A lot of newer aircraft have built in checklists now[0]. For a bunch of reasons (e.g. safety, automatic double-checking, and expedience).

Yes, it would be non-optimal if an aircraft had an issue without a handbook, but assuming that communications haven't been lost, someone on the ground can easily read out items.

[0] http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2006/april/i_ca...