Airline Pilots Rely Too Much On Automation, Says Safety Panel

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Nearly all people connected to the aviation industry agree that automation has helped to dramatically improve airline safety over the past 30 years but Tom Costello reports at NBC News that according to a new Federal Aviation Administration report commercial airline pilots rely too much on automation in the cockpit and are losing basic flying skills. Relying too heavily on computer-driven flight decks now poses the biggest threats to airliner safety world-wide, the study concluded. The results can range from degraded manual-flying skills to poor decision-making to possible erosion of confidence among some aviators when automation abruptly malfunctions or disconnects during an emergency. 'Pilots sometimes rely too much on automated systems,' says the report adding that some pilots 'lack sufficient or in-depth knowledge and skills' to properly control their plane's trajectory. Basic piloting errors are thought to have contributed to the crash of an Air France Airbus A330 plane over the Atlantic in 2009, which killed all 228 aboard, as well as a commuter plane crash in Buffalo, NY, that same year. Tom Casey, a retired airline pilot who flew the giant Boeing 777, said he once kept track of how rarely he had to touch the controls on an auto-pilot flight from New York to London. From takeoff to landing, he said he only had to touch the controls seven times. 'There were seven moments when I actually touched the airplane — and the plane flew beautifully,' he said. 'Now that is being in command of a system, of wonderful computers that do a great job — but that isn't flying.' Real flying is exemplified by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, says Casey, who famously landed his US Airways plane without engines on the Hudson River and saved all the passengers in what came to be known as the 'Miracle on the Hudson.' The new report calls for more manual flying by pilots — in the cockpit and in simulations. The FAA says the agency and industry representatives will work on next steps to make training programs stronger in the interest of safety."

Comments

self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious solution is self-flying planes! Then there won't be a pilot to rely too much on automation.

Re:self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand They need Both Today a flight crew landed a 747 at the wrong airport on too short a runway to ever take off again , Had they used some automation perhaps thery'd have avioded that They are lucky nobody was killed as they had no clearance for the wrong airport , t

Re:self-flying planes

[drainbramage]

After the tire smoke cleared from the landing, the Piolet exclaimed "Man, that was one short Runway!.
The copilot looked left, then right, then said "But it sure is wide."
--
I want to meet the guy that landed the Shuttle on that aircraft carrier!

Re:self-flying planes

[I'm New Around Here]

Was that at Warsaw International?

Re:self-flying planes

[devman]

It was at Jabara airport in Kansas, and the 747 in question was a Dreamlifter which is a heavily modified 747 Boeing uses for cargo hauling it is manufacturing process. It has been determined that the runway in question is long enough for it to take off again, although it seems just barely.

Re:self-flying planes

[marcello_dl]

That is modifying the terms of the problem, not a solution.

A solution is: have pilots run simulation exercises while they are flying on autopilot. We'll call it the yo dawg routine. This will both have 'em stay alert at all times, prevent them to running candy crush on their tablet and brand new wifi equipped airplane, and train them without losing time. All you need is a spare monitor and a "this is not a simulation" honking siren when real emergencies arise

And when somebody eventually tries to patent this sh*t remember you read it first here.

Re:self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

That is modifying the terms of the problem, not a solution.

That's fine, often modifying the problem is better than coming up with a solution, or rather is itself coming up with a solution to the real problem. The *real* problem here is "we need a way to safely do lots of flying without crashing into things and bursting into flames", someone over specified it to "pilots need to be really good".

Re:self-flying planes

[Moof123]

Yes, you are actually totally correct. The problem we have today is we are in the twilight zone between automation and human control. A simple autopilot alleviates the pilot from drudgery and reduces fatigue related human errors. But we have moved so far from that to a point where it promotes ineptitude, but is not self sufficient for the hard crap.

I think we need to see rules that curtail how much an automation system does to just automate the drudgery (smooth level flight at cruising altitude) unless it is certified to do it ALL. Until such time that automated systems can handle bad weather, false sensor readings, and other crisis at least as well as a good pilot, they should not be given too much responsibility. The same steps are already applied to a co-pilot, he doesn't get the pilots seat as soon as he can handle the easy crap, he has to put in thousands of hours as co-pilot before he gets full command of the aircraft.

Re:self-flying planes

[Electricity Likes Me]

Except the problem is false sensor readings can't be handled by a pilot either. Trusting your human senses just doesn't work with piloting, and has been the cause of any number of light plane and several major jetliner accidents too.

When sensors on a plane malfunction, you can't just look out the window and know what's wrong. Similarly there's a lot of concern about exactly the type of deferrence you suggest - co-pilots that, due to their culture, feel unable to question or overrule perceived bad decisions of the captain.

It's a complicated problem and is not easily explained as laziness on anyone's part.

Re:self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it just be easier to require a certain amount of flights every month to be done "full manual" and have some system of logging it in order to maintain qualifications? You don't have to re-invent things for extra cost when some modification of procedure alone should suffice.

Of course the same exact thing will be a problem if self-driving cars are ever made legal.

Re:self-flying planes

[sabri]

When sensors on a plane malfunction, you can't just look out the window and know what's wrong.

I grossly disagree. I fly planes. In the aviation food-chain, I'm on the bottom with my private pilot license, allowing me to fly single engine lawmower-like airplanes.

I look out of the window for most of my flying. The only things I care about are engine, airspeed and altititude. I could not care less about the attitude indicator, vsi, compass or any other instruments. If all my instruments die, I can hear by the sound of my engine with its approximate rpm is. I know that with an RPM of 2300, I'll be cruising at 100mph. Lower it to 2100 and I'll descent at approx 500ft/min. I can look out the window and see the earth closing, meaning I'm about to land. If needed, I can land an aircraft without any instruments at all (all tho granted, I would declare an emergency).

Why can I do that? Because I'm not trained to look at a computer screen in the cockpit. And don't give me crap about how jetliners are different. They are not. They fly based on rudder, aileron and elevators.

Re:self-flying planes

[timeOday]

I think we need to see rules that curtail how much an automation system does to just automate the drudgery (smooth level flight at cruising altitude) unless it is certified to do it ALL.

Flying in the US in the last decade is safer than it has ever been before, anywhere. Automation is part of the reason for that. What you propose is tantamount to disabling antilock brakes so people maintain their brake-pumping skills, just in case the ABS ever fails. It is likely to be a poor tradeoff.

Re:self-flying planes

[dcw3]

Get some time under the hood, and come back and tell us the same. Been there, done that.

Re:self-flying planes

[theshowmecanuck]

Are you thinking of that belly landing by Polish Airlines Flight 16 (November 1, 2011)? The landing gear failed to lower and the pilot did a text book belly landing. This was compared to the Captain Sully landing on the Hudson. It is a very good example of why pilots are still in the cockpit. Maybe sometime when AI is much, much better, computers can take over entirely. But then they'll take over the earth too (it's a joke). Here's a video of a C17 landing at the wrong, way too small airport in Florida; just so people don't miss it in the rush to talk about the 747 that did the same thing last night in Kansas.

Re:self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the solution is not to have pilots running simulation exercises when they're flying on autopilot. Their attention should be on the jet they're flying, not on some video game to keep them occupied.

