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FAA's Aging Flight-Plan System Having Problems
Eddytor takes us to eWeek for a look at the FAA's air-traffic control system, which, after 20 years of continuous operation, is in desperate need of an overhaul. Recent crashes have caused major delays, but the system's scope and importance make it difficult to test upgrades and improvements.
"Many technologies are used in air traffic control systems. Primary and secondary radar are used to enhance a controller's 'situational awareness' within his assigned airspace; all types of aircraft send back primary echoes of varying sizes to controllers' screens as radar energy is bounced off their skins. Transponder-equipped aircraft reply to secondary radar interrogations by giving an ID (Mode A), an altitude (Mode C) and/or a unique callsign (Mode S). Certain types of weather also may register on a radar screen."
I do wish TFS would make the distinction between software crashes and aircraft crashes.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Couldn't they just hook the new system into the current data that's being provided from RADAR and other sources alongside the old equipment? Hire testers (retired air traffic controllers?) to test use the systems and see how they hold up. Once enough data has been gathered, allow the some of the data to be fed to the actual ATCs, perhaps let them use the system side by side (not sure how that would work). Maybe it would be even better to just build a new ATC Tower with the systems built in already, hire an extra shift of ATCs or testers, provide training, and one day in the future just do a hot swap.
I realize the are hurdles, but unless I'm missing something (IANAATC) it seems possible, if costly.
Alternatively they could test it out at regional airports first, as the equipment and changeover is likely to be on a smaller scale.
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It doesn't need to make sense to me. If I handed a page of C++ to my grandmother, she couldn't make sense of that either. The weather report is concise and practical, giving a lot of information with the fewest amount of words. Once you can read it, you find it valuable to not have to sift through mounds of useless or redundant information (like adjectives, verbs, etc.)
Just because you can't read and understand it doesn't mean it doesn't have value to someone.
And what's that shit you posted at the end of your comment? Black People suck? Grow up, asshole.
If you mean weather radar, they have it. If you mean radar to see other aircraft, they already have (available) TCAS - Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System
, but the article doesn't give any real suggestions.
People probably won't like my suggestion, which would be to regulate air travel again. Cut the routes, limit take off and landing slots, increase the seat and isle widths and let airlines raise prices to the market level of support. Add a gas tax to keep the cost of gasoline above $3.50/gallon and take the money pay for building a high speed train system across the US. To me that would be worth going into debt for, short term anyway. It would create jobs here and give people an alternative to our broken air transportation system.
The trains could handle the commodity traffic and airlines could compete for luxury traffic, just like the old days. We have to do something. We have 3% of the world population and use 25% of the gasoline. Without alternatives we're never going to get people out of their cars. If I could go anywhere in the continental US in 24 hours, I'd never fly again.
With the added bonus of keeping air traffic at a predictable level for the FAA.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It's pretty apparent that the current system isn't up to the task. I think the real questions should be more along the lines of upgrade or redesign? and in-house engineered versus contractor engineered? I hear there is a replacement on the way, but is it an actual 1 to 1 replacement or is it just replacing a few machines but the heart of the system is some old POS box that's been running since 1988? (I've seen other government networks receive upgrades like this)
Given the vast scale of the system, the constant use, and the time it would take to retrain all of the operators, how would you start testing and implementing new hardware? Just continue running the same code on new hardware... providing a few software tweaks to allow it to scale? Just how old is the current system? DOS era computing? CTOS? ENIAC?
greed@All_Evils:~#
Obviously they have to rewerite it for Google Chrome to compete with the LHC.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
TCAS isn't so much "in flight radar" as it is "holy shit last minute saver of your ass". TCAS doesn't do anything until a collision is basically imminent, at which point it gives instructions on how to avoid said collision.
ADS-B is the real in flight radar.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
I recently graduated from an aviation program at Purdue and I can tell you every single person I've ever sat down in a classroom with can read METARs, TAFs, and any other weather report just as quickly as if they were reading plain english.
More horseshit. I see cars on the side of the road almost daily on my commute. How often do you see a plane fall out of the sky because the engine died?
Name...That...Autocomplete!
DUATS (the only place pilots should be getting official weather briefings online) provides plain english translations for all aviation weather briefings. By the way, none of what you posted has anything to do with weather. Those are NOTAMS (NOtice To AirMen) describing changes to some airport runway information and a few changes to instrument procedures. DUATS has plain english available for those too.
