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Virtual Pilot Lands Qantas Jet
An anonymous reader writes "Australian airline Qantas has successfully tested an automated landing where both the pilot and the control tower didn't talk to each other. The plane was being piloted by a "Virtual Pilot" located in the control tower."
I know the mil. has had auto landing and take off tech for years according to popular science. I know com. airlines have autopilot on most big planes. I just figured that it there was more of a political reason than a tech. reason why pilots haven't been entirely automated. I'd rather have a trained human "flying" my aircraft, but it may be faster/safer/cheaper to have a computer do it. The big reason that I've heard that we will always need pilots is if anything happened midair the pilot could either fix it fly around it recongizing that the incoming data from his instruments couldn't possibly be true.
Actually, I've always wanted an autopilot for my car. I'd feel alot safer if there was a dependable/safe/cheap autopilot for cars. Most car accidents are caused by human error. I'd love to prevent human error from my car.
Food for thought.
The goal is not to replace pilots, but to allow air traffic controllers to make better use of their time. From improved ATC efficiency, they expect also expect to gain things like reduced "circling" time, better (more direct) flight plans, and reduced fuel usage.
Imagine a 9/11 style aeroplane hijacking scenario, wouldn't it be cool for the tower to take over the steering and landing of the aeroplane to get it down safely by remote control regardless of what its pilot is either forced to or intends to do?
I'm suspecting this could be the prime motive out of testing this technology right now.
So, the air traffic controller gets to send instructions in a text form straight up to the airliner in a format acceptable for the FMS to use. The autopilot is slaved to the FMS and so I guess the air traffic controller is telling the aircraft where to go.
My question is why anyone thinks this is a good thing? What happens here that saves fuel?
It may come as a surprise to most of you, but air traffic controllers know shockingly little about what performance to expect from the aircraft they "control". They know even less about the weather those aircraft fly in. Their radars aren't designed to show weather. They're designed to show little bits of metal in the clouds.
Air traffic controllers don't often have a feel for ice formation aloft. They don't know what the cloud formations look like ahead, so they can't know in advance if they're likely to send you in to severe turbulence. Terrain is not often mapped on their scopes, and sometimes they make mistakes. Thats why TCAS and GPWS are found in nearly all the large airliners and why the Capstone project with ADS-B has been such a big success in Alaska.
I'm not belittling air traffic controllers. They have some incredibly complex staging and sequencing work to do to bring large fleets of airliners in to an airport in a timely fashion, while allowing for transitory traffic through the vicinity. They do this job amazingly well with very few problems. But the reasons I just cited are honest and valid situations where ordinary pilots routinely refuse the traffic instructions given to them by the center and terminal controllers.
Finally, I don't suppose most of you know what it's like to be IFR in the goo, receive a hand-off to the next sector and then play 20 questions with the new air traffic controller because s/he has no idea who you are, where you came from, or where you're trying to get to. Even as good as these folks in ATC are, they screw up just like the pilots do.
Pilots have a reason for being just as Air Traffic Controllers. I don't understand why mixing the two professions in to one saves anyone anything.
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