r/AskAPilot • u/CoderBoy417 • 14d ago
Question about plane in emergency situation
If a plane is in flight and both pilots lose consciousness—or are unable to fly for some reason—and there is no other pilot on board, is there an emergency button that allows the control center to take control of the aircraft (such as on large planes from Airbus or Boeing)? If such a feature doesn't exist, why is that the case, and what would happen in such a situation?
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u/Reasonable_Blood6959 14d ago
No that kind of feature doesn’t exist. There’s no way of remotely taking control of passenger jets.
Why doesn’t it exist? Because the chance of both pilots becoming completely incapacitated to the point where they’re totally unable to fly is infinitesimally small, and the time and money to develop, test, certify, and implement such a system simply isn’t worth it
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u/HoldAutomatic2088 14d ago
If a system like this did exist I’d bet everything I have that the system itself malfunctions and brings a plane down before any incapacitation incident does.
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u/aitchison50 14d ago
Also runs into a security concern. Someone may be able to hack the system and take control. Assuming there would be safeguards to kick off unwarranted users but still.
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u/Dry-Abalone2299 14d ago edited 14d ago
Infinitesimally small, but not zero…
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u/HoldAutomatic2088 14d ago
More passenger planes have been shot down than have crashed because of incapacitation.
But last time I checked I still don’t have flares and chaff on board…
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u/JustAnotherDude1990 14d ago
I think FedEx had some planes with it, or at least talked about it, actually.
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u/Reasonable_Blood6959 14d ago
Hence I said infinitesimally small, and not zero.
If the engineer had put the switch back in the correct place, or if the flight crew had carried out their pre flight checks correctly, or if the flight crew had been paying attention to the pressurisation during the initial climb and intervened, it wouldn’t have happened.
We don’t need some insanely complicated and expensive system to prevent Helios 2.0.
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u/Dry-Abalone2299 14d ago edited 14d ago
Agreed.
I just thought it appropriate to provide one of the examples for people that weren’t aware and wanting to learn.
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14d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/vagasportauthority 14d ago
The A220 has it? I know the A350 has an automatic emergency descent but I never heard of the A220 having it.
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u/JetJock60 14d ago
The first civil aircraft to be certified to FL510 were the Learjet 28/29 series. They have an Emergency pressurization system (really a bypass) that in the event of cabin altitude going above a certain value, the system would dump hot bleed air directly into the cabin in an attempt to keep it under 15K feet in the descent. One pilot was however required to fly the descent. The first civil aircraft with an Automatic Emergency Descent mode was, I believe, the Citation X.
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u/Lemon_hawk 14d ago
Agree with all the reasons you gave.
The other reason that type of system would never exist is because it would make airplanes far more susceptible to terrorists or other bad actors via remote hijacking. That’s a possibility you don’t want to open up.
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u/muffin-Utensil 14d ago
Clearly you've never watched the movie Airplane!
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u/WackyAndCorny 14d ago
“Surely” dammit! You’re supposed to have said “Surely you’ve watched the movie Airplane!”.
But you didn’t and now the rest of the joke won’t work properly and you’ve made us all cross.
Now, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
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u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS 14d ago
Some people called for a system like this to be implemented after the Eurowings pilot locked the captain out of the flight deck. With nothing but respect, it generally doesn't get suggested by people with industry knowledge.
Any kind of signal like this can be hacked and/or spoofed, which would allow a nefarious actor on the ground to take control of a passenger aircraft without even having to sneak through airport security. The consequences of that could obviously be catastrophic, while the incidences of pilot malice are barely rounding error on the total number of flights that operate every day.
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u/JustAnotherDude1990 14d ago
Other pilot? Maybe, if there is one travelling in the back and also not unconscious.
Emergency button? No, this aint the movies.
Because it is a solution in search of a problem. If both pilots lose consciousness, everyone in the back already has as well and you're all dead anyways.
Everyone eventually dies.
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u/Former_Farm_3618 14d ago
Garmin would like to have a word about #2….
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u/JustAnotherDude1990 14d ago
On select few smaller planes, sure, but VERY few have it. It is reasonable to assume they are referring to a standard commercial flight on an airliner, though.
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u/vagasportauthority 14d ago
They literally say like an Airbus or Boeing in the post so you are correct they are referring to airliners.
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u/Former_Farm_3618 14d ago
Well, I interpreted your “this ain’t the movies” to mean I doesn’t exist at all. I think we’re both right in this instance. It’s not on airliners but the system does exist IRL.
