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Suppose I am a passenger in a small, non-commercial plane (e.g. at most 8 seats), and the pilot suddenly dies or is otherwise incapacitated mid-flight. Suppose further that nobody else on the plane knows the first thing about flying, or that I were the only other person on the plane. I understand the basic physics of flying, and have been in airplane cockpits before for a ride, but never piloted one. Cockpits are an intimidating bank of switches and dials, and I imagine I'd have very little time to acquaint myself with them experimentally in an emergency.

What minimalistic, general information should I know in an emergency situation to try to land a small plane?

I'm looking for perhaps 5–10 fast-and-simple rules-of-thumb that would be useful in a life-or-death situation, yet easy to remember.

A great answer might include 2–3 sentence answers for things such as:

• Where might I expect to find certain, key controls?


• How could I contact air traffic control?


• What kind of terrain should I aim for, if possible?


• What rate of descent is too dangerous?


• How to deploy landing gear? (What might this button look like?!)


• How to control the aircraft speed, and how slow is too slow?


• How might I determine a good angle of attack?

ATC has successfully talked down folks with zero experience in GA planes, and if there's one thing you need to learn, it's how to call ATC so they can give you that help. Any pilot would be happy to teach you this, and it should only take a few minutes while you're sitting in the plane before departure. Anything you know beyond that will make ATC's help a lot easier to understand and get you safely on the ground that much faster, but that's the bare minimum.

My recommendation is a "discovery flight" at a nearby flight school; that will teach you far more of the basic skills you'd need to survive than days of looking for tips online. Flight sim time would save money if you're interested in becoming a pilot, but otherwise I wouldn't bother; you need to actually sit in a real plane, touch real buttons and knobs and levers, and feel how a real plane reacts--with someone at your side explaining the key points along the way. I learned every one of the things on your list and more, plus made my first landing, in that one hour lesson.

FWIW, it doesn't matter if that discovery flight is in a Cessna and your emergency happens in a Mooney, or whatever. For light planes, most of the differences border on cosmetic for emergency purposes. Once you know what to look for and why, it shouldn't take much to recognize the important controls and instruments in any other light plane. Again, any pilot you're flying with should be happy to explain the differences if you don't pick them up on your own; an instructor is only needed when you're starting from zero.

If you'll be flying GA a lot, particularly in the same plane and/or with the same pilot, look into "Pinch Hitter" courses; they'll cost quite a bit more than a simple discovery flight, but they're worth every penny if you'll be flying often enough for real concerns about emergencies.

That's way too complicated a question. The best thing you can do is get MS Flight Simulator and learn to fly one of the light planes on it. It even has lessons in it. You can easily learn enough to survive the real deal if that ever happened and you had access to the controls. Instructors these day frequently get new students who've spent time with FSX and are surprisingly advanced right at the start.

Other than that, the most important thing for a passenger to know is how to tune the communications radio to the emergency frequency 121.5 and how to broadcast on it. This will get you in contact with the nearest air traffic unit, wherever you are (they all monitor it) and you would be able to be talked down. It's been done a number of times.

Have your host show you how to control the plane in level flight, enough to keep in level flight and do basic turns (very easy). If you can do that, and can get ATC on the radio on your own, you'll be able to make it down. You'll be steered to a suitable airport with a nice big runway and told what to do step by step. No worries.

flying a plane, specially a small one requires a lot a practice, but if you find your self in this situation, and assuming is a small prop, complex twin engine aircraft (Variable prop, retractable landing gear).

Where might I expect to find certain, key controls?
all the controls are in the front panel, 3 levers in the mid control panel, black for thrust, blue for prop, red for fuel, don't touch red and blue, move black, back to reduce power and forward to increase

How could I contact air traffic control?
usually on the yoke is a small button (ptt) press it and talk, or by the microphone, set on the radio the frequency 121.50

What kind of terrain should I aim for, if possible?
try to maintain level wings, aim for an airport

What rate of descent is too dangerous?
try to maintain between 500 to 700 fpm rate of descent

How to deploy landing gear? (What might this button look like?!)
depends on the aircraft, usually black rounded knob on the panel, usually on the right side, it moves up and down, look for it.

