They landed at an airport. I think the CNN article has a bit more context:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/florida-passenger-lands-p...

> Morgan learned the passenger on the line had never flown a plane -- but had been around aviation and seen other pilots fly.

If they've been around planes like this before, I don't think it'd be that difficult to land in one piece with guidance (and the ATC seemed to be a CFI as well). But what do I know, I'm still working on my PPL.

Hopefully the passenger got his logbook signed for his first solo

We can probably assume it's a small passenger plane. I'm not a pilot but I've landed them a few times in flight sims.

It's a matter of getting the right level of descent and setting a few knobs and switches correctly. I could probably explain to you how to do it if you were playing a video game.

The real impressive thing is they were able to keep calm and go through the steps, or figure out how to use the radio, without freaking out. Not everyone is capable of that.

Flying a small plane like this really isn't all that hard as long as a) the weather is good, b) the plane itself is working normally, and c) you have a basic understanding of how the controls work. When people are learning to fly for their private pilot's license it's not terribly unusual for people to solo (be competent enough to fly alone) after 5-10 hours of instruction. Granted many people do take longer, but it's often because their instruction is very spread out. At typically > $150 per hour many people can only afford a few hours of lessons per month.

It's not hard, if they had spent time around aircraft they provably had a rudimentary understanding of the controls. The dicey part is staying calm during the final stage of landing. You need to stay slow but not too slow and not panic and do something crazy as student pilots occasionally do early in training (going too fast, trying to force the plane to land but just porpoising down the runway, freezing, flaring too early and holding the flare, etc)

I once took a gliding plane lesson with an instructor. I had never flown a plane before but was able to do the whole flight including a winch start, circling up in a thermal and landing on my own just by the instructor telling me what do. So I don’t think it’s hard if you have a good instructor and stay cool enough to listen and do what you are told to do.

Im not familiar with this plane, but the Airbus a320 has an auto-landing autopilot. I wonder how often that's used though.