The solution is proper training and qualification programs, with constant refresh and evaluations. E.g., one day a week, instead of flying a jet, you're flying a simulator. And that simulator has the aeronautical equivalent of Netflix's Chaos Monkey running around in it, thrashing various bits of the jet to force you to respond to an unpredictable emergency - maybe left engine goes out. Maybe there's sudden cabin depressurization at 30,000 feet. Maybe landing gear gets stuck. Maybe hydraulics on one side of the jet fail. Maybe wings ice up. There are all sorts of failure scenarios they could program into a sim, and the simulators are pretty goddamned good at this point.

There are "proper" responses for all of these things, and there are panicked, flying-blind-into-a-mountain responses to these things. If you execute the proper procedure for the circumstance, you pass... if you execute the wrong procedure, you fail. Too many fails puts you into remedial pilot training until you can bring your failure rate back below, say 10%.

Forcing your pilots to sweat about an evaluation WHILE they're supposed to be sweating the safety of their passengers in the air, is a recipe for disaster. Training them to respond to the "automation failed, holy shit, you're gonna die" in a simulation will build the proper habits into their minds so when it actually happens in the air, they can respond to it properly, and maybe - just maybe - save a couple hundred lives.

Re:self-flying planes

[profplump]

Except that being fully manual is dangerous too -- overall automation has reduced crashes.

Re:self-flying planes

[marcello_dl]

Ok then the solution is fully automated flying. In zeppelins.

Re:self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

given that most aircraft crashes are pilot error, it is clear that there is a fine line between too much automation and irreducible human frailty.

go look up the truth of pilot error for yourself: http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/index.aspx

Re:self-flying planes

[NoImNotNineVolt]

a heavily modified 747 Boeing uses for cargo hauling it is manufacturing process.

Okay, incorrect usage of "it's" in place of "its" is irritating enough, but expanding it to "it is"?!?!?

Re:self-flying planes

[citizenr]

Are you thinking of that belly landing by Polish Airlines Flight 16 (November 1, 2011)? The landing gear failed to lower and the pilot did a text book belly landing.

It was also determined by now that landing gear was 100% OPERATIONAL, fuse for the landing gear popped open and pilot didnt notice it (standard procedure).
Proper action was to look at the instruments panel, notice fuse, pop it in, land a plane, not crash it.

Re:self-flying planes

[gregor-e]

Pilots are not permitted to fly more than 100 hours per month. They could work a full 40-hour week by spending their remaining hours in simulation.

Re:self-flying planes

[demonlapin]

Flying VFR on familiar turf with control surfaces you can see... I've never touched a stick and I can think of so many ways that's not like a 747 at 3000 feet AGL in a storm.

Re:self-flying planes

[skitchen8]

You mean that plane that's getting ready to take off right now? Lucky that nobody was killed at a non-tower controlled airport that would have had no traffic at the time anyways? You sure aren't good at these fact things.

Re:self-flying planes

[Politburo]

I think only wheels up time counts towards that 100 hours.

Re: self-flying planes

[the_bard17]

What ^ he said.

I've flown VFR on a dark night with no visible horizon. It's an unsettling feeling when there's a lit road in the distance, at an angle to the real horizon. Your eyes naturally attune to the road, and tell your brain the aircraft is banking. Your inner ear says you're level. After a few moments, that part of your brain that handles balance starts to freak out and throw its hands up in disgust with the conflicting information.

It takes willpower to trust that the artificial horizon on the attitude indicator is indeed correct, despite that voice in the back of your head whispering that it could be broken and you should trust your eyes instead.

Re:self-flying planes

[devman]

Yeah I saw it too. Blame it on lack of an edit button.

Re:self-flying planes

[Obfuscant]

Pilots are not permitted to fly more than 100 hours per month.

Citation required. I'm a pilot and I know of no such limitation.

Re:self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

Try telling that to Whip Whitaker! He was drunk, probably high, AND not trusting the sensors.

Re:self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you really don't have any idea. The flight envelope of an airliner at cruise altitude is so small that there is no way to stay inside it by "looking out the window". They also fly over the ocean, at night, in weather. Even in perfect conditions you just don't have the visual cues you can rely on when flying your flying lawn mower, you're too far from the ground to estimate movement speed.

Re: self-flying planes

[aoteoroa]

The FAA agreed with Sabri's general point. The instruments were giving bad information. If the co-pilot had reverted to the basics of flight and set thrust and pitch to normal levels then flight 447 would not have crashed. Instead the co-pilot followed the computers instructions ...kept pulling back and trying to climb. By the time the Pilot figured out what the co-pilot was doing it was too late.

Here are the final words from flight 447's black box:

02:13:40 (Co-pilot1) Mais je suis à fond à cabrer depuis tout à l'heure! At last, Co-pilot1 tells the others the crucial fact whose import he has so grievously failed to understand himself. (But I've had the stick back the whole time!)

02:13:42 (Captain) Non, non, non... Ne remonte pas... non, non. (No, no, no... Don't climb... no, no.)

02:13:43 (Robert) Alors descends... Alors, donne-moi les commandes... Ã moi les commandes! (Descend, then... Give me the controls... Give me the controls!)

Bonin yields the controls, and Robert finally puts the nose down. The plane begins to regain speed. But it is still descending at a precipitous angle. As they near 2000 feet, the aircraft's sensors detect the fast-approaching surface and trigger a new alarm. There is no time left to build up speed by pushing the plane's nose forward into a dive. At any rate, without warning his colleagues, Bonin once again takes back the controls and pulls his side stick all the way back.

02:14:23 (Robert) Putain, on va taper... C'est pas vrai! (Damn it, we're going to crash... This isn't true!)

Re: self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

You are completely incorrect.

The FAA does not agree with Sabri's points at all. At no timeThe instruments briefly gave one piece of bad information (air-speed), and the plane and the pilots knew that information was bad. The one pilot then made the mistake to pull the nose of the plane up (which should not have been done), and that ultimately caused the plane crash.

What the pilots could see of the horizon is debatable (flying at night over the ocean, through a storm and clouds). Using their eyes to look out the window and ignore their instruments is exactly what pilots are trained not to do in this type of situation. Furthermore, as the investigation report stated, all of the instruments were reporting correct information well before the crash occurred, and it was pilot error and panic that lead to the crash. One recommendation that came out of this was, in fact, to add an additional instrument to directly show the angle of attack.

Re: self-flying planes

[Cochonou]

Well, I can only advise you to read more carefully the investigation report (which was made by the BEA, not the FAA).
The airspeed indicator gave wrong information for 61 seconds at most .The others indicators (such as pitch indicator) were functioning correctly, yet it was the inappropriate control inputs of the pilot flying that directly put the aircraft into a stall. The stall warning sounded continuously for more than 54 seconds, yet nobody in the cockpit voiced the possibility of a stall. The main problem was that the crew in the cockpit was deeply confused... probably overloaded with information they couldn't prioritize, and discarded (consciously or inconsciously) the warnings presented by the aircraft systems. Saying that they "followed the computer instructions" is a deeply flawed way of describing the situation.

Re:self-flying planes

[T-Bucket]

Uh. citation is in the current CFR. If you fly 121 at all, you had better be familiar with that. (there are no such restrictions on private pilots)

Re:self-flying planes

[sabri]

Get some time under the hood, and come back and tell us the same. Been there, done that.

