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Pilot posts detailed MS Flight Sim video of how to land Boeing 737

This'll come in handy if the pilots are unconscious AND you have Wi-Fi

Vid An actual airline pilot has posted a how-to video explaining the best way to land a Boeing 737.

Commercial pilot Tim Morgan responded to a question posed on Q&A site Quora.

“What should I do if the pilot passes out and I (with no flight training) have to land the plane?”, the question asks.

Morgan's answer is footage from the virtual video recorder built into Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Morgan suggests that you start by finding the radio so you can contact air traffic control and say “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Delta 1603. Both pilots are unconscious and I am a passenger flying the aircraft.”

The video zooms in on different parts of the plane's cockpit to show you just which knobs and switches you'll need to twiddle. The image below, for example, is of the microphone button on the plane's yoke. Press it before you try the Mayday call!

The microphone button on a 737 yoke

The video is rather detailed but was clearly scripted by someone with extensive knowledge of the aircraft, but not of how to clearly and consistently communicate complex procedures. Just how somebody fumbling through their first minutes in a cockpit would execute suggestions like “Use your feet to steer by pushing on the left or right pedal” is anyone's guess, because how the pedals steer the plane isn't explained.

And then there's the small problem of just how to get this video into a cockpit. If the plane you're on loses its pilots, pray it has Wi-Fi. And that signal reaches the cockpit. And that you can juggle a mobile device and the great many controls in the cockpit.

Still, the video's quite fun and if nothing else shows that pilots sure do need to know a heap of stuff to get you up and down in one piece. ®

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