
plane into a nosedive. Unexpectedly, this kicked the engines back into life, and
the pilots eventually brought the plane in to land safely in Jakarta.
Moody sees parallels with yesterday's incident. "The chap was brave to do it
but he had to live. He was together enough in his mind to cope - not everyone
would have done that."
He says that although modern planes are to a great extent flown by computer,
he doubts whether air flight can completely eliminate the element of skill and
judgement which a good pilot brings to bear. It's a test that he thinks
yesterday's passenger-turned-pilot passed: "It doesn't matter how you land it as
long as you walk away from it."
Reporting by Ben Milne
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