If a simmer used to a C172 for instance, and having to survive in same plane, I guess that at least he / she would not be lost in the different panels, finding his / her way if asked by ATC to switch something or lower flaps or whatever else? So at least not in panic mode and able to focus more on important parameters.
Just a guess lol. Having the plane under your butt is surely something different that a office chair 
Absolutely a simmer would have a much better chance than someone who has had no exposure to the cockpit environment at all!
It all depends on the circumstances and the aircraft you are flying. Some aircraft obviously are much more forgiving than others, and some have systems that are very easy to use for autoland etc.
Weather will play a big part of whether you are successful or not.
But the biggest thing that will massively increase your chances, is resisting touching anything unless it is absolutely necessary, and transmitting for help from ATC. As in the OPs example, the thing that saved them was the passenger’s ability to ask for help.
Check out ‘Garmin Autoland’, it’s a system starting to become incorporated into newer aircraft (Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet, the TBM 940 and Piper’s Malibu M600 have it). Passengers can push the big red button and the aircraft will determine where it is, where it should go and go and land it, all by itself.
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Let’s say it this way: a simmer more likely is able to land an aircraft safely than some random person on board.
I had the chance to try my best to land an A320 in a certified full motion simulator used for airliner training but at low weight and best weather conditions when it comes to wind and overall visibility (they won’t let you just crash the aircraft as it may also crash the hydraulics!).
In these conditions it wasn’t that hard for me to land the aircraft by hand in one piece smoothly and to keep and stop it on the runway. Anyway irl it would be more tricky ofc as you for sure have more than just a bit of fuel on board 
anyway simmers have one big advantage to average passengers: they know the systems and they know for what they have to look where, even if they are not familiar with the aircraft type they are sitting in (aircraft cockpits are designed to be similar - the gear handle always looks like a landing gear with it’s tire )
Some random person would have to be guided through the cockpit and procedures which increases workload and stress. But still (as reality told) it’s also possible for them to land at least a general aviation aircraft.
In some TV experiment over here they also tried that - people (one random person and one picked with sim experience) were invited to a free roundtrip in a C172 and were not told that the person flying will simply stop flying the aircraft. At some point the pilot (a flight instructor) just said “Okay, I’m dead now, you have to fly.” and ATC took over to guide them.
In the end the random person would likely have crashed the aircraft on landing but also would be able to get away unharmed (so it’s already a good landing - the flight instructor however stepped in on flare to not see the aircraft crash ),
the other person with sim experience however landed the aircraft just fine, the instructor just held his hand at the yoke just in case.
There is a dangerous point in education where you pick up enough information to know what to do-- but you lack the trial and experience to know what not to do.
It’s the adage of “You start with an empty bag of experience and a full bag of luck. The trick is to fill the bag of experience without running out of luck.”
A simmer can know just enough to get themselves into more trouble than they know how to avoid or get out of.
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I had the identical experience in my first introductory flight, also in the 172!
I suspect my years of simming made the landing process seem like yours, quite natural.
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I totally disagree. A simmer who knows what he or she is doing is well aware of stall speeds, particularly if they happen to fly something like the 172 and find themselves having to land a real one. Its far more likely a person with no experience whatsoever is going to fail than a good sim pilot.
I know of at least one Heli simmer who was so experienced in a sim that on his very first real helicopter lesson his instructor was confident enough in his ability to let him to land the machine by himself, that is how good a person can become using a simulator.
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A simmer of what caliber? One that seriously sits down and studies flight physics and air law with discipline (e.g. a helicopter simmer)? Or one that flies a PMDG 777 every day between Europe and North America and thinks they’re experts because they know how to program the plane to follow a path?
I’d be far more inclined to trust my life with the former than the latter. That’s not to say you can learn a lot from flight sim; I was flight simming with a variety of aircraft for a decade before I got my PPL, and my flight instructor was fairly impressed and called me a “quick learner”, but really…would I trust myself to fly a real 737 without stalling it out of the sky? Probably not.
EDIT: to help drive my point home: In the event of an emergency where one 737 pilot is incapacitated, I would much rather be flown by a first-officer-in-training flying solo than by a Captain being assisted by a flight simmer with “PMDG 737 experience”
In a word, Yes, that sort of simmer, one that takes aviation seriously, not one of those casual gamers that flies with the whole aircraft in view and posts terrible videos on YouTube showing how not fly.
I used to play Operation when I was a kid. You would have to have very still hands to remove the funny bone without the buzzer going off. But yes, now I am proficient at that, as I am flying a plane in the sim. I totally feel I could not only land the plane, but perform an operation on the pilot after…
(NOTE: This post has been smiley for the humor impaired)
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When we see that it is already not simple the first time for a pilot in training with hundreds of hours in simulator
I’m sure with an NXi equipped airplane I could take off and even do an ILS landing. Not upsetting ATC or venturing into restricted airspace in the process would be a different story.
Some years ago there was a kid that stole and airplane and flew it to the Bahamas without any flight training. I’m not sure if he practiced in a sim.
When someone says “I know how to fly a plane” they’re really talking about a C152. Not the 737 they fly for Delta. Not the C17 they flew in the military. They mean a Cessna 152.
The 152 is the airplane equivalent of a Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. Their a zillion of them out there and they’re stupid easy to fly
I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express so I probably could land just fine.
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typical hands on planes. lmao
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Whilst it was a firm landing, it was still a safe landing, and in the correct touchdown zone area. I would call that a successful landing. If you can do that you’ve just saved everyone on board.
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I had been flying flight sim for 25 years prior to getting my PPL in real life. The short answer is probably not especially if the wind is tricky. Even with all my sim experience , the simulators can’t replicate landing like it is in real life. Looking at my logbook I was not landing on my own without instructor help until about hour 15 of training and my first landings were so bad I thought I broke the plane. I now have over 100 hours in real life and every now and then when the wind is tricky or there is turbulence or shear on final I still have pretty ugly landings. The one thing I tell everyone that’s asks, flight simulator can give you a false impression of real world flying skill.
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on the whole. maybe. Weather type of aircraft all play a huge role and so does the individual attempting to do it.
As we know, it has been done before and a level headed person with a small GA plane and support from the ground stands a chance. Better sim time than no time at all though.
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The evidence in the video means clearly yes. But I would ask a comparable question, “Can a child drive a car?”. Yeah, in the UK we have had joyriders for years. But do they follow proper procedures, can they parallel park? No, of course not, but they can steer, and they know where the throttle, and brake pedals are. They might grind the gears a bit, but they can do it, of course. But they often end up crashing, so there’s that.
Ask yourself if your kids could drive a car after hours in a racing simulator. Both the sim and the car have all the basic controls but the real world is totally different.
A sim pilot would probably be able to make contact with the runway, possibly even with all wheels but the odds are in favour of a lot of scratched paint and bent metal. The feel on the controls is very different in real life as the loads change with speed. There’s a massive trim change with flaps too. There is very little aileron input, very gentle elevator input and a lot of footwork. I fly on a tight grass strip and go around once in ten approaches. What goes around lands better.
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