In the off chance you find yourself in this situation…
Aviate, navigate, communicate. Make sure the plane is flying nice and level. Then figure out where you are and what your heading is. Finally, figure out the radio and get in contact with someone so they can get you help.
Don’t do it yourself either. Commercial pilots are experts in a field that is as nuanced and technically demanding as medicine or law, and there are still two of them on the flight deck to manage the aircraft. Get someone, anyone, to hop in the other seat and look for switches, instruments, checklists, manage comms…etc.
I mean with the right flight sim and setup it’s functionally identical to the experience of flying a real plane, just without any of the potential danger.
Yeah, like even if you don’t have a HOTAS, if you’ve successfully landed a plane in sim you know what the procedures are and how to approach, which is very helpful if someone needs to talk you down.
I need the opinions of avgeeks and pilots on a matter involving my wife. I AM COMPLETELY SERIOUS AND I NEED HELP. /srs
My wife and I (together for 5 years, married for 2, no kids) have an amazing, happy relationship. I can’t recall a single time we’ve ever argued to the point of a breakup or divorce. This issue, however, is causing me to reconsider the health of our relationship. Since my wife and I have been together, I have worked as a manager for a restaurant chain. I am an extremely passionate aviation enthusiast in my free time. I have spent thousands of dollars on flight textbooks, sim gear, and even built my own a330 setup. I have never actually flown a plane or started flight training, but I have considered it for a long time. Even though my skills are not a career, I still consider myself as adept or possibly more knowledgeable than the average pilot.
That being said, here’s where the problem arises. My wife and I were invited to one of her male coworkers house for a barbecue. My wife is a senior software tech for a Covid startup. She’s worked there since 2020, a lucky catch after she was laid off from her previous job due to the virus. It was my first time meeting many of her now-close coworkers due to Covid and working from home. I had assumed she’d talked about me before, but as we were cycling through introductions I became less sure. We make our way down the line to the host of the party, a new male hire that she has grown platonically close with. We exchange casual conversation and Greg (host) asked what I do for a living. My wife chimes in with “He manages a [insert fast food chain], it certainly comes with some benefits (I’m assuming she’s referring to free food)”, in a voice that implied nothing was wrong with what she said. I very quickly corrected her and told him that I am a pilot. My wife already knows how insecure I am about my job and how I’d much rather be introduced by my hobby. I’ve earned the title of pilot through my 500+ hours on and sim and thousands of dollars put into my craft. I think it is incredibly disrespectful for her not to acknowledge my skills and training. Just because I don’t have the title of pilot on an overpriced piece of paper doesn’t mean I’m not a pilot.
I laughed it off with Greg, told him under my breath that my wife was often forgetful (which I’m sure he’s realized just from working with her). He seemed to brush it off casually. At this point, I’m fuming, but I don’t go much farther than exchanging some nasty glances at my wife for the rest of the night. As we pack into the car to leave, the argument starts. She feels as if I don’t deserve my title as a Pilot because I’m not professional. I told her she is completely insensitive to the work i’ve done and she will never understand what it’s like to study so much. She’s currently on the couch as I type this. Am I really the asshole for asking to be respected?
If someone has 600 hrs of flying in a 1:1 representation of an aircraft type, they could be successful flying it in real life assuming the plane is 100% okay and it was only the pilots who were incapacitated somehow. After all, Every airline pilot gets certified to fly in a jet without ever actually setting foot on the real thing.
It would depend on the person, but having flying fundamentals is the most important knowledge in that situation, not knowing every little thing about a “737-700”. The radio guidance can tell you where to find all the buttons you need for a landing where you will be guided step by step and going to a super long safe runway.
I should know, I have 100 hrs in Cessna 172s and 1 hour in 747-400s.
I worked for a training facility who had 747-4 sims when I was a student pilot and one of our instructors took me “up” in it. Never had been in the fuckin thing in my life, but I was hand flying a 747 400 in a 6 axis full motion simulator while possessing a current medical and accompanied by a current 747 instructor. So, that hour could go in my log book. (I wish I had him put it in there honestly)
I was easily able to fly the aircraft. The controls are the same as any aircraft, it’s just bigger and heavier. Slow and steady, minor adjustments to learn and get a feel for how much input = how much output.
The way harder part for me was taxiing that monster around the airport. Iirc the cockpit was positioned 26ft off the ground, and you sit in front of the nose gear, so just imagine trying to eyeball when to turn when you sit in front of the wheels that do the turning.
