Apparently the Captain of a JetBlue flight had some sort of a breakdown inflight today. He was running up and down the aisle yelling something about a bomb before being restrained by passengers. Another airline pilot happened to be a passenger on that flight and was brought up to the flight deck to help land the plane. This touches on something I’ve always wondered about. If both pilots were incapacitated could I land the plane? It has been done before, By Kurt Russell in the movie “Executive Decision.” Although he did a crappy job. I’m pretty sure I could land a large jet, they’re mandatory after all, landings that is. If I can find the throttles, flaps and landing gear I can fly a reasonable approach in any aircraft. The problem might be in selecting reverse thrust If I’m going too fast for the breaks or if I had to shoot an approach in bad weather, then all bets are off. I shudder to think what might happen if one pilot has a breakdown and kills or incapacitates the other pilot. If there doesn’t happen to be a spare in the back things could get ugly.
