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On a given flight, let's say a commercial flight with about 100 passengers and a few flight attendants, what are the odds that I (or any other individual) am the most qualified person to fly the plane, after the pilots?

I call myself a pilot very loosely here. I fly paragliders (so I trust my own life to my flying skills, and know a little bit about airspace, etc.), I've flown lots of simulators, RC aircraft, and have started ground school, but haven't yet done any actual flight in powered aircraft.

I'm sure many aviation enthusiasts and non-commercial pilots have thought about a scenario where the pilots of their flight are somehow incapacitated. Maybe someone frantically gets on the PA and asks if anyone knows how to fly a plane. I've wondered if I should even speak up in that situation? (should that be a separate question?) I'm not a great choice to fly the plane, but what are the chances that I'm the best we've got?

I guess to generalize the question, what are the odds that a given person on a flight has some reasonable level of flight experience?

notloc
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    We all can dream, can't we? But reality will turn out different: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/8986/can-a-passenger-realistically-replace-suddenly-incapacitated-pilots – Peter Kämpf Oct 24 '17 at 07:16
  • Peter, I like your answer on that one think that's probably right about panic (but, I don't think panicking people would necessarily prevent someone from reaching the flight deck, they'd scream, but would they leave their seats?) and also agree that the flight crew wouldn't ask that question, but what if they felt they had no other option? This question differs from that one though, it asked if a completely inexperienced person could fly based on radio instruction alone. I'm not completely inexperienced, though admittedly, pretty close. – notloc Oct 24 '17 at 07:47
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    Mins, I know there is no real answer for this. But maybe something along the lines of "2% of the general population hold a private pilot license, so on a flight of 100 people, odds are that two are private pilots, which would make them more qualified than you" except, I don't know the right numbers. – notloc Oct 24 '17 at 07:53
  • This sounds a bit like you're asking how likely United Airlines Flight 232 is. – user Oct 24 '17 at 08:02
  • When people ask about the usefulness of PC flight simulators when learning to fly, I think about how useful would a PC bike simulator be when learning to cycle. If a paraglider is analogous to a high performance mountain bike here, the airliner would be a Harley. Yes, you know about handling and flight dynamics for paragliders and RC aircraft, but not for big iron. You won't know the systems, the operating procedures etc. The crewmember who tried to save Helios 522 had a CPL but couldn't work out how to turn the radio on – Dave Gremlin Oct 24 '17 at 10:31
  • Dave, the crew member of Helios 522 went into the cockpit and after one minute, the engines ran out of fuel. No time to do anything, especially with low Oxygen. Remember that he had not a B737 type rating. A flight simulator (with good add-on aircraft) can massively help on how the different systems (not handling) work on that aircraft. – Tas Oct 24 '17 at 11:59
  • Although off topic, this is easy to calculate in an approximation, if you can find the relevant data. If you can find the numbers of people who hold a license that would make them more qualified than you - say an ATPL - you can work out the probability that one is on your flight (making the approximation that your flight companions are random selections of the population). Repeat this for all the categories you can think of that might be better than you - commercial pilots, GA instructors, instrument rated pilots, multi-engine pilots etc. Find the chance that one of them is on your flight. – DJClayworth Oct 24 '17 at 18:46
  • "2% of the general population hold a private pilot license," I think it's far less than that. In the US for example, last number I saw was 619,000 pilots, out of a population of 340 million - my math puts that as 619,000/340,000,000 = 0.182%. So I'd say that You're odds at being the most capable are more like 1/number of passengers, if you consider yourself capable. Otherwise, the math says next to none, more like 1 person out of every 5 to 6 flights might have a pilot rating (unless there are deadhead pilots on that trip). – CrossRoads Sep 20 '18 at 12:48
  • CrossRoads, that's basically what I was looking for, thank you. In hindsight, I could have searched out the numbers and done the math myself, as DJClayworth suggested. For Dave Gremlin, aren't certain flight simulators certified for actual flight training? I think I even heard that some airline pilots train exclusively in sims (I'm sure they have previous flight experience). I've seen a video of someone who used only PC fight sims for training and then completed a take-off, flew a pattern, and landed, with no major mistakes or input from the flight instructor that took him up on his first try. – notloc Sep 25 '18 at 21:39

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