He was sitting up front next to the pilot. Statistically the odds are that this wasn't the first time. And that means there's a good chance he's controlled that plane before as well, and listened to countless radio calls. Whether he's licensed or not will soon come out, but passengers with significant stick time can't be that unusual in light singles like that. For what it's worth I'm a helicopter pilot, I travel a lot around Canada with an engineer in the other seat. I know for a fact that some of those engineers (who are not pilots) would not have much trouble landing the machine if the dual controls happen to be in and the conditions are not too tricky