Been there, too. I've flown on instruments only, and when you're IFR then yes, the statement made can be true in some cases. However, it is way to blunt to just say "a pilot can't look out the window to see what's wrong". Are your instrument readings of your number one engine weird? Go send the co-co into the cabin to have a look!

Re:self-flying planes

[sabri]

Re:self-flying planes (Score:-1, Troll)

Whoever moderated this as troll needs to read the moderation guidelines again. You don't have to agree with the content, but it is definitely not trolling.

Re:self-flying planes

[theshowmecanuck]

Interesting. Just found a preliminary accident report posted online (PDF).

Re: self-flying planes

[sabri]

Well, I can only advise you to read more carefully the investigation report (which was made by the BEA, not the FAA).

Did you actually read it yourself? The captain, who came back from his rest, did realize that they were in a stall. The co-pilot in the right seat kept the nose up, increasing the stall. He kept the nose up when they were dropping, and dropping fast. He kept the nose up even when they were below 10000ft. That has nothing to do with a high-speed stall at the upper end of the coffin corner, that is simply a pilot forgetting what to do in case of a stall, which is nose down.

Re:self-flying planes

[Jyms]

Surely passenger planes are prime candidates for remote piloting. They fly long boring routes and land at a variety of airports. If they were piloted remotely, you could have a specialist for each type of aircraft at each airport and you could have frequent shift changes on the boring bits. That way you always have the optimum pilot in control. It also changes the whole hijacking think quite a bit.

Re: self-flying planes

[Paul Jakma]

The computer did not give any instruction. The computers went into alternate law (i.e. "act dumb, do 100% what the pilots command") precisely because the computer had detected sensors were giving conflicting readings. It was down to the pilots to determine what was needed to be done. The correct course of action was fairly obvious. They were flying at altitude, where maximum speed and stall speed are very close to each other. That is, any significant loss of airspeed risks stalling and disaster. The correct course of action, if there's a problem with airspeed indicators, then is to ensure airspeed is preserved - i.e. descend. This is real 101 stuff when it comes to "Flying high".

The senior co-pilot, in command at the time, knew what had to be done, so did the captain (who was not on the flight deck initially). Unfortunately, despite both of them clearly ordering the junior co-pilot to descend and, later, leave the fucking controls alone (though, by that time, they were almost certainly doomed), the junior co-pilot inexplicably kept taking control and ordering the aircraft to climb - precisely the wrong to do. What was going through his mind we will never know.

Re:self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

From FAA Part 117:

117.23 Cumulative limitations.

(a) The limitations of this section include all flying by flightcrew members on behalf of any certificate holder or 91K Program Manager during the applicable periods.

(b) No certificate holder may schedule and no flightcrew member may accept an assignment if the flightcrew member's total flight time will exceed the following:

      (1) 100 hours in any 672 consecutive hours and

      (2) 1,000 hours in any 365 consecutive calendar day period.

(c) No certificate holder may schedule and no flightcrew member may accept an assignment if the flightcrew member's total Flight Duty Period will exceed:

      (1) 60 flight duty period hours in any 168 consecutive hours and

      (2) 190 flight duty period hours in any 672 consecutive hours.

A 30 day month is 720 hours, so it's not exact, but fairly close.

Re: self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

I've flown VFR on a dark night with no visible horizon. ...It takes willpower to trust that the artificial horizon on the attitude indicator is indeed correct, despite that voice in the back of your head whispering that it could be broken and you should trust your eyes instead.

That's not VFR flying, just so you know.

Re:self-flying planes

[delt0r]

Your asserting that because a machine didn't do these landing that they couldn't. We just don't let machines do it and that is not the same as they can't.

Re:self-flying planes

[delt0r]

I could not care less about the attitude indicator, vsi, compass or any other instruments.

Let me guess, you are still a VFR pilot only. Being able to fly with no visual ques (ie 0 visibility) is a basic requirement for flying anything beyond a hobby.

Re:self-flying planes

[theshowmecanuck]

I'll gladly watch from the ground while you ride in a jumbo jet doing a belly landing all on automated pilot to prove your point.

Re:self-flying planes

[delt0r]

I would gladly take the machine over the human if I had the choice any day.

Re:self-flying planes

[sabri]

Let me guess, you are still a VFR pilot only. Being able to fly with no visual ques (ie 0 visibility) is a basic requirement for flying anything beyond a hobby.

While I don't intend to make flying more than a hobby, I am training for my IFR rating and I've spent quite some time under the hood. Including recovering from unusual attitudes and instument approaches/go-arounds.

I know that does not, by far, make me a profi, but my argument is that basic flying stays the same. IFR or VFR, in a stall condition you point the nose down, not up.

Re:self-flying planes

[delt0r]

And without instruments humans are crap at telling which way is up or down or how fast or slow or what sink rate you have.

Re:self-flying planes

[lsatenstein]

The obvious solution is self-flying planes! Then there won't be a pilot to rely too much on automation.

If cars can park themselves, and look ahead in the traffic for accident avoidence, then planes should be able to taxi, takeoff, land and come to a boarding gate unattended.

The pilot holds the ignition key. We don't want a plane like that stolen.

Re: self-flying planes

[aoteoroa]

You are completely incorrect. The FAA does not agree with Sabri's points at all.

Sabri's basic point was:

"The only things I care about are engine, airspeed and altititude."

Everything else Sabri said supports his view of the basics of flight

Flight 447 was at 38,000 feet when it stalled. 7 miles up provides plenty of safety room to trade altitude for airspeed, and recover from a stall. Instead the co-pilot pulled the stick back, held the stick back, and continued to hold it back the entire time. This basic pilot error contributed to the FAA's 200 page report and their support is mentioned in the first line of the article:

"Commercial airline pilots rely too much on automation in the cockpit and are losing basic flying skills, warns a new Federal Aviation Administration report due out this week."

Re: self-flying planes

[the_bard17]

Not according to the FAA (I hear that CASA in Australia is updating the reg's regarding "dark night flying", so things might be different outside the US).

There is no requirement for a visible horizon when flying VFR at night. Please reference VFR Weather Minimums. Flying anywhere near those minimums is crazy as far as I care, as it's really easy to progress into IFR conditions.

Regardless of whether it's legally VFR or not, I'd feel much more comfortable being IFR rated in those conditions. I'd want the option to call in for a pop-up IFR clearance if the weather deteriorated. The limits I place personally are much more stringent than the FAA reg's, seein' as I'm a low hour "strictly for the hobby and love of flying" pilot.

Re: self-flying planes

[Anonymous Coward]

Self flying planes is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Pilots are able to do things a computer could never do. Unlike computers humans can think and problem solve unlike the unable computer which can do basic commands. While I do agree that automation is nice and convienant, It could NEVER replace and experienced pilot in the cockpit.

Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Isn't the goal to remove as much possibility for human error as possible? Can we automate how much the pilots are allowed to use the automation?

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[SJHillman]

If you read the summary, you'll notice one of the big problems is when that automation fails. It's great when it removes human error, but if automation fails, you still want human error as minimal as possible... and that means teaching pilots to rely less on automation (which is a very different thing from using less automation).

