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Airbus Plans to Expand Cockpit Automation
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Airbus plans computerized systems that could automatically maneuver jetliners to avoid midair collisions, without pilot input, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'For the first time, flight crews of Airbus planes will be instructed and trained to rely on autopilots in most cases to escape an impending crash with another airborne aircraft. Currently, all commercial pilots are required to instantly disconnect the autopilot when they get an alert of such an emergency, and manually put their plane into a climb or descent to avoid the other aircraft. The change, which hasn't been announced yet, comes after lengthy internal Airbus debates and despite skepticism from pilot groups and even some aircraft-equipment suppliers.'"
wasn't there a plane crash a few years back caused by both planes trying to avoid a mid air collision actually moving into each other? A system which ensures the planes do actually move apart seems a good idea
Soon they'll have nothing left to do at all..
I was always under the impression that pilots were trained pretty much entirely for these once-in-a-lifetime events, such as mid-air collision and having one jet fail. I guess they are only going to be useful for take-off and landing now?
Maybe they're trying to phase out pilots all together? Sure would put an end to the whole pension-deficit issue that airlines are facing (well, once all the current pilots die of old age).
Will program for karma.
We will have too trust our lives more and more too machines, we already do it in hospitals...
:)
Machines and electronics are less subject to stress... pilots will have to share their responsabilities with electronics, it's inevitable.
Still, we should first have a good quality check procedures on those programmers and engineers work, as a programmer myself I wouldn't trust my own code to keep me alive
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
there exists such a thing as 'Software Bugs'
"For the first time, flight crews of Airbus planes will be instructed and trained to rely on autopilots in most cases to escape an impending crash with another airborne aircraft or a building."
Technoli
Airbus's design philosophy is that the airplane knows best, and Boeing's is that the pilot knows best. I tend to agree with Boeing. For example, AFAIK, one cannot cross control a modern Airbus - the airplane automatically maintains coordinated flight under all conditions. Normally, this is a good thing. However, in the case of Air Canada flight 143, where a Boeing 767 was improperly fueled, the pilots intentionally slipped the aircraft to avoid disaster (http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html). In the case of American Airlines flight 587, where the tail of the Airbus broke off, the cause of crash was determined to be the pilot's rapid full extent rudder inputs. However, when one looks into _why_ the pilot put in those rudder inputs, you find out that Airbus uses a very high detent load (high load before initial travel) combined with very low load progression as the pedal is depressed - kind of like a keyboard key. Try to press a key on your keyboard 1/4 way - it's not easy. Bottom line - Airbus has some decent technology, but their aircraft are not always pilot friendly. To ignore what the end user - the pilots - have to say about design is just plain foolish.
I'm getting an idea. No, false alarm. No. Yes! No. Yep. Nope, waaiiit, no. Yes. Yes. No. YES!!!!
How about implementing international standards for collision avoidance similar to what exists in the marine world, e.g., if one aircraft is overtaking another, the one overtaking vectors starboard (that's right), the one being overtaken vectors port (that's left). If approaching head-on, both vector starboard, if approaching at right/oblique angles, the one to starboard descends (if altitude and terrain allows) and the one to port ascends. Seems simple to me.
Of course, the ideal solution is to stick to your flight plan when flying IFR, keeping your eyes open when flying VFR and when flying VFR stay within VFR conditions, keeping your eyes open all the while, and fly conservatively. But no, that would be too sensible and would not earn lawyers (no legislation required) and avionics manufacturers enough money (no having to retrofit needless systems into aircraft and recertify them).
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The system to avoid mid-air collisions is already mostly automatic.
It's called Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). It intercepts
other aircrafts' transponder position signals, and, in case of
intersecting traffic, actually communicates with the other aircraft's
TCAS system, and they both agree on which of them will ascend or
descend. This decision is then communicated to the pilots via audio.
Therefore, if both aircraft have TCAS installed, they are guaranteed
to receive opposite instruction (i.e., one to ascend, one to descend).
In the mid-air collision over Germany a few years back, both aircraft
had TCAS, and they both worked perfectly, and their instruction would
have avoided the crash. However, at the same time that the TCAS alarm
sounded, the traffic controller advised the one aircraft to sink,
in disagreement of the TCAS instruction. Unfortunately, the pilot
decided to ignore the TCAS, and followed the traffic controller's
instruction, driving right into the path of the other aircraft,
which was following TCAS advice to sink.
Since then, pilots have been trained to always follow TCAS
instruction. When pilots must follow TCAS instruction, it is
logical to automate that decision. With the appropriate controls
to override the autopilot, of course.
I had a good friend who once read a story about a guy who was thrown from a car accident and walked away because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. He used that example for many years as justification for NEVER wearing a seatbelt (and, ironically, he suffered a concusion from a 15 mph fender bender).
So, humans have an incredible capacity for ignoring the facts that don't support what they want to believe. In this case, even if the computer makes the RIGHT decision and a collision is avoided, passengers will get pissed for minor injuries in a severe turn, the computer will be blamed and a massive investigations will be launched.
And, in some cases, very senior, experienced individuals will make better decisions, but these aren't the guys that will flying the planes most of the time. They're the guys that need to train the computer systems (like chess - you need really great chess players to 'teach' the computers and, at some point, the computer will outplay the master).
I work on the Avionics package of the F-16. These (among many other aircraft) are fly-by-wire meaning that all pilot inputs (stick, rudder pedals) are passed through a computer and electrically sent to the control surfaces. These aircraft fly in conditions that are *somewhat* more hazardous and complex than your average Airbus, and largely the pilot does what the little screens tell him to. A common AF joke is to refer to a pilot as a "stick actuator", as that is largely what he is. It is a relatively small step (relatively speaking) to automate this last bit of flight. Or, for that matter, the Predator is a remote-controlled plane that carries Hellfire missles- surely if that can work, this can work.