How to control the aircraft speed, and how slow is too slow?
the airspeed indicator has colors, try to maintain the speed on the green band

How might I determine a good angle of attack?
it depends on the speed, and configuration, but a good indication is the rate of descent and constant speed, aim for 500 fpm descent maintaining speed on the green band

safe flights

This is a fairly broad question, as there are a lot of possible airplanes you could be flying in, all with a variety of possible avionics and flight control configurations. But, there are two main types of avionics - the so-called "six pack" of analog instruments and glass displays. Both display the same basic information, but in different ways.

The first thing you'll probably want to do is gain or maintain control of the plane. Keep it flying level, at sufficient altitude, with sufficient speed. You'll look for these 3 pieces of information in 3 analog instruments:

The attitude indicator (this one showing a nose-up attitude of ~10 degrees and wings level).

The altimeter (this one showing an altitude of ~10,200 ft).

And the airspeed indicator (this one showing an airspeed of ~92 knots).

If the plane has glass avionics, these are all combined into one Primary Flight Display (PFD) (this one showing an altitude of ~2700 ft, an airspeed of 175 knots, and a slight nose-up attitude of 4 degrees and wings level).

In all cases, these instruments should be directly in front of the pilot, although there may be similar instruments in front of the copilot as well. You'd want to get your instruments showing a wings level, slight nose-up attitude, with the altitude not changing and the airspeed constant and in the green arc. If it's already doing that, no need to change anything.

If it's not in a stable configuration, your best bet is probably to add full power (throttle is typically a black lever for each engine, push it / them all the way in or all the way up for full power). The yoke controls attitude, pull back to raise the nose, left or right to bank, push in the lower the nose.

Once you have control of the plane, your next step is to contact somebody who can help you land the plane. Grab the pilot's headset and put it on. If the pilot was already talking to ATC (you hear voices through the headset), keep talking to them; there's no need to change the frequency. Most control yokes have a Push-to-talk (PTT) switch located on them somewhere, which will transmit your voice over the frequency. Wait slightly for a break in the chatter, push the PTT, and say "Mayday" or "Emergency". That should get everyone's attention, and then ATC can get additional information from you and provide help to you. If you can include your tail number with your initial "Emergency" call, all the better (the tail number is placarded somewhere in the cockpit, possibly in front of the pilot on the instrument panel, and will begin with an 'N' for US aircraft).

If there is no chatter through the headset, you should change the frequency to 121.5, the emergency frequency. There's too many possible radio configurations to go through here, but one thing to keep in mind is that most aircraft radio stacks have multiple communication radios and multiple navigation radios. Each of those likely has an active frequency and a standby frequency. When you're changing the frequency, you'll be changing the standby frequency; you'll then have to switch it to the active frequency. This is done with a little button with a double-arrow on it (<-->). Make sure you change the comm frequency - when in doubt, change the one at the top of the stack.

A discovery flight is a great way to get acquainted with a lot of these instruments and controls, as would a couple hours on a PC flight sim. You could probably also find some videos online going over the basics.

If you think this is ever likely to occur to you, you should look into a Pinch Hitter class

https://www.aopa.org/community/flying-clubs/flying-club-newsletter/2017/august/20/safety

where you will get more in depth in addition to what's already been offered.

Pilot incapacitation is extremely rare during general aviation flights, but non-pilots may worry about it if they don’t know what to do in the event of an actual emergency. Introducing non-pilot flying companions to basic flight concepts, and how to handle emergency situations, can help calm this anxiety.

Enter the early 1960s, the AOPA developed the Pinch Hitter™ course to do just that. Through the course, non-pilots learned to navigate to an airport, talk with air traffic control, and land an airplane safely—all on their own.

Today, your flying club members can tap into two free resources designed to be used together in pinch hitter training—the AOPA Air Safety Institute (ASI) course that provides non-pilots an interactive introduction to GA aircraft along with an understanding of basic aerodynamics concepts, and ASI’s recently developed Pinch Hitter™ syllabus.

The 14-page syllabus booklet guides non-pilot flying companions, flight instructors and experienced pilots through Pinch Hitter™ training. It also expands on the knowledge that participants gained from the course, and suggests ground and flight lessons to cover aircraft orientation and scenario-based training. The latter provides hands on instruction to deal with a simulated emergency. In addition, an in-flight guide and emergency checklist complete the syllabus booklet.