The parallels with 9/11 hijackers are a red herring. They only needed to be aware of E of C, S&L 1 and 2 and Descending 1 of the PPL syllabus, and a few details about FMC and autopilot operation. What they did, sadly, was probably at least couple of orders of magnitude easier than getting themselves fully configured, on speed, on a 10 mile final to a runway of their choice. They had also done an enormous amount of homework on the specific aircraft type(s)they knew they were going to be flying. Not at all the same as your scenario where a Flt simmer with PPL time is asked to walk onto the flight deck of
any airliner at a moments notice and pull off a survivable landing.
FWIW like I suspect like many here I've got just a bit of time on a couple of Boeing's types, I should certainly be able to land those types and hopefully could probably produce a survivable
"on runway" landing in most of Boeing's other products if I unexpectedly ended up in the hot seat on a bad day. OTOH I've spent enough time jumpseating on Airbuses to know they are more than somewhat different to Boeings and I
know I wouldn't find handling one of those easy. However if you still think computer Flight Sim time and a PPL would enable you to handle any airliner well enough to make it
probable that you and the passengers would survive then I bow to your greater confidence and think we'll have to agree to disagree about the probable outcome....
End point from me: Training airline pilots is very expensive. If you could be released to the line with MSFS time and a PPL it would be happening. It isn't
, there's a reason why the professionals spend expensive hours upon hours on type specific training in the classroom, and hours upon hours in the simulator of their type before being let loose on the real world.
I now understand why professional pilots get very nervous about / annoyed with PPL-holders who are chomping at the bit to 'have a go' and save the day in an emergency situation.
