[air-cool-me]

Following a weird twist of fate I was left in a Boeing 747-400 simulator with two mid-50's secretaries who had no flying experience. (pull to go up, push to go down) The simulator session was a gift from the training center.

It was as entertaining as it was eye opening. Keeping them alive was a challenge!

After an hour they figured out how the controls worked and with some throttle movement I could keep us upright and level.

Setting up the plane so it could land itself was difficult because I could not use any terminology that would be familiar to even the greenest of airline pilot. (or simfan)

I had one important advantage over a controller on the ground..... I could point!

During the last 30min of the session we put the secretaries repeatedly at 200ft on final approach with mixed results. Giving them every opportunity to succeed usually produced a survivable crash in the general vicinity of the runway.

All and all it was pretty fun. In my opinion the chances of survival would increase exponentially with any flying experience.