The last time the FAA decided to do a major overhaul, they got a little too ambitious. They awarded a $4.5 billion contract to IBM to produce the Advanced Automation System, a complete replacement of the antiquated air traffic control system. The project was to begin with a major overhaul of the ATC workstations and human interface, looking at all the ideas engineers and air traffic controllers had to make the system better and safer. After 2 years IBM had blown through $2 billion and the only thing they had really accomplished was to replace the 1960s-vintage hardware with more recent gear. It was clear that it would take >$15 billion and >10 years to complete the project at the rate they were going, so the FAA cancelled the rest of the project. The less expensive $500 million version in Canada (CAATS, awarded to IBM's unsuccessful competitor Hughes Aircraft), was no more successful. Lesson learned: ATC system are *complicated*. They require near 100% reliability, and human lives depend on them. When they fail (as they must always do eventually), human controllers must be able to smoothly and safely pick up the entire workload in mid-flight, and then smoothly transition back to computer control when possible. Designing and implemnting this system is a challenge comparable to going to the moon.
I was an intern this summer at the FAA Technical Center. They are currently working on an overhaul of the national air space. The system that crashed a few weeks ago (the NADIN system) is in the middle of being replaced by NADIN II. They were testing it this summer. Also, look up the capstone program, its an effort to replace the radar based navigation with a GPS based system. ADS-B is a huge part of that, with the teams working on it winning the Collier award.
Protip: large pasted post involving slipped in racist comments from an AC are one of the oldest forms of trolling used on slashdot.
Once you can read it, you find it valuable to not have to sift through mounds of useless or redundant information (like adjectives, verbs, etc.)
You're suggesting that the your local TV station's Doppler 2008 15-minute weather segment is too long?
Dunno about you, but here in Southern California, getting the highs, lows, barometric readings, precipitation levels, wind speeds, wind directions, relevant surf, snow, rain or wind advisories, sun rise, sun set and current phase of the moon for where I live (and the same for a dozen or so nearby communities) from a friendly weatherman or weatherwoman that takes the time to describe and explain the relevance of all that information (hopefully with live footage, pictures, charts or graphs), is the only way to know with quantifiable certainty that tommorow's weather will be just like just like yesterday's and the day before that.
Unless, of course, you choose to look out the window or step outside long enough to realise you've probably got better things to do.
People, especially here in the US, are independent creatures. They prefer personal transportation to mass, and personal right now happens to be gas.
While people do often like their cars, as a person who has traveled by bus(both city and greyhound), train, plane, taxi, and car I have to say that there are reasons for so many people being almost glued to their vehicles.
To Wit: The alternatives suck. And the old saying: time costs money
For commutes, you're stuck using their schedule, not your schedule. When I had a *free* bus available, I mostly drove to work. Why? Because my work, despite being the one providing the bus, set the bus schedules in a paranoid fashion, resulting in adding 2 hours to my 12 hour work day. If it's simply added a half hour, I'd have taken it. The $2-4 saved back then just wasn't worth the time.
So, in any proposal to actually get people out of their cars, you have to acknowledge this. If you can make your theoretical public transport faster, cheaper, and more reliable than a car, you'd easily be able to get a large number of cars off the road.
That's why I like the idea of a high speed PRT system - you get the system's average speed above that of cars and a ticket that costs less than the gas to drive the same distance and you're gold. For an inner city system that'd often be 25-35 mph, for a interstate type system I'd want 100mph at a minimum*.
relax regulations on battery technology
Specifics?
*And a way to keep the same car when you stop to use the bathroom or even eat at a restaurant.
and allow more nuclear power plants
I agree with you here, but this reminded me of a local politician campaign add talking about 'adding more wind power to reduce our dependence on foreign oil'. I don't mind green energy by any means, but I detest fuzzy logic. Wind turbines produce electricity. Electricity, at this time, is insignificantly tied to our demand for oil. We could triple our electricity production and cut the cost in half and we'd barely reduce our demand for oil. At that, it'd be mostly people in the northeast switching from oil heating to electric. And they're already switching away from oil in many cases.
I don't read AC A human right
Car engines are more reliable then aircraft engines.
This is a common misnomer. Car engines typically spend > 80% of their engine life at 80% of their life at > 75% power. Few in the GA fleet are water cooled. Most are air cooled, which creates a far greater range of operating temperatures, most hot spots, and a much greater range of heat related expansion.
Most car engines operated as an aircraft engine experience a very short life. In fact, most engines which are operated as an aircraft engine are typically torn down and rebuilt following the race or event.