Kadko- *sigh* 156hrs and it looks like the work of a 12yr old
In your earlier post, the one you just referenced as higher in the thread, you titled your post "Old school". Quoting that article fit there, because it was posted in 1989.
While there are craft still in operation that were built pre-1989 (well, I assume so - those things were and still are expensive, and so built to last), seventeen years have passed since. Your 'major revisions' have come and gone and been replaced with new problems.
I can understand tracking down a newsgroup(?) post made 17 years ago to point out that history repeats itself and problems will mutate and resurface. But implying that the aircraft manufacturer does nothing against problems over that timescale? That's laughable. They'll have had scores of people working on the problem as soon as it came up, because any disaster like that makes stunning headlines and puts big dents in those companies' prides. Far more recently, Concorde had problems and was pulled rapidly; the entire line no longer exists. Granted, there were more and varied other factors added in - but your post here is utterly misleading. Air crashes happen, and make big news. Car crashes happen daily, often, expensive by wasting entire tailbacks worth of peoples' time; boat crashes are thankfully lower-speed and better balanced and tend to cause fewer problems unless something vast has too much momentum. The air transport industry sees the greatest safety margin requirements by far among transport types.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
To be fair, a number of overrides, including the disabling of the GPWS, were done to the computers on this plane in order to make the fly-by possible. It was a combination of those overrides that resulted in the engines being nearly powered down when they were needed to power the plane back up into the sky... with the result we know.
In actual service, an A320 in such a situation would have already at least sounded a number of alarms and probably would not have allowed the airspeed to drop so low without the flaps and gear to be in landing configuration.
As far as B goes. How is this the fault of the onboard computer? It seems as though the pilot should not have waited so long to increase the thrust. It seems to me that the pilot put the plane in a no win situation. If the computer would have acted as the pilot had requested the plane would hve went in to a stall and still would have crashed in to the woods.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
IMHO, Airbus suffers from a poor user interface between the pilot and the airplane. In several crashes, the pilot's last words were some version of "Why is it doing that?". Airbus is usually able to point to the manual and right there, in black and white, on page 599, it says that if you use the rudder pedals while the windshield wipers are on, on a Tuesday, the tail will fall off. So the crash is "pilot error". The aircraft and its controls behave differently in different modes and sub-modes. So, a pilot needs to know if the plane is in "approach mode", "cruise mode", etc., before he can understand how the plane will react. The interface is complex enough that several perfectly good airplanes have crashed while the pilot was completely bewildered by what was going on. The plane and at least one pilot ought to be in "flying an airplane" mode the entire time the plane is in the air. KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid applies.
A computer might be deterministic for a given set of inputs, but what happens when the sensors throw bad data?
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
If a computer had been in charge, computers have no intelligence, no judgement, and no creativity. All dead is the inevitable result.
I think what he's saying is that the computer looked at the current speed without taking into account that the speed was increasing and thus the plane would not have stalled, because by the time the nose was up, the speed would have been higher
Autopilots these days are good. They are really good. In a commercial flight, they do 99.999% of the flying. The problem really only occurs in situations which don't normally happen, as the ones being described by the grandparent. To deal with the tedious and well understood, computers generally do a better job than humans. To deal with the unexpected, a well trained human will always be better than computer programs (until the programs become sentient, at least). A collision situation would be "unexpected" except that how to avoid them really is pretty well understood these days. I didn't read the article (sue me), but the article description says that the pilots "will be instructed and trained to rely on autopilots in most cases." Sounds to me like if the pilot decides to override the system, he can still do it.
When an autopilot gets to override a pilot's best judgement, I think that's unsafe. If the autopilot takes action first but allows the pilot to assess the situation and take control if necessary, then that's saving valuable seconds in most cases, at the expense of wasting some time in the more rare cases. That's probably a fair trade-off.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
To be fair, these engines are kept below full reverse to avoid catostrophic engine failure that could likely result in explosion and loss of the entire wing.
Well if you are certain you are about to go off the edge of a runway into a body of water, or into a woods at high speed then I'd take a "Likley" loss of a wing any day.
The problem is that pilots should have the ability to make that choice as needed, and not have an option removed because it offers some risk. Perhaps it takes some manual saftey overrides but it should at least be possible.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wouldn't that conceivably allow someone to hijack a plane without even boarding it? Just how do you secure that?
Planes could have flown themselves for years now, the main reason the overpaid passengers are there is to make the rest of the passengers feel warm and cozy.
My understanding is that these planes get their inputs from Satellite and ground based stations. Just to imagine one nightmare scenario, a solar flare knocks out the GPS satellites, and knocks out the power on the ground. Better shielding protects the aircraft from the flare. By some estimates, you have 60,000 people in the air at any time. I'd personally rather have the "Overpaid passenger" there than a computer attendant. Not saying the current solution is perfect by any means, but I don't share your enthusiasm to remove humans from the equation. Especially to save 10% on the cost of a ticket.
The statistical data flat out contradicts your conclusion, despite your anecdotal evidence. Take a look at the NTSB accident reports at www.ntsb.gov. Human error is attributable as the cause of accident in close to 80% of cases (see http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/ARC0401.pdf and http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/ARG0401.pdf for an annual summary of accident data for 2000 as an example). Aircraft related causes were a factor in less than one third of cases. One can always find anecdotal evidence supporting your point of view, but skim across a listing of recent accident reports and one quickly finds that human error is the overwhelming majority cause in most accidents. Automating the cockpit and reducing the human element therefore is the best way to reduce the number of accidents in the sky.