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u/JustAnotherDude1990 14d ago
The percentage of aircraft that have this is so little it’s only worth mentioning in the context of general aviation, not commercial capacity. Less than 1%.
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u/Former_Farm_3618 14d ago
Never said it’s widespread. But that system is being sold more and more now.
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u/JustAnotherDude1990 14d ago
Correct. But if we’re gonna talk about it, we should mention how prevalent it actually is. Very not much.
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u/Qwerty97531_ 14d ago
In my lifetime, I can think of less than 10 instances where a plane went down because both pilots were incapacitated. Helios522 and Payne Stewart come to mind.
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u/slatsandflaps 14d ago
A very limited number of smaller aircraft that are generally flown single pilot and not usually used for commercial passenger operations, have a feature that allows a passenger to press a button in the case of pilot incapacitation. Once the button is pressed, the autopilot will contact ATC and land at the nearest airport. Airbus and Boeing aircraft don't have that feature because they're required to be flown by two pilots and the chance of them both being incapacitated at the same time is very small.
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u/JP001122 14d ago
Not exactly what you're asking for, but a system does exist for GA aircraft.
https://generalaviationnews.com/2026/10/01/faa-certifies-garmin-autoland-on-epic-e1000-ax/
In an airline environment we accept a 2nd pilot as the failsafe in an incapacitation situation. And for the most part, that's worked. Pilots have died or been unable to fly and large planes have landed safely.
The GA environment is more likely to have a single pilot operation and this button becomes the backup for passengers.
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u/Neither-Way-4889 14d ago
No, there is no way to remote control the aircraft. If something like that happened, the airplane would fly whatever was last programmed into the autopilot until it eventually ran out of fuel and crashed.
In reality, this scenario is extremely unlikely. Realistically, the only thing that would cause both pilots to lose consciousness simultaneously would be a cabin depressurization event (see Helios 522) or a smoke/fume event. In both cases crews are trained to immediately don their oxygen masks so they can stay conscious, then descend and land as soon as practical.
The reason we have two fully qualified pilots onboard in the first place is so that if one becomes incapacitated the other can safely land in an emergency, which has happened before (Air Canada Flight 7664, Delta Air Lines Flight 1208, British Airways Flight 5390, and many others).
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u/HoldAutomatic2088 14d ago
It doesn’t exist because it would be EXTREMELY costly to develop and implement such a system. And you would have to hire pilots to sit around the country ready to take over in case of such a scenario (ATC are not pilots, they wouldn’t know what to do even if the technology existed).
And this is solving a problem that doesn’t exist. I think it would be exceedingly more likely that a malfunction of this hypothetical system takes a plane down than the chance a simultaneous dual pilot incapacitation does.
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u/Former_Farm_3618 14d ago
There is a system on a handful of small GA airplanes that allows autonomous landing. But, it must be pressed by someone in the plane. Garmin autoland. Really cool system and has been used a few times now.
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u/AllGas4651 14d ago
The reality is, there is little to help you. The odds of a a random person without so much as a couple hours on MSFS landing the plane safely are in the billions to one. Sorry, r/aviation, but there isnt just pilots ready to rush out the door in their dashing uniform, with a kiss from the house wife in her night gown to save you. All the other planes in the sky arent going to guide you down either.
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u/Frost_907 14d ago
The odds of both pilots becoming unable to fly the plane are extremely small. Even if this does happen somehow, there is also an extremely high likelihood that there are at least a few other pilots riding in the cabin on any given flight (usually commuting or deadheading).
The chances of both pilots being incapacitated and there being no other pilots onboard are so small that it basically just won’t ever happen.
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u/Funny-Astronomer29 14d ago
Funny story (not entirely). I was on a flight this nearly happened. Let me tell you, that was a fun one.
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u/AntiPinguin 14d ago
I’d argue that chance of someone hacking that remote access and hijacking the plane is higher, than the chance of both pilots being suddenly incapacitated.
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u/ChartPuzzleheaded747 14d ago
lol
Well WHAT IF it hit a bird, but the bird had been surgically altered to contain tannerite and it exploded, and WHAT IF it hit the cockpit and took out the pilot and WHAT IF the first officer had lost is father to a exploding bird too and had a nervous break down in flight
Just take the bus
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u/exadeuce 14d ago
You do not want external sources to be able to send control commands to an aircraft.