Long story short, few engines outside of aviation have the longevity that GA piston engines do.
i think a straightforward printout you can easily read in under a minute is much more useful to aviation professionals than a TV weather report.
a pilot doesn't need to know whether or not he should pack a heavy jacket if he's leaving town his weekend, or that this is the 2nd most humid day of the year, or any other miscellaneous info/small talk which TV weather reports generally consist of.
what pilots do need is precise and very specific pieces of info regarding their flight path and destination. they don't need a 7-day forecast that covers an entire state. and they certainly don't have the time to sit through a long-winded weather forecast giving him tips on how he should dress or laymen explanations of meteorological concepts.
using a standardized format that organizes and presents the data in a clear and precise manner also allows easier transmission of weather info by radio or other means. so it shouldn't be too hard to understand why the aviation sector (as well as professional meteorologists) have adopted simple codified formats such as TAF, METAR, etc.
First let me say, I am no friend of the FAA. Everything in life is is a trade off between cost and risk. Everything. Period. In many cases, unless you're willing to pay $10,000 for your next coach plane ticket, many "fixes" are simply not cost effective given its low risk of occurrence.
Having said that, the FAA, as it relates to GA, is directly responsible for everything costing 2x or more than it should. They are also responsible for maintaining, if not elevating risk in many areas. Free market competition is vary rare for almost all aspects of GA aviation. Attorneys are directly responsible for all things GA aviation related costing a factor of 2 more than they should, in addition to the FAA's overhead.
If people really want to increase aviation safety, half the size of the FAA, require a pilot license to head the FAA, double the number of inspectors for commercial operators, and force a revamp of the certification process. As is, the FAA is directly responsible for keeping newer, safer, smaller, lighter technologies out of most cockpits and engine bays. Remember, it's a question of cost and everything aviation related is inflated 4x-8x higher than it would be if free market forces and liability protection would be allowed to function.
You are right about one thing, in many cases of aviation accidents, the FAA does have blood on its hands.
In more recent times, the spectre of the TSA has raised its head and is now starting to negatively impact aviation safety with no return on public safety. Does anyone remember the B2 bomber crash? Turns out some moister was the cause, inside some instrument pitot tubes. Now imagine TSA agents wilfully damaging the same types of instrumentation on commercial airliners in the name of public safety inspections; which are impossible to improve public safety. Recently, as many as 10 aircraft were ignorantly sabotaged by TSA inspectors in the name of public safety by climbing up onto the aircraft, on these very sensitive pitot tubes. Thankfully a pilot noticed some abnormalities and aborted his takeoff. Now keep in mind, it is impossible, regardless of the damage created, for these types of inspections to improve public safety.
Don't be fooled, the TSA is fighting hard to "get into the cockpit" and I have no doubt, public safety will continue to be compromised unless the public is educated on the dangers the TSA's well meaning yet ignorantly harmful involvement will cause. It's only a matter of time.
Jesus Christ...nitpicking the phrase "fall out of the sky"? Seriously? I am well aware of what happens when an engine problem occurs and how often it happens. I was making a point.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
But if that weatherman came on one day and said i'm going to read a list of numbers, in this order: high temp, low temp, wind speed, direction, and visibility, he could come on every day and say 74,56,23,west,10000, and be done with it. A pilot doesnt need all the hunky dory graphics that the news weatherman puts up.
It it was only true!
There are so many points of failure in a system this complex, that it simply boggles the minds of the best architects we have out there.
Discloser... I am a pilot, I deal with Air Traffic Control and all the problems that they have
Let's begin with a single aircraft that will fly a from point A to point B. The flight is scheduled to leave at 0600Z from point A and arrive at point B at 1200Z for a total of 6 hours of flight time. The aircraft will have an SOA ( speed of advance ) of 600 kts ( nautical miles per hour ) and fly at 30,000 feet. Given this data the aircraft will cover 3600 nautical miles.
Given those parameters, it is simple to create and appropriate data structure that will represent the aircraft in question, allow us to create a series of data points to describe it's theoretical route, and predict where that aircraft is at any given moment with mathematical precision. In short it boils down to a rather simple database problem. Most any database cooker can come up with a set of queries to predict where crossing routes and position problems will be when you add more then one flight to the problem.
All of this will work just fine, right up until reality rears it's ugly head.
