According to an utterly believable survey by YouGov in 2023, almost half of men think they could safely land a plane in an emergency. We’re not here to ground anybody’s confidence, but landing an aircraft – especially a large passenger plane – without experience is an extremely difficult thing to do.
There are documented cases of people landing smaller aircraft with the guidance of air traffic controllers and flight instructors on the ground, but remember that pilots of all kinds undergo hundreds of hours of training.
Some larger aircraft, like the Boeing 737, have an autoland function that allows the plane to land itself, even without power, and is sometimes used by pilots in low visibility.
Setting this up requires dozens of steps and knowledge of the instruments in the cockpit, but some pilots and instructors believe a novice could manage it with the right help.
Petter Hörnfeldt, a 737 instructor, details a 20-step procedure that a non-pilot could follow in an emergency on his YouTube channel. You’d still have to set the plane’s speed, heading and altitude, and also engage the flaps and landing gear. More importantly, as Hörnfeldt points out, you’d also first have to find a way into the locked cockpit.
In a smaller plane, the odds improve a lot. It’s more manual and familiar, with fewer controls. In 2022, a BBC journalist with no experience landed a two-seater plane, guided by instructors in a set-up scenario where the actual pilot only played dead.
Experts say that for small aircraft, flight simulator games give a good approximation of what’s needed to make it back to Earth.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Jack Childs, via email) 'Could I really land a plane in an emergency?'
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