Could you land a plane in an emergency? 40% of young men say yes, poll finds
The next time you fly, take a look at your seatmates. There's a good chance that one of them believes they can successfully pilot the plane, according to new polling.
In the latest Cygnal survey, 25% of respondents said they think they could safely land a large passenger plane if something happened to the pilot — a finding that may strike some as comforting, and others as concerning.
However, the majority, 66%, said they do not think they could steer the aircraft to safety in this scenario.
That said, responses varied significantly based on gender, age and partisan affiliation.
In a sign of high-flying confidence, 36% of men believed they could land a large plane in an emergency, and 40% of men under age 55 said the same.
By comparison, just 16% of women — and 23% of women under 55 — trusted themselves to land a large aircraft.
When broken down by partisan affiliation, 30% of Republicans said they think they could touch down an aircraft without harm, while 20% of Democrats said the same. Independents fell in the middle, with 25% expressing confidence in themselves to land a plane.
The poll sampled 1,500 Americans June 3-4 and has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
The findings are similar to those from a 2023 YouGov survey of 20,063 U.S. adults, which found 32% of respondents were very or somewhat confident they could 'safely land a passenger airplane in an emergency situation, relying only on the assistance of air traffic control.'
Here, again, men were far more assured of their abilities than woman. Nearly half of men, 46%, said they were confident they could land the plane, while 20% of women said the same.
Despite the widespread belief that untrained professionals can fly planes in an emergency, aviation experts have doubts.
Writing in The Conversation, five aviation experts argued that flying large aircraft is much harder than steering small planes and that landing is one of the most difficult tasks to perform.
'Both takeoff and landing are far too quick, technical and concentration-intensive for an untrained person to pull off,' the authors wrote in 2023. 'They also require a range of skills that are only gained through extensive training, such as understanding the information presented on different gauges, and being able to coordinate one's hands and feet in a certain way.'
Speaking to The Washington Post the same year, some pilots were more definitive in their assessment.
'There is a zero percent chance of someone pulling that off,' Patrick Smith, a commercial air pilot, told the outlet, referring to the possibility of an untrained individual landing a plane. 'Do people think they can perform transplant surgery? No. Then why do they think they can land a plane?'
Echoing this sentiment, Brett Venhuizen, the chair of the aviation department at the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at the University of North Dakota, told the outlet, 'I think they would have a very difficult time.'
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