'Is there a pilot on board?'
Do you ever sit there on an airliner fantasising about what you would do if the call came on the intercom, 'Is there a pilot on board?' Could you land a 777?
I had the fantastic opportunity to find that out last week. A friend who is a 777 first officer with a major airline got us a slot on their simulator - the real deal, full motion job - and we spent a happy three hours. So... from my experience, as a bog-standard PPL/IMC with 250 hours (and lots of time spent on MS Flight Sim at home):
(a) I couldn't have done it without my friend telling me what to do - configurations, speeds, &c. But in the real-life scenario, of course, they get someone on the radio to do that (don't they?...)
(b) I didn't use the autopilot, but the thing which really made it easy was the flight director. Whoever invented that should be better known than they are. With speeds/headings/altitudes dialled into the autopilot, hand-flying it to the FD's instructions was a piece of cake.
(c) The systems involved are absolutely mind-boggling, and I have a greatly renewed respect for airline pilots. The time required to learn what all those overhead switches do must be considerable.
(d) The actual experience of hand-flying - circuits, for example - was much easier than I expected. It felt big, but not unreasonably so, and was quite responsive.
(e) Flying under bridges in a 777 is great fun... especially when you bump the plane on a wave and feel the shudder through the entire aircraft.*
(f) The simulator is unbelievably lifelike, even though the visuals are like Flight Sim 1990-vintage. The full motion and sounds are totally convincing.
(g) You can fly an aileron roll in a 777 without losing altitude, though you do have to fight the plane to do it (over 30 deg bank it actively tries to right the plane working against your control inputs). We didn't try a loop...
(h) If the call came for real, yes, I could fly it. With some help from a nice guy on the radio.
Tim
*edited to add: more fun once we'd found the circuit breaker for the EGPWS - which was otherwise rather maddening...