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Millennium]

Automation fails from time to time, and when it does, pilots are the failsafe. But to be able to do that, they need to stay in practice, and that's the problem being highlighted here: they're getting so little time in control that they're getting out of shape.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[somersault]

Automation isn't so much to remove possibility for human error, as to stop people getting exhausted from performing a monotonous task. Which may reduce errors, but may actually also cause worse ones if it means you can relax more than usual. Think about using cruise control in your car. It makes highway driving much more pleasant, but it adds a little extra to your response time, since you've removed your feet from the pedals, etc..

Some cars these days have adaptive cruise control that can detect that of course.. and some cars can drive themselves entirely.. and while that of course reduces "human error", it also potentially removes the "human common sense" element..

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[TheloniousToady]

Likewise, the automation is not designed to handle extreme failures of the aircraft. For example, the situation many years ago in Iowa where the hydraulics failed and the pilot had to steer the plane using only the engine throttles is an example of something that no computer system is designed to do. Yet a veteran pilot managed to pull it off.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't argue with you, Sheldon!

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Desler]

What doesn't make sense? Automation fails and human intervention is needed, but some of the humans he are needed to intervene don't have the skills to do so.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have feet, you insensitive clod!

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[fisted]

Thanks for summarizing the summary.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[ShanghaiBill]

For example, the situation many years ago in Iowa where the hydraulics failed and the pilot had to steer the plane using only the engine throttles is an example of something that no computer system is designed to do. Yet a veteran pilot managed to pull it off.

That veteran pilot was a passenger that just happened to be on the plane. 99% of pilots would not have been able to pull it off. So what should we do about that?

Option 1: Train 100,000 pilots on a difficult technique that they will likely never use.

Option 2: Have one programmer sit down with that veteran pilot and code up the technique, test it on a simulator, test it on a real plane, and then use a USB thumb drive to update all flight control software on every plane.

automation is not designed to handle extreme failures of the aircraft.

It should be. One of the lessons of TMI was that automating routine stuff only leads to disaster because operators lose the skills they need to handle emergencies. The "extreme failures" are the first thing that should be automated, because those are the events that pilots are least capable of handling properly. ABS in cars is a good example of this. Nobody needs ABS to slow down for a routine traffic light. But ABSes have saved many lives when drivers slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision, or started slipping on ice.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

More automation already means that the pilots gain less experience, including in unforeseen circumstances. That was exactly what the AF447 crew ran into. The juniors didn't catch on and when the old man finally got back, he didn't gain oversight in time either. A veteran pilot would've been able to pull the thing out of its deathly course, provided he'd known what was going on. Worse, the automation will mean there will be less pilots of such veteran ability around.

So this is a bit of a turning point. More automation, and then better work hard on making it able to handle as many situations as possible, not just the common ones. Then give it full authority. Or more emphasis on pilot training, and having them fly often so they keep current. The middle way would be both, which is probably harder to do well.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[TheNastyInThePasty]

The summary states that the report calls for more manual flying in the air, though. Which means using less automation. This seems like the wrong way to go about it since it gives more chances for human error. It seems to me that the better solution would be more mandatory yearly simulation time with simulations focusing on how to properly handle auto pilot failures. That way, you keep the pilots in practice without making the passengers any less safe.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[UnknowingFool]

That veteran pilot was a passenger that just happened to be on the plane. 99% of pilots would not have been able to pull it off. So what should we do about that?

That's not exactly the full crux of what happened. The DC10 had two pilots and one engineer. There was another pilot who happened to be a flight instructor that happened to be a passenger and he went up to the cockpit to assist when the plane lost hydraulics. From my understanding the instructor provided assistance by controlling the throttle but didn't take over. Could the crew have handled themselves? Who knows.

Dennis E. Fitch, an off-duty United Airlines DC-10 flight instructor, was seated in the first class section and, noticing the crew were having trouble controlling the airplane, offered his assistance to the flight attendants. Upon being informed that there was a DC-10 instructor on board, Haynes immediately invited him to the cockpit, hoping his instructional knowledge of the aircraft would help them regain control. Upon entering the cockpit and looking at the hydraulic gauges, Fitch determined that the situation was beyond anything he had ever faced. . . Haynes, still trying to fly the airplane with his control column while simultaneously working the throttles, asked Fitch to work the throttles instead.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Joce640k]

If you read the summary, you'll notice one of the big problems is when that automation fails. It's great when it removes human error, but if automation fails, you still want human error as minimal as possible...

When automation fails the humans are supposed to get in radio contact with the ground and reach for the book of checklists. The "Top Gun" style of piloting where they switch off the autopilot and start heaving at the controls really, really doesn't apply outside of the cinema.

Even in the Hudson River incident the passengers might have been better off if the pilot had made it a bit further down the checklist and hit the "ditch switch" to close valves and air vents underneath the aircraft. They're designed to keep it floating a bit longer. The "water landing" checklist was designed for descent from higher altitudes with more time available, he never completed it.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a lot cheaper to automate everything and pay a pilot less to nothing to fly the plan. You will probably decreasingly see pilots with the skill necessary to handle those kind of failures. This is why I do not fly, they cut corners to pass the savings onto the customer. Paying for a better pilot for that one in a million situation where you might crash and burn horribly obviously isn't that big a deal if it means you pay less for a ticket.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a lot cheaper to automate everything and pay a pilot next to nothing to fly the plane. You will probably decreasingly see pilots with the skill necessary to handle those kind of failures. This is why I do not fly, they cut corners to pass the savings onto the customer. Paying for a better pilot for that one in a million situation where you might crash and burn horribly obviously isn't that big a deal if it means you pay less for a ticket.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[tibit]

It's not about staying in practice. The problem is much more immediate. In order to interact with any system when you're to be part of the control loop, your brain needs to be preset for control. That means you need to know and feel exactly in what state is the system you're going to take control over. It's very hard to maintain this awareness if you're not actually controlling the process. You need to be ahead of the plane, so to speak.

This very same problem is present in all of man-machine interaction when control tasks are involved. This is the reason, for example, that "taking over" a self-driving car while it is underway is pointless: you need to be pretty much driving the car without actually driving it - so you might as well be the driver without the self-driving brouhaha. Otherwise by the time you figure what's going on, you'll be dead. You can only take over a self-driving car when it's stopped. Even then you'll be quite likely to get lost or to execute a wrong turn/maneouver since you're unlikely to know where you are - unless you're on a road you frequent.

What it really boils down to is something else entirely: people use "common sense" to judge things that they have zero experience with. If you ask "common sense", it would be "cool" to have self-flying planes, self-driving cars, etc. But common sense is precisely the wrong one to make judgment about such things. Reality is quite far from common sense, until you had a chance to experience it just so. The common-sense widely-spread non-specialist thinking about self-controlling systems is usually wildly off-base. Reality is under no obligation to make sense to anyone, so to speak. Thus some things that should be "common-sense-easy" are very far from being so. Self-controlling systems often bring with them a whole lot of extra issues that nobody had any idea of until they've faced them. Aviation industry has only recently went out of automation-related self-denial. 20 years after it was all understood. That's the risk of relying on common sense over facts.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Joce640k]

What about all those times when a 'veteran pilot' farked up badly and crashed the 'plane?

