Passenger lands plane in Fla. after pilot dies

FORT MYERS, Fla. – A passenger landed a twin-engine plane in Florida after the pilot died in flight with a total of six people on board.

Federal Aviation Administration officials say the pilot died after takeoff from an airport in Naples on Sunday. It was on autopilot and climbing toward 10,000 feet when the pilot died.

The passenger who took over is licensed for single-engine planes but isn't certified to fly the larger King Air craft.

An air traffic controller helped the passenger down by calling a friend in Connecticut who knows the King Air plane and relaying instructions. The plane landed safely at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers.

news.yahoo.com...

Scusmee, scusmee. I wonder if anyone can fly this bird. The pilot kind of died, and so I wonder . . .

What are the odds of the passengers not joining the fate of the pilot shortly thereafter?

Wow! That would send me to the local church first thing after landing.

That dude who managed to land the plane didn't have the proper papers to operate the aircraft, so I wonder how much the penalty for operating the plane without having the license to do so would be.


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[edit on Mon Apr 13 2009 by Jbird]

Originally posted by stander

What are the odds of the passengers not joining the fate of the pilot shortly thereafter?

Don't run to your local church just yet.
He had flight experience on other aircraft similar to the craft he had to take over and land. He wasn't someone without a basic knowledge of planes and he certainly knew the meaning of the instruments on the control panel.

I have some limited flight experience in gliders and single engine Pipers. Had the chance to take off a Twin Otter once, that was fun because it was on water.
But the thing is, this guy knew how to fly..........

I'd crap my pants trying to land an airliner because it's so far out of my experience, though I would give it a shot if Karen Black was my co-pilot and I was the only one with any knowledge of flying.

Any landing you walk away from is a good landing, and this guy did a great job when he was called on.
I'd expect no less from any pilot, he saved lives.

Originally posted by anxietydisorder

Originally posted by stander

What are the odds of the passengers not joining the fate of the pilot shortly thereafter?

Don't run to your local church just yet.
He had flight experience on other aircraft similar to the craft he had to take over and land. He wasn't someone without a basic knowledge of planes and he certainly knew the meaning of the instruments on the control panel.

I have some limited flight experience in gliders and single engine Pipers. Had the chance to take off a Twin Otter once, that was fun because it was on water.

But the thing is, this guy knew how to fly..........

I'd crap my pants trying to land an airliner because it's so far out of my experience, though I would give it a shot if Karen Black was my co-pilot and I was the only one with any knowledge of flying.

Any landing you walk away from is a good landing, and this guy did a great job when he was called on.
I'd expect no less from any pilot, he saved lives.

Are you saying that the chances of having a guy among six passengers who could land the plane are high; that going to the Church to thank God for putting that person aboard that plane isn't worth the trip?

Let me disagree here. I think that all the passengers were EXTREMELY lucky to have that guy on board to walk away from the situation alive. Or do you think that a fight broke out among them who was more qualified to land the plane licensewise?

[edit on 4/13/2009 by stander]

It's very fortunate for all on board that a person with some flight experience was one of the passengers, granted.

The fact that you you think their survival is due to some imaginary God or something called luck is what bothers me. There is no God and no such thing as luck, a skilled person took control of a machine and landed the plane.

He did well, even if it was a craft he didn't have a ticket for.

Originally posted by anxietydisorder

The fact that you you think their survival is due to some imaginary God or something called luck is what bothers me. There is no God and no such thing as luck, a skilled person took control of a machine and landed the plane.

LOL.

Do you realize what you just wrote? If the presence of the skilled person on board wasn't due to luck, then there had to be some intervention that made the person to buy ticket at that precise day. The intervention was hardly due to NTSB.

I think that you live under delusion that when a problem arises, the chances are always extremely high that person(s) would be around in the right place and in the right moment to solve the crises. Well, let me show an example of you being totally wrong. If each hijacked plane of 9/11/2001 had aboard three armed FBI agents travelling back to California, the WTC towers would be still standing.

As far as the existence of God is concerned, you just repeat an opinion of extremely ignorant folks who can't imagine what an evolutionary process in the place called the universe, the age of which goes into billions of years, can do.

you guys are close to breaking rules here, i would tone it down if i were you

Originally posted by outrider
you guys are close to breaking rules here, i would tone it down if i were you

Outrider, you are not suppose to give us a legal advice by using only one line of text. You need to be more eloquent and stretch your counsel to the acceptable number of lines. Oneliners are not a safe way to convey a message; it's like flying a single-engine plane. What if the fuel pump quits? Huh? There are no other engines to fly on, are there?

Well, this time you were lucky, or maybe God guided my mouse, so your single-line post landed safely to come into my attention. But think about the next time. I would recommend ATS-20 twin-engine biplane to begin with. Just 10,299 points -- pre owned though.
www.antiqueairfield.com...

Play it safe, you hear?

Originally posted by stander

Well, this time you were lucky, or maybe God guided my mouse, so your single-line post landed safely to come into my attention. But think about the next time. I would recommend ATS-20 twin-engine biplane to begin with. Just 10,299 points -- pre owned though.
www.antiqueairfield.com...

Play it safe, you hear?

It's time to check on Outrider and his twin engine celestial adventures . . .

d.yimg.com...

????????

news.yahoo.com...

oops.

The plane, believed to be a twin-engine Cessna 421, crashed around 11:20 a.m., and the house burst into flames.

Oh, well.

Outrider, how about flying Junkers?
www.historylink101.com...

It's a triple-engine plane. Maybe that's going to work.