Delta Plane Makes Emergency Landing After Pilot Locked Out of Cockpit [5 days ago]

ABC News - GMA ^ | January 29, 2015 | Michasel Kreisel and Paul H.B. Shin

[Crazieman]

Yeah, because autopilot in a thunderstorm over the ocean is just like landing in decent conditions.

[BatGuano]

“Big Deal.” Tell that to the passengers who were flown into the rocks short of the runway at SFO in “decent conditions.” Is that a better example?

[Wingy]

“Big Deal.” Tell that to the passengers who were flown into the rocks short of the runway at SFO in “decent conditions.” Is that a better example?

IIRC, the ILS was cut off during that "landing". Hence the problem. The pilot was not too familiar with physically lining up with the glide slope and actually landing the plane.

[Bullish]

As an avid flightsimmer for many years I can answer all of those questions quite easily. All aircraft have a “kneeboard” for the pilots reference with all pertinent flight speeds for takeoff, cruising, landing, flap configs and speeds etc. Flight simmers such as myself know quite a bit more than you'd think about aircraft and flight controls and systems.

All Delta airliners currently in use have ILS landing systems and that's all they needed. Also, I'm sure the copilot could have landed the plane by stick if he had to. He has all the training necessary for just such an occasion in case the flight capt becomes incapacitated for any reason.

Your reply to me came off as really quite rude.