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Remote Control To Prevent Aircraft Hijacking
Snad writes "The UK's Evening Standard is reporting that Boeing plans to roll out aircraft remote control systems in a bid to eliminate the threat of terrorist hijackings, and prevent any repetition of the events of September 11 2001. 'Scientists at aircraft giant Boeing are testing the tamper-proof autopilot system which uses state-of-the-art computer and satellite technology. It will be activated by the pilot flicking a simple switch or by pressure sensors fitted to the cockpit door that will respond to any excessive force as terrorists try to break into the flight deck. Once triggered, no one on board will be able to deactivate the system. Currently, all autopilots are manually switched on and off at the discretion of pilots. A threatened airliner could be flown to a secure military base or a commercial airport, where it would touch down using existing landing aids known as 'autoland function'.'"
Remote control systems should simply augment human control systems. In this scenario, the human control system is much more effective. Specifically, "passengers beating the living shit out of all hijackers."
Won't terrorists instead try and find ways to take over the remote control system? Why limit yourself to simply crashing one plane when you can crash them all.
Why not autotakeoff as well, then we can just eliminate the human pilots altogether for nonmilitary aircraft?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
All they need is a case of baseball bats on the plane. "In case of a cabin seizure, a small bat will fall from the ceiling. Take the bat, and beat the shit out of the hijacker until he is unconscious"
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No remote access allowed unless the pilot flips a switch in the plane.
what concerns me is: 1) it could be accidentally triggered under certain conditions i.e. someone nudges the door like in a fall bracing against the door etc. 2) if an accident did happen, normal flight would incur excessive delays [acceptable or not?] 3) under what conditions would the system not detect a hijacking, ie can it be triggered from the ground in case of failure? 4) human error- suppose the system is bypassed by the pilot- ie it isnt switched on or the door is kept open etc. what then? how would these problems be addressed and how would it affect the normal operations in flight?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
How about locking the f***ing cabin door??!!! Doesn't cost anything, no one gets hijacked. Instead lets make a remote control terminal to fly the plane into a building. Only good old fat government defense contracts can bring us such stupidity. Heck, lets give the contract to Diebold and let the central control program be an Access VBA App on a Windows machine connected to the internet.
Skyhook is a book centered around this concept. The interesting part was that they wouldn't actually deploy this system in commercial aircraft, they'd just have a press release to make people think they had.
(And no, that isn't a referrer link where I get money. I don't know why it has 'ref=')
Oh, I'm sure this could never POSSIBLY go wrong.
The mind *boggles*.
But it'll make for some great disaster movies, where Bruce Willis has to hack his way through a bulkhead to cut the wires for the autopilot before Boeing Jon can fly the remote-hijacked plane to Norway where all the passengers would, um, well, have something awful happen involving blonde women and glaciers.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Buy a clue, please.
Autoland had been in use on commercial aircraft for over thirty years. It's routinely used for landing at places like Heathrow which are frequently foggy. It's so accurate that they had to introduce some dither into it because the runways were starting to deteriorate what with landing gear smacking into the exact same spot landing after landing.
-- Alastair
Hijackers simply start shooting passengers until they remotely fly him where he wants to go.
Fanatics are irrational by design...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
We don't need this. If anything genuinely good came out of 9/11, it's this: passengers will *NOT* sit idly by while a hijacker goes and tries to seize control of an aircraft, as they know that their lives would likely be forfeit anyways if they did. It was a very costly wake-up call, and although I would never go so far as to say it was worth it, I think it's safe bet that no hijacker will ever be able to take control of a passenger aircraft ever again... at least not over USA soil.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You are attempting to engage the Remote Control System.
Cancel or Allow?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You are absolutely correct, military and some civilian aircraft already have this feature. However, a terrorist activating a jammer could never happen because it is against FAA rules to turn on a transmitter during flight.
"You can't fly any lower describes an advanced ground contact avoidance system developed in Sweden and tested on F16s. This is really impressive.
After moderate checks of the system at shallow dive angles and an aborted run or two, Prosser simulated several fatal mishaps. The first replicated a pilot flying on night-vision goggles (NVG) and losing situational awareness. With Auto-GCAS minimum descent altitude set at 500-ft. AGL (a medium-risk test condition), Prosser rolled into a partially inverted 5g turn, then back to a 90-deg. bank before relaxing his grip on the stick. The mishap pilot had lost the night horizon and, thinking he was approximately wings-level, let the nose fall. He was unknowingly diving toward the ground. Similar NVG-related accidents have killed F-16 and A-10 pilots.
While the flat Rosamond Dry Lake raced upward at us, filling my out-the-canopy field-of-view, I glanced at my back-seat HUD repeater and saw two large chevrons moving toward the center of the display. Their arrow-points touched, and we immediately snap-rolled to wings-level and pulled sharply to about 10 deg. nose-up. When the "You got it!" annunciation sounded, we were climbing at about 317 kt. and 2,940 ft., roughly 600+ ft. above the lakebed--an artificially high altitude established for safety reasons.