The things we can’t account for are the most dangerous. The weather on the day this happens will be the biggest factor in determining if the flight simmer is successful in saving the plane. Heavy winds, low visibility, runway conditions, etc are going to affect the outcome way more than anything else.
Bottom line is If my relative was on a plane where they needed a hero to land it safely, I would trust a 600 hr flight simmer’s chances waayyyyyyy before most other people. Especially since they have radio pilot guiding them, they can declare an emergency, fly to a safe extra long runway, etc, all to maximize the ease of the landing.
I want to say mythbusters did this in a sim. They had ATC walk them through it. I want to say they landed, but maybe not in the first attempt. It’s been a while and it might not have been myth busters.
As an avid player of flight sims, probably not too well on a fully loaded plane like a 747 or whatever. They are heavy, react slowly, and the controls are electronic so you can’t “feel” any resistance from the plane. Also the jet turbines take a while to spool up and down so you have to be pretty deliberate with your inputs.
Now if it were something like a smaller GA airplane, as long as it has tricycle gear and you aren’t landing into a crosswind, I feel like it would be fairly successful, and even if you get 10 ft from the ground and stall, or miss the touchdown point by 1000ft or so, you are only going 45-50mph tops at that point so the chances of you surviving are pretty good.
Compare that to a 747 where you’d be going much faster and the margin between landing and stalling is pretty thin, there’s a good chance you’d overshoot the landing point, come down hard, then crash into something at the end of the runway.
Now if it’s a taildragger and you don’t have any real training, there’s a good chance you’ll tail loop and crash once you touch down. You’d probably survive, but it would be ugly.
Edit: that is assuming you don’t smash the brakes and prop strike first.
I liked my experience on the flight simulator. Got good at flying the little Cessna around. Take off, landing, I problems at all. Decided on a new challenge. Did the landing challenge they offer. They instantly throw you into a landing random plane. It was an airliner. I tried. I fell right out of the sky way before the runway lol.
I have my pilots license. You can actually use a few hours of your required flight time on a [certified] flight simulator. They recognize the value of learning that way and sure is cheaper than renting the plane.
I did support for Microsoft games and specifically Flight Simulator. I remember talking to instructors and them encouraging me to pursue a license. One specific encounter, the instructor told me that almost half of the required hours can come from certified places like his. The reason was mostly to do with the cost of fuel and the scarcity of qualified instructors. He can oversee multiple people in his lab while only one at a time with long time commitments
I did support for Microsoft games and specifically Flight Simulator
Was that job directly through Microsoft, or via a contracting agency? I’m curious as to if they have any full-time employees in those types of support roles.
I’m not going to pretend like I’m an expert but I played like 20 hours of car mechanic simulator and was able to help my buddy with pointing out some weird things when he popped the hood of his car.
And I also wonder if a few hundred hours of Truck Simulator will give me some novice level experience in truck driving.
As someone who worked for a trucking company before, I can tell you that no amount of simulation will equip you with the horrors that truck drivers have to live through every day.
I’ve crashed my trailer dozens of times in the Euro Truck Simulator and may have committed a bit of “floor it because not a crime if they can’t catch me”.
I mean you can probably back up the trailers fine, but all the “stuff” involved with hooking up and unhooking is completely omitted from ATS and ETS/ETS2.
Shifting gears is another thing, I can shift a 6 speed, but if you put me behind a real 18 speed with splitter and range gearboxes, I guarantee I’d be grinding the shit out of those gears, over-rev or lug the engine… Etc.
The popular truck “sims” are not sims, they are basically one step above arcade games. And I say this as someone who likes playing them. They are fun, but they are not sims.
Perhaps the most complicated – and once more, expensive – aspects of building a one is the Forward Overhead Panel which will likely set you back anywhere from $1000 for an extremely basic one, to (more likely) $7000 to $10,000, possibly even as high as $12,000 for a fully accurate and articulate design.
Not that i want to build a simulator but there’s none with Arduino or Raspi?
I mean, these days, if you’re good with general fabrication skills and you’ve got a 3D printer, you could probably get a fully physically accurate instrumentation setup for 10-20% of that.
Why? If one knows that they will play a LOT and wants the extra realism. Would it not make more sense to buy it at 600 hours than 6000? Or are you only allowed to buy expensive stuff if you spend thousands of hours without them first?,
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