On Jun 18, 12:13*am, Wingnut wrote:
On Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:10:01 -0700, Dudley Henriques wrote:
It helped certainly that this nice lady had flying experience but it
was by NO MEANS essential to what she was asked to do or what she
actually did in the cockpit.

Had the Captain opted to, he most certainly could have completed the
flight to a safe completion from the left seat without assistance. He
might have had to extend his reach a bit at times, but nothing earth
shattering for sure.

All in all, this was a class crew and they did a class job, right down
to the stew who very classily and politely deflated the media hype on
her role in the completion of this flight.

Consider who would have been landing the plane if something had caused
the pilot to also conk out, though. Then her prior flight experience
would have become quite relevant indeed.

It's an interesting hypothesis for sure, and such a scenario has
indeed been the subject of many discussions over time. The general
consensus in the area where I work in human factors in aircraft
accidents is that the result of such an attempt would depend on many
factors, a great many of these factors over and above the "experience"
factor of the newbie involved.
Makes a great movie though :-))
DH