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[gmack]

It also doesn't help that in some cases the change is rather jarring and the problem has gotten even worse now that the systems are fly by wire.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone stole my shoes and I felt bad because I had no shioes. Then I met a man who had no feet.

"Lucky bastard," I said, "He doesn't even need shoes!"

More seriously for the GP, while that of course reduces "human error", it also potentially removes the "human common sense" element.

To quote Pogo, "common sense ain't so common."

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Oceanplexian]

If it were so easy to just automate extreme failures, websites like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would go down a lot less often. Unfortunately despite thousands of employees with extreme technical skill, there are still mistakes that bring them down from time-to-time. If we didn't have human SREs or System Administrators, things would be a lot worse. A computer doesn't have the analytics skill of a pilot and never will unless we end up with a singularity.

We don't have strong AI yet and pilots will never just "sit down with a programmer". Automation has to be tested thousands of times across thousands of scenarios in different aircraft and conditions for decades. Even then, there's always the chance that some snippet of code is waiting to kill a plane full of people because it got the wrong set of sensor inputs.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Option 2: Have one programmer sit down with that veteran pilot and code up the technique, test it on a simulator, test it on a real plane, and then use a USB thumb drive to update all flight control software on every plane.

Oh yes, that's right. They all simply forgot to reference the master list of absolutely every combination of absolutely everything that could go wrong in real life, and code up all the entries on it. Thanks for pointing out that oversight, genius!

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Automation fails from time to time, and when it does, pilots are the failsafe. But to be able to do that, they need to stay in practice, and that's the problem being highlighted here: they're getting so little time in control that they're getting out of shape.

Right, build or contract a small fleet of trainers (perhaps twin turboprops or two seaters trainers like PC.7s or Tucanos or even set aside an old 737 or something in that class) and make these people fly their ass off once in a while. I'm sure simulators are great learning tools but there is no substitute for taking a plane up and actually practicing things like: engine restarts, flying on one engine, simulating an emergency descent after a rapid decompression or just boning up on basic aerobatics (the value of practical experience is one of a number of reasons the military hasn't replaced exercises like Maple Flag with simulater-only LAN partys). That should take care of any 'bureaucratification' problems your pilots are suffering from.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[MrChips]

Likewise, the automation is not designed to handle extreme failures of the aircraft. For example, the situation many years ago in Iowa where the hydraulics failed and the pilot had to steer the plane using only the engine throttles is an example of something that no computer system is designed to do. Yet a veteran pilot managed to pull it off.

This scenario has happen several times and the pilots have not always been successful at control via engine throttle only. But an autopilot program has been developed now that can do a much better job than the human pilots. See Propulsion Controlled Aircraft.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some People Go With Rips in Their Shoes...
Until Some Stop Going

- Cornelis

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or not even extreme failures

For example an Asia Airways pilot visually landing at SFO because the electronic aids are down for maintenance.

The pilot needs to be able to recognize when things are not right and deal with it
        A pilot without a basic stick and rudder understanding/skill in flying can't always do this.
        A pilot without an understanding of his airplane can't always do this.

The pilot at SFO was not able to recognize that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time at the wrong speed during landing.
      Lots of hours managing the automatic systems flying the airplane.
        Not enough time actually flying the airplane.

       

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

That veteran pilot was a passenger that just happened to be on the plane. 99% of pilots would not have been able to pull it off. So what should we do about that?

Option 1: Train 100,000 pilots on a difficult technique that they will likely never use.

Option 2: Have one programmer sit down with that veteran pilot and code up the technique, test it on a simulator, test it on a real plane, and then use a USB thumb drive to update all flight control software on every plane.

Option 3: Do both (1) and (2).

It will take many years to cover all scenarios in the software, and while we may make to to completely auto-flying planes, we still need pilots until. So as the software gets better and better, the pilots will be trained on more and more obscure corner cases (in addition to the routine stuff).

Currently two pilots are mandated for complicated / big aircraft, but as the software improves to handle more situations, that may go down to only one in a decade or two. And then, maybe, to none.

It's not an either/or choice IMHO.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[dave420]

He kinda pulled it off. Loads of people died in a fireball cartwheeling down a runway and through some corn fields. Some pilots flying over Iraq, on the other hand, did the same in a far more modern plane (a cargo jet), and landed safely.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[michelcolman]

NASA has actually conducted tests with special flight control software that can fly the aircraft using only differential engine power, even in some cases with an engine inoperative. It performed beautifully, much better than a human pilot could. But this is just one of the many unexpected things that can happen to an airplane (and extremely rare at that). You can't program everything into the systems, you still need basic on the spot common sense surprisingly often. As an airline pilot, I can't tell you how many times I've had to keep the plane's automation from doing something completely stupid because of some malfunction in the software.

People often cite the statistic saying that most accidents are caused by pilot error, but those don't include the huge number of malfunctions of automation that were corrected by the pilots and therefore did NOT end up in the statistics.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[bored_engineer]

Read the third paragraph of this article. It looks like it's been managed in at least a limited case. The article doesn't mention whether it's gone farther than a limited test case, though.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[bored_engineer]

That should be "the third paragraph of the section of the article. . ."

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[dryeo]

Sometimes there are failures that aren't on the checklist. The Gimli glider comes to mind where they ran out of gas at 35000 ft. When the all engines out alarm went off, they reached for the checklist and discovered there was no entry as it wasn't supposed to happen. With all engines out they lost all electrical and hydraulic pressure and were informed that a 777 can't glide. Luckily the captain was an accomplished glider pilot and the co-pilot knew of an abandoned airfield and with luck they landed without killing any passengers or people picnicking on the runway (it was being used for car racing) and through luck they picked the least occupied runway and the nose gear failing stopped them quicker then the brakes could.
Imagine being on the ground when suddenly a silent airliner lands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_glider

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[lesincompetent]

Likewise, the automation is not designed to handle extreme failures of the aircraft.

I beg to differ. Even though i'm unable to find it on the net i distinctly remember that after the crash of UA232 (total hydraulics failure) a system was developed (but not installed, as it was deemed too costly) that could land a DC-10 in those extreme circumstances.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Savage-Rabbit]

If it were so easy to just automate extreme failures, websites like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would go down a lot less often. Unfortunately despite thousands of employees with extreme technical skill, there are still mistakes that bring them down from time-to-time. If we didn't have human SREs or System Administrators, things would be a lot worse. A computer doesn't have the analytics skill of a pilot and never will unless we end up with a singularity.

We don't have strong AI yet and pilots will never just "sit down with a programmer". Automation has to be tested thousands of times across thousands of scenarios in different aircraft and conditions for decades. Even then, there's always the chance that some snippet of code is waiting to kill a plane full of people because it got the wrong set of sensor inputs.

Which is why I will never get on a plane unless there is a pilot to switch off the AI if it goes haywire and fly the aircraft old-school. Furthermore I will never trust my well being to an AI driven car. With a plane at least there are a couple of minutes to react if the AI goes ape-shit before you run out of sky, with a AI driven car it's perhaps 10 seconds if you are lucky before you get T-boned by a truck and become a slimy red coating on the inside of a car wreck. I am still on the fence about AI driven trains.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[dcw3]

Actually, it is, and this is the reason that the FAA has requirements for pilots to remain current. They're required to execute a minimum number of take-offs and landings. And any training program worth a shit gives them simulator time, and practice with emergency procedures. I haven't sat in the controls in 20+ years, but maybe these guys aren't getting enough practice now.

