Can an fighter jet pilot fly a jumbo jet?

Answer 1

A military jet fighter pilot could land a Jumbo jet in case of an emergency with the assistance of a pilot "talking him down" over the radio. But a military pilot could not go out and fly a passenger jet without any training. If he had flown a military cargo plane, then MAYBE he could. Flying a real jet is NOT like playing with Flight Simulator on your home computer. However, many military pilots, including Air Force and Navy fighter jockeys, are hired by passenger and freighter airlines and are trained to fly passengers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Legally....no. A (private) 'pilot's license' allows one to fly a plane of a given configuration. This means a plane with a single piston engine. Commercial pilots have to be trained, tested, and certified on each type of aircraft they fly. To put it in everyday terms, it would be like someone needing a driver's license to operate a compact car with an automatic transmission. Manual transmissions, diesel engines, 4X4s, and even cars from different manufacturers would all require a different driver's test. As we saw on Sept 11, it doesn't take a lot of training to maintain level flight. That's not really an essential skill to flying an aircraft though, like how keeping your car in your lane is important but it's not something that's particularly difficult. With experience, you do it automatically. The real skill in piloting is knowing the aircraft's flight parameters (envelope), weather patterns, emergency procedures, etc...it's a long list. It's like asking you to jump from driving a car to driving a bus....maybe you CAN do it, but certainly not proficiently.