This thing is dealing with flight situations much tougher than anything the big transports do. It's designed not to interfere with typical attack aircraft maneuvers. We flew about 200 ft. above the ground at 520-560 kt., popping over high-tension power lines, hills and small ridges. Slipping through cuts in the desert mountains, rolling inverted to pull down the backside of ridges, and carving around the sides of rocky hills, Prosser demonstrated that a pilot could fly a normal, low-level tactical mission without experiencing a single nuisance fly-up. But go a little too low, and there's a "speedbump" as the system nudges the aircraft up a bit.
The system turns off when you're set up for landing: slow speed, wheels down, flaps down.
This would have saved United 93, where they had a fight in the cockpit. If the computers take over when the plane is headed into the ground, a number of situations become survivable. Not just hijackings; crashes due to pilot distraction or navigational error; what's called "controlled flight into terrain".
As a passenger ... and a pilot I think this is a VERY dangerous idea. More so than dealing with the terrorists in other ways.
Let me qualify myself -- I am a hobbyist when it comes to flying. Single and dual engine props are the largest I've ever flown myself, but I know a damn good landing when I see / feel one. Flying "runs in the family" as my brother does it, my father, my grandfather [did, passed away], and my Uncle is a commercial pilot himself. Growing up it was common to go and visit grandpa (or more often have him fly over to us) in the rent-a-plane type club -- why drive and deal with all the traffic? When we wanted to go downtown to the city -- just fly in. I was flying when I was six... Anyway, I digress...
On a recent commercial trip to Hawaii I can remember two specific landings that took place. One was in bad weather and the landing impressed me so much that I waited around to find out who landed the plane. The pilot proudly introduced me to his co-pilot and informed me it was his first real landing as such [flying passengers and not testing / in a simulator]. The other landing scared the hell out of me and within seconds of touching down I looked at my white-knuckled scared wife and said "somethings wrong, we're going off the runway". The weather was calm and clear -- and at the gate the pilot apologized to *everyone* over the PA system and informed us that the landing that took place was done by the emergency autopilot landing system [a scheduled test -- WITH PASSENGERS]. THANK GOD he was able to dis-engage said system and go with a hard left rudder when he did...
Due to that last landing it has been the _last_ commercial flight I've taken (or plan to take). I'll fly myself, thank you.
What do I do for a living? Ironically computer [programming] -- and I know all too well what can (and does) go wrong with these types of computer programs. There is NO WAY that all the bases and/or possibilities could be covered with our computer knowledge today.
While the parent was moderated Insightful I would like to point out that up to date no commercial Airplane can take off with autopilot. Take off is always done manually.
Also, even on an Autoland the pilot has to perform a few tasks like extending the landing flaps and lowering the gear. Again no airplane that I know of has these under autopilot control.
Besides, autoland for the pilots is far from leaning back and enjoying the show. Current autopilots are still limited in the operational envelope (max wind inputs etc.) and need a lot of working systems that a pilot can do without (landing signal receivers etc.). It is not uncommon for an airliner in normal operation to be restricted to "no autoland" because some subsystem is not performing nominally.
Why these Limitations? Because certifying any automatic operation on an airplane costs lots of money which is not necessary as long as a pilot can perform these operations for "free".
Disclaimer: I earn my living flying airplanes.
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While demonstrating one of the new remote controlled aircraft, it was pointed out that the cockpit will now be occupied by a pilot and a dog. When asked about the dog, it was explained that he was there to bite the pilot's hand off if he reached for any of the controls.
What?
"One passenger dies every minute until the door is unlocked".
Duh.
With the new system:
"One passenger dies every minute until the fancy auto-pilot is turned off".
Another duh.
Any questions, Einstein? Yeah one question: how long before 300 people on a plane being executed one a minute does it take for the remaining passengers to figure out that the best odds (in either case) lie with using laptops, coffee pots, and even fists to beat the living crap out of a hopelessly outnumbered handful of hijackers who aren't going to get their way?
I know, this sounds like algebra, not your strong suit.
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While you are correct that autoland has been around since the 70s, it is far from used routinely.
Pilots use autoland only when required so due to fog (visibility below roundabout 300m, depending on aircraft type). Even at London I doubt that more than 1% of all landings are made with autoland.
And the thing about hitting the exact same spot on landing is a myth, because so many factors (weight of airplane, temperature, wind, rigging of the control surfaces to name just a few) will affect the landing spot even for an autoland that it is impossible to touch down at the same spot consistently.
Disclaimer: I earn my living flying airplanes
X IMPRIMITE "SALVE TERRA!"
XX ITE AD X
There should be a scale, like the Richter scale for earthquakes, for dumb ideas.
This one would be 11/10.
Hijacks are very, very rare so the effectiveness of this stupid idea is dominated by the failure modes. The obvious failure mode is accidental activation. This will occur much more often than an actual hijack.
So rather than being a solution, it will be just another cause of flight delays.
Not quite. At some point during the autoland, usually around 50 to 20 ft above the runway the aircraft does not follow the glideslope anymore. Instead it will do a preprogrammed flare following a fixed programm like "pull the yoke back by 2 inches and wait for touchdown" (I know that it is a little bit more complex than that). Any (vertical) disturbances during those last few seconds are not corrected and will lead to different touchdown points.
I am not saying that autoland systems do not have a dither (like from the sampling rate of the radio altimeter), but I doubt that it was put in intentionally. It is system inherent.
X IMPRIMITE "SALVE TERRA!"
XX ITE AD X