CLAY: There was a story that both of us could not stop checking out, the details on it. Maybe everybody’s thought about it before. A guy was up in a Cessna plane, passenger. The pilot has an emergency and is no longer able to fly the plane, and the passenger — who had never, ever flown an airplane — put on the headset and air traffic control walked him through landing the plane. I’m gonna be honest. This is something I’ve worried about before.
I have never been in a situation where I was on the plane and it was just me and the pilot until recently, just a couple months ago, and I legitimately was sitting in the back of the plane thinking about this. Do you think you can land a plane if that was the situation? If the pilot became incapacitated and it was just you and you had to go up to the cockpit, do you think you could pull this off?
BUCK: I’m a confident fellow, Clay, so my CIA training would kick in — which would involve memo writing, not plane flying.
CLAY: Yeah, right.
BUCK: But, yeah, I think I’d get it done. I wouldn’t bet all the money in the world on me, though. (laughing) I’m saying. It’s not easy.
CLAY: I don’t know. I don’t have a lot of confidence in myself. I had never been in that situation and the guy who was flying the plane I was like, man, I’m glad he’s around my own age ’cause if it had been an older guy, I’m like, “Oh, my God. What happens if he has a heart attack? What happens if something goes on here?” I can’t think of anything much more terrifying than suddenly having to climb into the pilot’s seat and land an airplane.
BUCK: Can we just think about, there is the moment here where the pilot — I mean a medical emergency — passed out.
BUCK: So, this is like something that you would see in a movie where all of a sudden the pilot maybe had a stroke, a heart attack, whatever it may be. So, it’s not even like the pilot is incapacitated but awake and can tell you let’s say that he had been injured in some way or whatever, you’re alone. You’re in that cockpit and you’re going down and you’re not gonna make it unless — and, by the way, credit to air traffic control.
Could you imagine you’re an air traffic control guy, you’re sitting there and all of a sudden it’s like, “Yeah, I’ve never flown a plane before in my life and the pilot is knocked out cold and I don’t want to die. So can you please help me figure this out?” Full credit to them.
This happened down… It was Bahamas to Florida was the flight here. And they managed to pull this one off, which is pretty remarkable. I mean, I gotta say not everybody — not everybody — is able to pull this one off. Think also the panic that would set in for that one moment. You’d be, like, this is rough. Now, probably easier —
CLAY: — get even those planes are not very big, Buck, right? So even getting up into the cockpit area with an incapacitated pilot would be a difficult thing to even pull off.
BUCK: I think — I think if you’re telling me, though, if it’s a Cessna and there’s only two people in the plane which I believe was the case here, that that feels more doable. Let’s just say… This is like from the movie Airplane or something, let’s say you’re on a fully stacked 747 or something, full of people and for some reason it’s all on you. You got your headset on, the pilots are all out cold, whatever. I don’t think… I think that, I would just panic. I think I’d have a heart attack. I don’t know if I could do it.
CLAY: I think the bigger — and I’m not an expert. I’ve never actually tried to do it, gone up and even done anything in an airplane. But my understanding, Buck, is that the bigger airplane, the easier it is to fly, meaning this — and our pilot audience can tell me if I’m a total imbecile here. Because so much of the big planes is computerized now, I think it might be somewhat easier to take the controls in a 747. There’s obviously a lot more at stake.
BUCK: That may be true. Maybe you could hit the auto… Maybe they could just say, “Hey, hit the autopilot, hit this, hit that, and you’re good.” I’m just saying if there were a hundred other people on the plane —
CLAY: There’s way more lives at stake.
BUCK: Yeah.
CLAY: Way more stressful than just yourself. But I think it might be more difficult to land the Cessna because those are less controlled by the computer technology, than it would be to suddenly find yourself in a 747 cockpit.
CLAY: Also I think —
BUCK: Helicopters are really tough. I know fixed-wing pilots who are like, “I can’t fly…” I knew them in the military. “I’m a fixed-wing guy; I don’t mix with those propeller things.”
CLAY: Not only do I think the time of day matters, but the weather, because if you’ve ever been up in some of those little planes, when there’s a storm coming through, you’re bouncing around a lot. And if you’re flying at night, it’s a lot different than flying during the day too; so, this is a heck of a story. But congratulations to air traffic control.
BUCK: I think both of them ended up okay. So, see? We end up on a happy story here. I believe that they’re good. I know the guy landed. He’s okay. I believe the pilot also ended up getting medical attention.
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