Dan Winterland - you are, of course, quite correct. Given sufficient time/fuel, anyone capable of identifying/pushing a button/pulling a lever could get the a/c on the ground in absolute safety. The reference to the Lodestar was just me giving my age away; this scenario has been discussed for as long as I can remember.
My observations stemmed from the original thread which asked "Could a PPL fly a 747?". I took that to mean "could he hand-fly the machine?" In my view the answer has to be an emphatic "no". As I mentioned in the earlier post, just basic flight control probably will be beyond him. An input will not provide the response expected from his light aircraft background so a bit more is applied. Still not much response so give it a bit more; now things start to happen but seemingly too slowly. Begin to take off the bank but, again, not much happens. Give it quite a bit more because we have passed the heading and are rolling too far to the left. We need more opposite control still and so we are on the way to Tower Dog's over-control regime. Easily done. Remember chasing the instruments when learning recovery from unusual attitudes?