Your example with a car is irrelevant. Cars are not planes, and you don't have to stop the plane to take over from an auto-pilot. Frequently, in an aircraft, you'll have more time to figure things out than in an automobile. You don't have to deal with trees, pedestrians, or other solid objects until you get close to the ground.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[dywolf]

air france 447.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[tibit]

What I meant by "it's not about staying in practice" was that the issue with automation has to do with things that happen on a much smaller time scale. It didn't mean that staying in practice is irrelevant. Is is relevant, but you need more than that. Practice demonstrably isn't sufficient in itself.

The only difference between a plane and a car is that the time scales may happen to be two or three orders of magnitude different, if you're lucky. Autopilot disconnect-related CFIT is a classical example of what I'm talking about. By the time the pilot figures out that his idea of what's going on (we're in a safe, controlled flight on autopilot) differs from reality (CFIT-in-progress), it's too late, or there's sufficient panic that has set in that the control responses are not what you've been trained for either (stall recovery, spin recovery, etc.).

It doesn't matter that the pilot has more time to figure it out. They are unaware of their own mental model's divergence from reality. In spite of having been given all that time, they still CFIT because they think they're on autopilot. You'd think this would be pretty obvious, but there's one insidious thing. If you're unaware of it, it will eventually kill you. Your brain's sampling of the state of the environment is highly dependent on how confident one is in their own model's accuracy. If things "feel" like everything is the way you imagine it should be, you'll be tricked by your own brain into "seeing" made-up instrument readings, your sensitivity to increased wind noise will be diminished, etc. I'm dead serious. It takes awareness of this pitfall to be able to force oneself to see how it really is, to make your brain not trick you. When you don't, and you're a pilot, usually a couple hundred people perish with you. This is happening over and over, it's sickening. The reason why it happens with such regularity is that we're dealing with a basic property of our brain's visual interaction with the environment. It's not widely appreciated in nonspecialist circles, unfortunately. We're almost all "broken" like that.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you would know better than the FAA, which has ushered in not only an unimaginably safe flying environment, but has more practical experience and success dealing with complex systems failure analysis and prediction (from the nuts and bolts all the way to human interaction) than any other organization in the world?

The FAA is in many ways a modern marvel, on par with the moon landing.

That's not to say it doesn't have it's faults, or you can't have a legitimate disagreement with their decisions. Heck, many economists would argue that flying is _too_ safe relative to the costs, notwithstanding that the FAA has achieved a ridiculous safety margin given the net costs imposed.

But whenever the FAA decides something that seems not obvious or intuitive, your first, second, and third instinct should be that you're probably wrong.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gimli was a 767-200, not a 777

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The flight computer doesn't have to be perfect, just better than the average human pilot, at handling an emergency. Statically the fatality rate will go down. Unfortunately I think many pilots will turn it off thinking they are better than the average, just as the majority of car drivers think they are above average at driving.

As far as AI goes, I think we're making good progress. IBM's Watson diagnoses lung cancer better than human doctors, 90% versus 50%. A significant advantage is that as an AI learns it would be able to share experience seamlessly for others to learn from, especially experiences that lead to the "death" of the AI device as the black-box could store that as well.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[dryeo]

Yes, typo on my part. Thanks

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Paul Jakma]

"ABSes have saved many lives when drivers slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision, or started slipping on ice." [citation needed]

If anything, the evidence is somewhat to the contrary. Studies on taxis with and without ABS (the cabs are otherwise very similar vehicles), showed that ABS equipped cars did not have lower accident rates overall. Indeed, certain types of accidents, e.g. in snow, where significantly higher for ABS equipped cars. Cite:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rI4c24VTriEC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=Aschenbrenner+and+Biehl+ABS&source=bl&ots=RgRKvw7Qnx&sig=1hNW1rAyzlSw5hpcGjgFnpn4Qpc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3xmPUrDcOYX40gXHm4DYDw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Paul Jakma]

Bear in mind, the captain was responsible for some of the mistakes that led to them running out of fuel in mid-air in the first place.

Re:Why put the automation in if not to use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Understanding and preparing for this is the key to creating systems where the pilot can take over in an emergency. Systems must be designed to show the required context to identify the situation instead of simply dumping the input data on an unprepared human. Consider the humble pitot tube, when that fails or is blocked the pilot needs to know that airspeed measurements are no longer reliable and what the current safety margins are based on the last recorded airspeed and altitude. This must be presented clearly, unambiguously and without superfluous information. The pilot needs the traditional instruments to fly with but until he knows what the aircraft is currently doing they have little value.

In the SIMULATOR?

[jcr]

Wait, what? Why in the world would someone use the auto pilot in a simulator? Isn't the whole point of the simulator to let the pilot get more stick time without the fuel cost?

-jcr

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[ALeader71]

It depends on the simulation. If you are training for a cross oceanic flight, you would simulate switching out flight crews and long periods where you would normally use auto pilot. The simulation would toss various problems at you to break up what is normally a dry, boring routine so you know how to handle different problems.

Personally, I think we're just a few years away from a fully automatic flying experience.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in the world would someone use the auto pilot in a simulator?

That's not what the article is saying. It says that the pilots should do more manual flying in real planes, and more flying in simulators. Both would strengthen the skills.

Anyway, there are situations in which you would want to have your autopilot fly in a simulator: When you want to test your autopilot before you put it into a real plane, or, if it failed on a real flight, to determine why it failed.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[canadiannomad]

Personally, I think we're just a few years away from a fully automatic flying experience.

Me too. Honestly I can't imagine a human surviving as many crashes as our black boxes have.. The combined learning from all of those, as well as the automation we already have ought to be able to out perform a human right to the last moment, when human pilots may have been incapacitated by movements or G-forces. We are getting better and better at explaining to these moving robots how to handle themselves in all sorts of crazy situations.

Just think about the Google Car that has to handle far crazier things then you would ever encounter in the air or on a landing strip. Even impromptu landing strips could be better judged by a computer with all the sensors at its disposal. (And it would be better able to analyze all the data then any human in a panic.)

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

What really twists my noodle is the knowledge that a new pilot, after completing sim training, fly's a real airliner for the first time on a normal commercial flight with a full load of passengers.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Shinobi]

A human can get an appreciation of velocity even without working pitot tubes, in a middle of a weather system where GPS doesn't work. The flight computer can't handle that, which is why it disconnected and warned in the case of the Air France flight.

In the case of the Hudson River landing, bird strikes took out both engines simultaneously, killing power. Pilot manually switched over to APU. Ironically however, in that case, the computer helped the pilot ditch the plane safely, once it had power again. With just the pilot, or just the flight computers, there would most likely have been dead people in the water.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most future pilots can only dream of training to the level of the famous blue angels (usaf stunt-team),

The Blue Angels are the Navy demonstration team. The USAF demonstration team are called the Thunderbirds.