The cruise or en route portion of a flight is pretty much as simple as I have described, with the exception of having to readjust things based on headwinds, aircraft performance and other factors that may or may not change during the duration of the flight. We have gotten pretty good at predicting what the wind will be like at the planned altitude of the flight, but there are occasions when we are flat out wrong and have to make adjustments. If the winds at say 30,000 ft are not as predicted then to maintain the SOA the pilot needs to change altitude. So we can either propose a change, take that bit of data and run it through a "what if" calculation and then tell the pilot yes or no based on the result which will tell us if that action will cause a potential crossing problem with another flight, or have the software check all the flights currently in the system and have it give us an altitude that will not cause a crossing situation that is as close as possible to the desired altitude while maintaining a safety margin.
The real problem exists at the airports. Things get delayed, weather problems, mechanical problems, passenger problems, luggage problems, you name it, it is going to happen at one point or another. It backs the system up and then the simple database problem turns into the "Traveling Salesman Problem" from hell.
Let us consider a very probable occurrence..... Plane A is sitting at the gate getting serviced for the next flight. The fuel truck rolls up to full up the plane and the fueler gets out, gets his hoses out, plugs them into the fueling connection on the ground and connection on the plane. He looks at his manifest that reads 30,000 lbs of JET-A for this plane, he sets the controls on the fuel truck appropriately and starts pumping. For some reason when the meter reads 29,670 fuel starts spilling from the wing! His "Oh Fuck Light" goes of in his head and he runs for the truck to shut off fuel flow but by the time he makes it the 30 feet from where he is watching to make sure his connection is not leaking the meter now reads 29,980. So you have just spilled around 300 lbs ( about 50 gallons ) of fuel all through the wing and onto the ground. So this plane is not going ANYWHERE for at least the next couple of hours AT LEAST.
With this little problem, and it has happened to me things start to avalanche very quickly. I need another plane, another gate and I have to get the passengers and their luggage off of this plane, to the other plane at another gate, hint hint, this does not happen quickly. We are now occupying two gates and we are going to depart late, more then likely over an hour late if not a more.
So now the arriving flight that was supposed to park at the gate where the airpla
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
That's ridiculous, and a sign of complete stagnation on your part. How about we either fix the system, or design a better one? The answer is not to stagnate, but instead to build again!
Telling people to return to trains is ridiculous, and who has time for that anyway? If the air system isn't safe, fix it. If it can't be fixed, then build a better one. There is nothing that people in the 80's could do that we shouldn't be able to equal, if not vastly exceed. They weren't magicians, and their technology was far less advanced than what we have been able to create in the intervening two decades.
Where do I even start with this? Here are just a few of the many things wrong with this statement:
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
You're only paying 2x as much? Sounds like a good deal. We had a Learjet a couple years ago that had a bad EL panel. Nothing fancy, just an EL panel with a handful of switches for radios. When the panel was previously replaced (about 4 years ago) it cost about $300. Two years ago, when we had to replace it again, it cost over $1200. A 4x markup in two years! Same P/N, and since there is no such thing as *new* for planes this old, it was also refurbished/remanufactured/rebuilt, however you want to look at it. I definitely blame the FAA and Insurance for the insane costs that we are seeing today.
"...TSA inspectors in the name of public safety by climbing up onto the aircraft, on these very sensitive pitot tubes."
Were these Rosemount styled pitot tubes by any chance? The costs for those things can be jaw-shattering. We had a lineman bend one on a jet right after it came back from RVSM installation and certification. He was trying to tug the plane with his car because the company's tug was broken down. He no longer works there.
Ever been a pilot?
As a pilot, unless I cannot communicate with ATC I don't want to have yet another system to monitor. Cruise flight is not where the problem is, it is approach and departure and in those phases of flight I am one busy MoFo and I don't have time to stare at yet another screen full of mostly useless information, since I am busy flying the fucking plane.
Technology has come a long way, I don't have to constantly scan the engine instruments because they have warning lights and buzzers and whatnot that will get my attention if something starts to go south. If I am making a visual approach my eyeballs are looking OUTSIDE, if I am making an instrument approach my eyes are scanning the primary flight instruments, not a screen telling me there are 43 other aircraft doing the exact same thing I am doing.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
I used to design air-traffic control systems.
The title and text of the parent post are inconsistent. The article is about the failures and obsolescence of the flight-plan system, but the discussion of radars, etc, in the text of the post is about other parts of the air-traffic control system. The flight-plan system interfaces to the part of the system that synthesizes radar data and allows communication from controllers to aircraft, but it is not that system. The reason for the interface is so you can do correlation of observed aircraft ID data, positions and position history with flight plans that have been filed. Then, if a plane goes off its flight path, the controllers can warn them and start emergency measures, which includes handing off to the air force.
