Whether you’ve seen it on Airplane! or elsewhere, it is possible for a passenger with no flying experience to land an airplane. It requires someone with a very calm voice directing the zero experience flying passenger on what to do.
It happened recently aboard a small single-engine plane, when the incapacitation of the pilot left a passenger at the wheel. Radioing down to sea level, Darren Harrison admitted, “I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”
Robert Morgan, who is a certified flight instructor with over 1,200 hours of flight time, was having a lunch break near his control tower at Fort Pierce when he got a disturbing call about a plane that needed help as it was flying in from the Bahamas.
Morgan was having lunch, near his control tower at Fort Pierce, when he got a disturbing call about a plane that needed help as it was flying in from the Bahamas.
“I rush over there and I walk in and the room is really busy… and they’re like, ‘Hey, this pilot’s incapacitated. The passengers are flying the plane. They have no flying experience,” Morgan told CNN’s New Day on Wednesday.
Audio of the radio exchanges between Morgan and Harrison was obtained by a CNN affiliate.
“‘3-Lima-Delta what’s your position?” Morgan radioed in.
“I have no Idea. I see the coast of Florida in front of me aaaaand, I have no idea,” Harrison responded.
“Try to hold the wings level and see if you can start descending for me. Push forward on the controls and descend at a very slow rate,” Morgan advised. Having never flown this particular Cessna Caravan propeller plane, he pulled up a photograph of the control panel to improve his explanations.
Between radio calls with the plane, Morgan organized air traffic at Palm Beach, the biggest runway in the area, where he knew he could give Harrison the largest target to aim at.
Talking Harrison down step by step, the plane landed safely, with much of the traffic at Palm Beach listening.
“You just witnessed a couple of passengers land that plane,” a Palm Beach tower controller told a waiting pilot. “Did you say the passengers landed the airplane? Oh, my God. Great job,” he said.
After landing, the two met.
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