Having your facts straight may go a long way in not being labeled an ignorant kook for your conspiracy theories. Just saying.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[SJHillman]

It's kind of expensive to put them in an empty commercial plane just for training. That's why they usually have a more experienced pilot in charge who can take over if necessary. And the argument of having them fly a plane that's not full goes against the "every life is precious" philosophy that most western countries embrace. Sooner or later, they have to make the leap.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[canadiannomad]

I see no reason why a computer couldn't use visual clues and alternate sensors to detect velocity.. These may have been harder in the past, but certainly possible with today's technology.

I also see no reason why a computer couldn't visually see broken engines and do an emergency maneuver.

I also see no reason why a computer couldn't learn from the Hudson landing and be able to do similar maneuvers.

I see the pilot being needed at this time, but I also see that in the not too distant future a computer could do a better job then the original.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[91degrees]

There are two pilots. I may be wrong here, but one of the pilots will presumably have actual flying experience. And even a pilot who has never flown that specfic type of plane before will have plenty of experience flying large planes.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Why in the world would someone use the auto pilot in a simulator?

1) automatic pilots are complex instruments and pilots need training with those too.
2) you have to train pilots to spot autopilot errors and mistakes and take corrective action.

It's definitely dangerous to take an unexperienced(for example at the start of training) pilot and put him in the difficult conditions when the above training is really needed, there are no extra safety margins in certain bad weather conditions.

For example zero visibility instrumental landings are made on full autopilot, but the pilots need to be trained to take over from the autopilot safely in case of any kind of malfunction even at the very last minute. This is a dangerous thing to simulate in a real plane with unexperienced pilots at the commands, pilots are allowed to perform this on real planes in simulated conditions only after proving proficient in simulators.

There are a lot more examples I could list, but they all in fact are variations of point 1 and 2.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

A human can get an appreciation of velocity even without working pitot tubes, in a middle of a weather system where GPS doesn't work. The flight computer can't handle that, which is why it disconnected and warned in the case of the Air France flight.

The flight computer can't handle that yet. I mean, where comes the human's appreciation of velocity from? Well, three sources: Experience (which is just collected data), knowledge of physical relations (that's the easiest thing to program in), and experience from the senses (which is essentially sensor data). Nothing which could not be replicated in software. The point is that the computer would have to be programmed to estimate missing data from one sensor from available data from other sensors (and also simple check routines to estimate the reliability of data; but I guess they are already built in, to know when to give up control to the pilot). The more sensors are available, the better.

In the case of the Hudson River landing, bird strikes took out both engines simultaneously, killing power. Pilot manually switched over to APU.

Well, for that step, you'd not need a trained pilot, a standard technician would suffice. Indeed, probably it could even be automated, with a separate low-power computer running on battery which starts the APU as soon as the normal power fails. Actually, on a completely autonomous plane I could even imagine the APU running all the time, to prevent the computer to ever be without power.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Shinobi]

What alternate sensors, that aren't already in use? GPS? Far less reliable than pitot tubes, due to weather, and that's just one example. Come on, practical engineering please, and not crackpipe dreaming....

And the systems to see the broken engines would be powered by what? Also, the emergency maneuvers have to be programmed in, based on human experience. Humans also have the advantage of being able to generalise and abstracting, able to adapt from one situation to fit into another situation more or less on the fly.

Hudson landing, until the pilot activated the APU, the flight computer was crippled.

Let's face it, automated cars is a fundamentally easier to solve problem, due to far fewer variables and complications, and weaker forces involved.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

What really twists my noodle is the knowledge that a new pilot, after completing sim training, fly's a real airliner for the first time on a normal commercial flight with a full load of passengers.

In which case it should twist your noodle even more that someone learning to drive gets into a car on a normal road from day one without even simulator training.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Shinobi]

"The flight computer can't handle that yet. I mean, where comes the human's appreciation of velocity from? Well, three sources: Experience (which is just collected data), knowledge of physical relations (that's the easiest thing to program in), and experience from the senses (which is essentially sensor data). Nothing which could not be replicated in software. The point is that the computer would have to be programmed to estimate missing data from one sensor from available data from other sensors (and also simple check routines to estimate the reliability of data; but I guess they are already built in, to know when to give up control to the pilot). The more sensors are available, the better."

The computer is already programmed to use multiple sensors, such as multiple pitot tubes for example. Despite research, pitot tubes are still the most reliable sensors we have for this application, GPS is way too unreliable. And in case of Air France, all 3 pitot tubes froze over, making the flight computer completely blind(And forget about GPS or other radio based navigational aid in the weather they were in, in the region they were in...)

Also, experience is not just collected data. Experience is the knowledge extracted through sifting and analysis of the collected data, and perhaps generalised and abstracted upon also, to possibly be adapted in whole or part to other situations. A rookie trooper that's gone through training has collected lots of data. But the trooper is still completely inexperienced until he or she has been through the real deal, and seen what works, what didn't work, how it worked, and what can be learned from it. Same thing with pilots. To equate a pilots decision making, you'd need a beefy cluster to handle the expert system, image recognition, processing all the sensor data to give better spatial awareness, and recognize for example an improvised landing strip that is suitable.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[I'm New Around Here]

Personally, I think we're just a few years away from a fully automatic flying experience.

No, there will always be guild navigators. The spice must flow.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many cases where you would want to use the autopilot in the simulator.

First off, is getting familiar with how to properly use the autopilot's controls, which include not only heading and altitude, but speed (Autopilot and Autothrottle).
Since each airliner's systems differ, practice would be needed to get familiar with where the functions are for that aircraft type (think systems admin learning a new server appliance).

Second is using autopilot to allow the airplane to fly, while you troubleshoot a failure (such as landing gear not deploying, or having to rerprogram the navigation system to an alternate airport due to weather).

Third is to set up a 'normal' condition (on autopilot) so the instructor can provide autopilot failures, such as a trim runaway, sensor failure, or partial autopilot failure, and make sure the pilot knows how the remaining automatic systems will react when part of them is not working.

I'm sure there are a lot of other cases that the sim would be on autopilot.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[I'm New Around Here]

What alternate sensors, that aren't already in use?

The ones they can develop and add to the plane in a few years. Not something already on the plane for some other function.

I'm guessing that's what he meant.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[LVSlushdat]

Let's face it, automated cars is a fundamentally easier to solve problem, due to far fewer variables and complications, and weaker forces involved.

Cars=moving in X and Y axis... Aircraft=moving in X, Y AND Z axis...

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[fisted]

I see no reason why a computer couldn't use visual clues and alternate sensors to detect velocity.. These may have been harder in the past, but certainly possible with today's technology.

Check.

I also see no reason why a computer couldn't visually see broken engines and do an emergency maneuver.

Check.

I also see no reason why a computer couldn't learn from the Hudson landing and be able to do similar maneuvers.

No. We are unlikely to see that before someone comes up with strong A.I.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[IndustrialComplex]

And the systems to see the broken engines would be powered by what? Also, the emergency maneuvers have to be programmed in, based on human experience. Humans also have the advantage of being able to generalise and abstracting, able to adapt from one situation to fit into another situation more or less on the fly.

If you are to the point where your engines are broken, and you have completely lost power so much that the FCS is down, I'm not quite sure how much any pilot is going to be able to help you on a large aircraft. He couldn't even get on the intercom to tell people to 'smoke em if they got em' if it reached the level of bad you are describing.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[ImdatS]

In fact, an Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) need at least 1,500 hours of practical, i.e. non-simulator flying experience before they can become one. A commercial airline pilot (level below ATP), needs at least 250 hours. And that's not to say "... in his lifetime ...", there are even more restrictions.

