Just watched thon Derren Brown thing...

[Albannach]

I don't for a minute think he landed the 'plane (simulator) 100% on his own, but to get him to step up and give it a go was some feat.

[Apache]

As an aside, the average modern airliner can literally fly itself into position, configure itself and land completely autonomously if you know what buttons to press to set that up.

Apparently, it can even taxi to its gate, park and shutdown, but they like to leave the pilots something to do.

As for flying manually, I'd give it shot without a doubt, and I reckon I could do it too

[J i m s t e r]

I used to work on flight simulators. The maths, rather than the levers and buttons.

In the seat, there's a lot to take in. Even more in combat aircraft. Those pilots sleep with a cardboard mockup of the cockpit at the end of their beds. Everytime an instrument changes, they get a new dial to stick on their model. They have to memorise the position of every instrument.

Then they turn the model upside down and you have to memorise that too.

Remember that Japanese nutter? He'd managed to fly a 747 under Sydney Harbour Bridge in a simulator and tried to hijack a real one to repeat the fear In Real Life™.

They stopped him, fortunately. I don't think it can be done, the water levels are different.

You can get a light aircraft under the Eiffel Tower no worries, there are vids of it on YouTube. They'd shoot you down if you tried it now, but it's not a massive squeeze.

Hercules pilots have always impressed me, they can land them on the sloping sides of hills, and roll them down to get speed on takeoff... Kiwis are particularly good at this. Absolute nutters.