Picture this: Flying home with your family, on a King Air. You have flown single engine airplanes before, but nothing as complex as a turbocharged, retractable gear, multi engined aircraft like the King Air.
You decide to travel in the co-pilots seat while the pilot of the aircraft takes off and flys you home.
10 Min after take-off, the pilot dies. What do you do?
This happened to Doug White. A video of his radar track and atc communications of the almost 40 min ordeal is a good watch.
Nice story – sent tingles down my spine!
Sounds like fun to me, except for the whole “somebody died to make it possible” situation.
That aside, my head kept going back to the “Anyone can land a plane” story. Yes, this guy did great in the situation he was in, but one must remember he was already a PP, and even then he was challenged – I doubt just anyone could have pulled that off.
I did wonder at points why he didn’t just refer to the arcs on the ASI to get critical airspeeds that he needed guidance with – VLO, VFE, etc, and why other fairly straightforward things seemed to have him a bit confused. I guess it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback like I am, though. ;-)