What happens if the co-pilot and captain are both ill mid-flight?

Question

What happens if they are mid-flight and they both become ill? What if there is no place to land? What if they are halfway to their destination?

Answer 1

The flight attendants will politely announce that you should return to your seat, fasten your seatbelt, but your face in your lap, and kiss your butt good-bye.

Answer 2

if both the pilots are ill comand will ridirect them to the closest air strip only if its serious.  If the problem its just a simple illnes then they will will be forced to remain that way for the rest of the flight.  If they are really badly injured or ill and cannot make it They will probably direct some one with flight experience or just a civil directed from command.  If only one of them is sick then theres no problem because the co pilot is also trained to fly a plane.

Answer 3

Someone (hopefully one of the stewards) will have to take the helm.  Do paper rock scissors, draw straws, but someone will have to take the controls, put on the headset, introduce themselves to the controller, and get ready for one heck of a ride.

It is actually possible to talk you down.  You will be introduced to as few 'controls' as possible.  Instead of using the yoke and throttle, the controllers will probably introduce you to the 'trim' controls, which you can also use to fly the plane.  The trim controls make tiny adjustments, so it would be much harder to say, flip the plane upside down, crash, and burn, using the trim controls.  You will probably also be told how to use the autopilot to maintain your flight direction and height (heading and altitude.)   This will obviously help you out a lot.

Once you've been briefed on how the controls work, and made some tiny adjustments, the controller will have you fly towards the airport.  They will then have you fly in a rectangular pattern around the airport, and have you 'simulate' a few approaches, but without landing.

When they determine that you're ready, you'll go around one more time, fly the approach, and land the plane.

When one gets sick, that's why there's another.  The alert pilot will send out a distress call declaring a medical emergency, and land at the nearest airport.

And as for the sniffles, it would have to be a really, REALLY bad case of the sniffles to incapacitate one of these guys.  Most commercial pilots are ex-military.  They will typically have operated under much more pressure than a stuffy nose.

Somewhat soon, this will be an irrelevant question.  They're currently testing technology that will allow controllers to remotely pilot an airliner if, you know, something bad happens....  This is probably 6-7 years or so away.

Answer 4

Don't get yourself worked up over speculations.  The situation you described is rare.  If they are under the weather, and are truly concerned that they might become too ill to control the plane, they wouldn't be at work.

Answer 5

It's very rare if both pilots gets sick. If you mean by them getting sick my eating airplane food, it's rare. Both pilot eat different food, so chances are that if one gets sick, the other won't

But don't worry. There is nothing to worry about.

Answer 6

They eat different meals, and the planes have auto-landing. Depending on the plane, you might have another crew member in the cockpit. Also theyll land at a secondary airport on the route there. Thats what they do for medical emergency.