Gulfstream G650ER flown by inadequate pilot

I'm no pilot - but the bit about getting speed for take off - I thought a Gulfstream was the equivalent of a top notch sports car, so getting up speed .... I'd have thought it wouldn't be a problem but......
Question to ask, based on power station turbines, is do you need to pre-heat the engines in a Gulfstream before giving it welly - what I mean is, if you get in, press start and do the equivalent of floor the accelerator, does that strip the blades off the turbine?

I'm not a pilot, but I've already spent some time writing a flying scene by running the whole sequence in a flight simulator.

Some things to think about...

There are videos on YouTube of inexperienced pilots flying complicated planes in the simulator. People are interesting. There have been a number of cases where a pilot, in a stressful situation, was able to pull off something that was nearly impossible when they gave a bunch of un-stressed pilots of similar levels of training the problem in a simulator. There are also cases where pilots have gotten stressed out and flown a perfectly functioning aircraft into the ground.

A G650ER is not single-pilot rated. This means that your hero is going to have a very hard time taking off safely without a second person, for the want of extra hands. I don't know offhand if the G650ER has a tiller control or not, but picture trying to steer the nose-wheel of the airplane while also steering the control surfaces.

The G650ER is also the sort of plane you need to get specifically certified for.

There's going to be checklists and a quick reference guide in the aircraft, but your hero isn't going to know where the buttons are quickly. Nor will they necessarily be able to quickly figure out how to set up the weights-and-balances calculator to know what speed to pull back on the nose, etc. Some time to familiarize themselves would help.

There's enough standardized that your hero can find the throttle, the steering controls, etc. Most engines just have a "start" button these days because it reduces pilot workload and damaged engines. There's a little arrow thingie in the corner of the display to represent stall speed. Okay, certain death from the antagonist versus potential death from a screwup makes this an easy call.

If I remember correctly, the G650 has a gust lock on the flight controls, to keep the plane from moving around in bad weather, and you need to know to retract that before you try to turn on the engines or something like that. So having them at least read the takeoff checklist (you might be able to even find it on google) would be important.

But, especially at landing, things are going to be dicey. I tend to break abstract skills down into two large chunks. Some stuff, like painting or drawing, you can do at a fast or slow pace. Other stuff, like pottery or glassblowing or flying aircraft, you have to do everything exactly right at full speed, or you are going to be in trouble. Part of what they do with flight training is get you to the point where you are able to do the right thing without thinking about it on a simple aircraft and then ratchet up the complexity. The airplane already lands at the slowest safe speed. If there was a slower safe speed, they'd land at that speed instead. And your pilot's brain is going to be full. They are going to PIO (Pilot-Induced Oscillation) the airplane. They are going to know that they are PIO-ing the plane rationally but can't quite get it to stop. They are going to have to figure out how bad they want to land, or if they can make a bunch of tries, getting closer to landing each time.

Oh and a single-engined piston plane has very little throttle lag, but a jet is going to take a second or two to spool up or down when you adjust the throttle.

I guess it depends on how heroic you want your fiction to be. It could be the point at which some chunk of your audience can't accept where the story is going. Or it could be your hero avoiding a battle and instead battling themselves.

And you'd really not want things getting complicated. They are going to need plenty of extra runway, because it's pretty much a guarantee that they are going to nurse the aircraft up instead of risking damage. The weather needs to be favorable. They probably don't want to go very far, or even do things like retract the landing gear.

And also remember that a *lot* of bad landings where the aircraft is ruined are still survivable. The penalty for a hard landing is broken landing gear, but a lot of pilots do that and walk away.

Or you could always have your hero know another pilot who let them sit in the right-seat or a more sophisticated aircraft while they flew, so they at least have some basis for understanding. If the aircraft is single-pilot-operation, a non-pilot or a pilot not qualified in that particular aircraft can sit in the right seat and still help out if no other regulations (like transporting paying passengers) still require two pilots.

So, looking at the checklists I've found (the good one I found is the manual for a Continental 777) the bulk of the workload is before you get moving. That's going to have you hunting through the menus and controls, whereas takeoff and climb are more just about flying the plane.

And, again, there's a helpful triangle on the speed display to let the pilots know where they are in the flight regime... the real problem is just that everything is going to happen so much faster, with reduced reaction time, and that's going to be the hard part where the hero needs to fight their existing instinct to slow it down.

Big thing to remember is that a trained pilot at least knows what it actually feels like to fly an airplane, whereas flight sim junkie may be able to find all of the buttons, but when it comes to the seat-of-the-pants feeling, they'll be lost. You can download FlightGear and some of the planes (The 777 model being one example) actually have enough complexity that you can gauge what it ought to feel like.

Possible? Yes but bear in mind even rated pilots spend hours in the simulator and/or the flight deck on the ground getting familiarized with the systems. On takeoff, almost even more so than landing, a lot of things need to happen in a big hurry, and simultaneously, while, as pointed out the aircraft is not certified for single pilot operation.

I think from a practical perspective, a non-familiar pilot, particularly if they aren't multi-engine rated, would have to be talked through both takeoff, and landing. Going through checklists sounds easy, but if you don't know right off hand what V speeds you should be looking at, which are fairly critical in a jet, finding them is going to be daunting under pressure, and failure to achieve them can have disastrous results compared to a light prop single. A landing phase stall in a light single is salvageable. A jet will just pancake if you get too low and slow. Lose an engine? If you don't understand the concept of Vmc, minimum speed for controllability with the critical engine out, you will roll the plane and you're dead.

Landing might be easier. If the pilots conk out, hopefully they have programmed the flight director for the whole route, including an ILS or precision RNAV approach. If so, our pilot might be able to let the plane fly itself down to final, disengage the AP, and flare to a landing. I'm not familiar with a G650 so I don't know how much control the flight director has over power management, flaps, spoilers and gear, etc... so there is still likely a lot of tasks that are going to have to happen even in that scenario.

I wouldn't try it.

wyzguy said:

If one assumed that manual, which does have a pilot's checklist, was on the aircraft, then could the hero, in theory, perform the checklist procedure before taking off?

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How long until the bad guys get there? The checklist isn't a simple, quick process. Heck, the walk around would take five minutes if he knew what he was doing and that's before he boards. Just figuring how to get the stairs up could take a while.

Business jets are not hard to fly compared to prop planes. They are very different for takeoff and landing. Give him a single engine propeller plane for his getaway.

Jeff

wyzguy said:

Thanks, Al. Greatly appreciate the time and thought. It seems clear I need to rethink that scene.

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The scenario of GA pilots landing passenger jets has been broached before. You might do a search and/or make a post on an aviation message board like www.pilotsofamerica.com. You might get feedback from pilots that fly those things.

Also bear in mind there are some legal consequences as well, which might not be applicable in the event of a zombie apocalypse or escape from an erupting volcano. I can legally jump in to any piston engine airplane of less than 12,500 lbs gross weight and just fly it (assuming I have the appropriate type and class ratings, and complex and high performance signoffs as applicable.) If it weighs more, has a turbine or jet engine, or requires more than one pilot, I would need a type rating in the specific aircraft, which involves a substantial amount of training. I'm not sure a G650 could be legally flown without an instrument rating either.