James May challenged by British Airways to try and land an Airbus A350 and it's all because of a book he wrote

James May was invited by British Airways to test a theory regarding the Airbus A350, and Airbus airliners in general.

Years ago, May wrote a book that contained instructions on how to land an Airbus A330.

So, over a decade later, British Airways asked May to basically put his money where his mouth had been all those years ago.

It didn’t go as planned.

Two little-known facts about James May and Richard Hammond

James May and Richard Hammond are mostly known as TV presenters, but they’re also published authors.

Like Jeremy Clarkson, they’ve written several books.

However, unlike Clarkson, both May and Hammond are licensed pilots.

Specifically, Hammond is a licensed helicopter pilot while May holds a couple of licenses for light aircraft, one of which he owns.

For May, this fact, combined with the title of a book he wrote decades ago, got him in ‘trouble.’

Because now he had to prove he can do what he believed he could do.

Can James May land an Airbus A350?

Earlier this month, James May was invited by British Airways to test whether the book he wrote years ago, How to Land an A330 Airbus, contained accurate instructions for an untrained person to land a commercial airliner in an emergency.

Despite having a pilot’s license for small, tail-wheel aircraft, May has obviously never operated a modern, fly-by-wire airliner

Guided by a first officer, he attempted several manual landings in a Airbus A350 simulator.

Unsurprisingly, he discovered that a modern airliner is very different from a small Sunday plane.

At which point, most people will probably go: “You don’t say.”

Still, after several aborted landings, he sort of managed to land the plane effectively.

And he also came to a conclusion.

“If you try to land it manually like I did, then as the Airbus captain who I consulted when I wrote this book put it, everyone will be killed,” he said in the video.

While it is virtually impossible for an amateur to manually land a plane, his book’s instructions for using the automated Instrument Landing System (ILS) and Autoland features were indeed effective and accurate.

“If you’ve read this book very carefully and memorized it and you keep calm and you use the Autoland system and the ILS and you have a very helpful air traffic controller to talk you down, then yes, you probably could land an Airbus yourself,” he concluded.

Can you land a plane with no training?

Statistics show that a surprising number of people believe that landing an airplane is easy.

But a trip to the nearest aviation museum – or any other facility that gives people the ability to test a flight simulator for fun – will confirm that the exact opposite is true.

Anecdotal evidence should always be taken with a pinch of salt, but having tried that, I believe that crash-landing is probably the best result you can hope for.

Obviously, results may vary individually.

Some people are naturally more talented and some aren’t, some people play flight simulator games, and so on.

But in general, landing a plane with no training is virtually impossible.

When I tried using a simulator for a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, I had a trained first officer next to me doing most of the work with the commands and dials.

At the same time, he was also giving me instructions.

And the result was, well, I basically crash-landed.