The amount of data in a flight plan is pretty small, and the volume of messaging is on the order of a few million per year. Conceptually, NADIN is little more than a guaranteed-delivery email system. Next time they build the system they should consider routing over the Internet (of course using encryption) as a backup communication path. And there's also a huge amount that's been learned about system redundancy and scalability in the past few decades. The 99.9% uptime mentioned in the article is piss-poor for such a critical system. That's 8.76 hours per year of downtime. I delivered military systems in the 80's that had far better uptime. It wasn't even good in its own time.
I worked on both military and civilian air traffic control systems. The FAA and their consultants I met had that dangerous combination of arrogance and pig-ignorance that makes failure inevitable. They knew next to nothing about user interfaces, and had worse understanding of engineering tradeoffs than the average private sector middle manager (and that's pretty bad). By contrast, a good percentage of US Air Force officers involved in ATC actually knew what they were talking about. The FAA controllers I met were also shockingly ignorant of the capabilities and limitations of their systems, and some of their processes were there for historic reasons that no longer made sense. It was like dealing with overpaid DMV counter staff. It scares the hell out of me that people's lives depend on decisions that these knuckleheads make.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
We have 3% of the world population and use 25% of the gasoline.
We use 25% of the world's gasoline, and produce 25% of the world's gross product (2007 numbers, from multiple sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) )
As long as we continue to be that productive, we'll probably use a pretty sizable chunk of resources, too.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
There is probably a Microsoft Windows Server solution for this situation, using products from the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Family. Combining high uptime and ease-of-use, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 is ideal for mission-critical, sensitive systems like this. It will also lower the system's TCO.
Transponder codes tell ATC what the manufacturer of a particular aircraft is.
No, transponder codes tell ATC what your transponder code is (yes, I know that's a tautology). Any other information--such as a type designator or a tail number--is entered into the system by a controller and associated with your squawk code. The transponder only reports a number (four octal digits, for a total of 4096 possible codes), and altitude if in Mode C (Mode S is rare enough yet to be overlooked).
Our museum's B-17 has had a couple instances where a curious ATC will ask why his radar is showing a Boeing aircraft cruising along at 4000ft and moving at 150kts.
Because (nearly) all Boeing aircraft have type designators that start with "B." The controller may not recognize the entire aircraft designator, but probably recognizes that it is a Boeing.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
You're suggesting that the your local TV station's Doppler 2008 15-minute weather segment is too long?
IMHO, the short answer is "Yes."
I can get info for the next 48 hours on ONE page, with all the data I'll need. Don't believe me? Great! Let's try something [for those in the US.]
First, got to the NOAA's page. Enter your ZIP code in the upper left-hand side of the page.
Next, scroll to the bottom of the next page and click "Hourly Weather Graph" in the "Additional Forecasts and Information" section. Read the next page carefully. Try mousing over the graph for information on a particular data point.
That page has all the data I'll need to plan my days/weekend in one place. I can read it in less than 10 seconds. If I want radar/doppler, it's a link at the bottom of that page, and I can even get the doppler in motion, with a limited zoom function.
So yeah, even counting the time to pull up the page, enter a zip code, and click a link, it's my opinion that 15 minutes is too long to get the same info I can get in around a minute.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Interesting. There are quite a lot of auto conversions running around in the homebuilt community and they typically have TBO's in the range of 1500-2000 hours. And Engine failure, while slightly more common than in your standard Lycoming/Continental crowd, still happens very rarely. Especially considering most of these engines are homebuilt from parts kits and not professionally maintained I think that's a very good track record.
Honestly the whole "certified" engine issue is really holding GA back. A 40+ year old Conty design can run for 2000 hours while A modern automotive engine can run for 10,000 or so with very poor maintenance and in harder conditions. (how often do you put your ga engine through constant cycles of full throttle acceleration and sudden deceleration with no warmup time)
I think Rotax is on the right track, but they need to go further. EFI, Modern variable ignition, and liquid cooling would all benifit aviation immensely. Plus if you move them out of the space where a 100hp engine costs $30,000 to replace you can make aviation more available to all.
Trains? Sorry, but the train era ended around 1970. After it was decided that trains were no longer profitable, they tore up the tracks and sold the land off.
Today, if you take the train, you will find that passenger service has to wait on sidings until the track (just one left) is cleared because freight is also using it and is more important. On the east coast there are some train lines left with some passenger service tracks, but that is the exception to the rest of the country.
Nobody is going to build any high speed rail lines except in a very few places where they can somehow buy back the right-of-way or just add a track to an existing freight corridor. A nationwide rail system was built before 1950 and allowed to deteriorate completely. It was sold off as scrap metal. I don't see anyone being able to rebuild it now.
Underground tunnels? Sure, but where would the labor come from? At OHSA prices we'd all be better off walking, even from New York to Chicago.
How true - my Granny can only do UNIVAC SHORT code and 4004 assembly code. At her age, she'd also have no idea what a POKE is.
AT&ROFLMAO
during takeoff
This kills a surprising number of qualified pilots. AOPA had an article on this some number of months back. The article was called something like, "Push, push, push." Seems most pilots fail to push forward enough in a timely enough manner to prevent a stall and the following onset of an unrecoverable spin into the ground.
If you're not a member of AOPA, please join. If you are a member, go see if you can locate the article. It's a surprising read.
Happy flying.
There are quite a lot of auto conversions running around in the homebuilt community and they typically have TBO's in the range of 1500-2000 hours.
This is true, with a caveat. Most engines are not used simply because they weigh far too much. The list of engines which are often put into home builds AND which have a good safety record is actually a pretty short list. In fact, these engines are both prized and hard to come by. If you look at the RV crowd, those that don't do Lyc 320 or 360s hunt for cores dating back to the 50s and 60s. At this late date, you can imagine they're getting scarce. These select few engines do not accurately reflect the huge variety of engines available to car manufacturers. And this should certainly come as no surprise as cars share little of the same constraints which airplane builders must address.
Honestly the whole "certified" engine issue is really holding GA back.
No argument from me on this. I completely agree.
A 40+ year old Conty design can run for 2000 hours while A modern automotive engine can run for 10,000 or so with very poor maintenance and in harder conditions. (how often do you put your ga engine through constant cycles of full throttle acceleration and sudden deceleration with no warmup time)
While the operating life your present is accurate, the operating conditions are not. GA aircraft must sustain far higher MPs, far widers spreads in temps, hot spots, large quantities of cold fuel pushed in from ham-fisted pilots (the true cause of mythical shock cooling), and high operating temps with limited cooling capacities. In the long run, car engines get a daily picnic compared to what GA engines go through; and doublely so if it is used for training.
Most automotive engines which are run as hard as GA aircraft engines either fail vastly premature or are rebuilt on a regular basis. In fact, about the only thing comparable here in treatment are race engines, which are often rebuilt after each race or after each race season, depending on the sport.
Eliminating the user mixture control would allow the pilot (student pilots especially) to focus more on flying the airplane than tuning mixture for best economy. It would also reduce the wear and tear on an engine from improperly leaning the mix.
It's only a $20,000 - $40,000+ option, depending on your engine and airframe. This assumes you're in the market for a retrofit. You can imagine owners are jumping right on that. ;)
Modern ignition could allow for more power in a more reliable system than magnetos. CDI units are largely bulletproof anymore and will frequently run the life of the engine without maintenance. A backup magneto system can be present in case of electrical failure.
More and more modern aircraft are getting this feature but it has its downside. A DA-42's accident, which is a twin, was traced back to ignition failure. Seems the battery was not charging. When the pilot retracted the electric gear on departure, the voltage dropped below the required threshold to operate the electronic ignition. Both engines died simultaneously. The pilot died. I don't remember if he had passengers or not.
Needless to say, there is still room for the ultra reliable magneto, dual mag setup of conventional designs.
Liquid cooling would eliminate the need for concern about shock cooling (thermostats are good things) and would reduce the amount of worry about exhaust gas entering the cockpit through the muffler shroud for the heater.
Liquid cooling adds weight and load on the engine. A coolant leak means a scrubbed flight. A water pump is yet one more component which can fail. Many pilots already elect to remove their A/C. How many you think are willing to reduce their useful load and reduce their available HP in exchange for creating an additional, likely, and costly maintenance item? Not many. This is one of the reasons Rotax engines are considered to be a real mixed bag.
Also, shock cooling is a myth. If it were real, it would be a noteworthy statics for twins and especially for twins used for primary training. No such statistic exists. The myth of shock cooling is believed to be answered by pilots who rapidly adjust the mixture and throttle controls, causing large quantiles of very cold aviation fuel and air to be dumped into very hot cylinders. Ham-fisted pilots are to blame, not throttle pulls and descents.
Check out Deakin's Pelican Brief articles for more on the subject. Sorry, I don't remember the name of the article.
Honestly nothing is more pathetic than the "heater" in a 172.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Happy flying.