Yes, they usually do ALSO train in simulators, but the hours required here must be actual plane-flying.
The problem with long-distance flights is though that most of the time there is really nothing to do for pilot once the plane reaches the cruising altitude and auto-pilot is on (even on smaller planes). You have to watch the skies, the instruments, listen to radio - and that's it. Most of the work is done during take-off and landing (approach).

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[fisted]

Damn it, this is chicken-egg. What about the first pilot ever?!

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Shinobi]

Don't forget about wind moving in X, Y and Z, ambient temperature, ambient pressure, humidity, precipitation, other objects moving in X, Y AND Z. And as I said, the forces involved in an aircraft flight are greater.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[LVSlushdat]

What really twists my noodle is the knowledge that a new pilot, after completing sim training, fly's a real airliner for the first time on a normal commercial flight with a full load of passengers.

Yeah, but that *new* pilot has several hundred hours of flight time (ie: Commercial pilots license by FAA, PLUS an instrument rating, certifying he's able to fly safely in the soup) in other aircraft before an airline will even talk to him.. He trains for MANY in that full-motion simulator for the type aircraft he will fly for the airline before he ever sits in the right seat (First Officer)....

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Shinobi]

Read up on and watch a few documentaries about the Hudson River crash landing

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

APU sure sounds like a battery to me..... I think they already have those, and can even turn them on when generators fail! Wow, I know!

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Joe_Dragon]

And what if the auto land system (on the ground) is off / not working right then what does the auto airline do?

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of that has already been mostly modelled for existing autopilot systems.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first pilot (Wilbur Wright) ended up fine. But the second one did get himself involved in a fatal plane crash within his first few years.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Human understanding of velocity can easily get out of whack. It relies on vestibular and visual cueing to determine orientation. Vestibular cuing can easily get reset to something wrong without a correlating visual cue.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Shinobi]

Keyword there being "mostly".

Also, far more extensive than an automated car would need.

The thing is, the aircraft autopilots are not AI's, and are tasked with routine tasks such as stabilising the plane, maintaining a level course etc. Adding decision making beyond "sensor data unavailable, alert pilot and disengage" would require you to carry a cluster on board, and a beefy expert system at the very least, preferably an AI....

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[rmstar]

Let's face it, automated cars is a fundamentally easier to solve problem, due to far fewer variables and complications, and weaker forces involved.

Cars=moving in X and Y axis... Aircraft=moving in X, Y AND Z axis...

AND on top of it, it has to keep moving at a speed above some minimum velocity with respect to the surrounding air. A car can just stop. It may be dangerous, but not as much as when a plane just stops in the middle of the air.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

The computer is already programmed to use multiple sensors, such as multiple pitot tubes for example. Despite research, pitot tubes are still the most reliable sensors we have for this application, GPS is way too unreliable. And in case of Air France, all 3 pitot tubes froze over, making the flight computer completely blind(And forget about GPS or other radio based navigational aid in the weather they were in, in the region they were in...)

And you think the pilot's appreciation of velocity was as precise as the pitot tubes? I strongly doubt it.

Not to mention that GPS is hardly the only data available. There's inertial navigation. There's ATC. There's the data from the engines. And there's data of how the plane reacts on the steering maneuvers. And probably a large number of other data sources. And, of course, the last readings from the pitot tubes before they failed.

Of course as long as you have functioning pitot tubes, the computer should use that for getting the velocity (but also track the other data, so it can do better error estimation when the pitot tubes are failing). But there's no reason why the computer shouldn't be able to fallback to other data when the pitot tubes are no longer available. After all, it's exactly what the pilot does when he "appreciates" the velocity.

That it isn't implemented in current systems doesn't mean it couldn't be implemented. However it would cost money to do so, therefore as long as is isn't considered necessary (because, after all, it's a rare case and there's a pilot which can take over if necessary) it won't get implemented.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[internerdj]

GPS Landing (if available), go around, holding pattern, divert to another runway or another airfield. Depends on the amount of warning, the projected time to repair, and the availability of resources. Crazy thing is the airline industry has done a lot of work making sure that problems don't end with catastrophy. The problem would be if the system itself failed, but there have been times when the squishy flight controllers have all failed as well.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[bickerdyke]

I think automated cars would have to cope with far MORE variables and complications.

Planes receive a unique flightplan and detailed instructions for take of and landing that are steered by a central traffic control to make sure that there won't be any other planes nearby. Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them.

So basically, automated planes would not need to consider other planes. They do in a rather simple way (TCASS) but only as a last line of defense. And even if that emergency system triggers, it sends one plane "up" and the other "down", which are obviously no evasion options for cars. (And blindly going "left" and "right" aren't options either as usually on roads, you have to expect curbs, trenches, more cars in more lanes or pedestrians)

Additionally, all information needed for a plane is already available in electronic maps. Pilots hardly have to react to speed limits posted on traffic signs. (Which my be dirty or partly shielded and all that stuff)

The final proof is even in the summary: We already have commercial airplanes that fly almost completly automated! (having to touch the actual controls no more than 5 times between NY and London is almost completly automatic!) whereas automated cars were unthinkable untill a few years ago and today they're not completly from "experimental" to "testing" stages.

But there is ONE THING that makes autonomous cars safer than planes: Cutting of the engine is a safe failure mode. (Espescially if it can be propagated to surrounding cars by radio, so blindly jumping out of your exploding Tesla onto a busy highway is rather safe when information about an emergency stop has been broadcasted to the cars around and they stop, too)

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Shinobi]

Human appreciation is good enough, compared to completely frozen over pitot tubes.

Inertial navigation without input from reliable sensors is useless. If your Inertial navigation systems last received input with a good tailwind, and suddenly you get a strong wind from front and left, but your sensors can't catch that, your Inertial Navigation is worth 0. ATC? Air France Flight 447 was out of range of ATC, and the storm was essentially blocking that anyway. Engine data? Pointless without other data to correlate it with

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

And those other objects are exactly what makes autonomous cars more difficult. It is very unlikely that a kid is playing ball just besides your air corridor, with the ball suddenly going into your way, followed by the kid. Your air corridor also isn't surrounded by parking cars between which pedestrians can unexpectedly walk into your way. Also the number of traffic signs and traffic lights which you have to detect, to distinguish from other, irrelevant stuff around you, and to correctly interpret, turns out to be vastly lower in the air.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[tibit]

A human can get an appreciation of velocity even without working pitot tubes, in a middle of a weather system where GPS doesn't work.

Sorry buddy, you've just killed yourself in exactly the same way the AF pilots killed themselves. Oh the irony. NEXT STUDENT, PLEASE.

Seriously. Your seat-of-the-pants "feel" for a modern jet is precisely what is going to kill you. So let me be clear: if you ever end up as an untrained babbling idiot in a cockpit of a jetliner, trying to save a bunch of souls while the air data is missing, you better keep it straight and level and not mess with anything until you've read the checklists. After you do, and you better be quick about it, you'll know that what you're supposed to do is to set the throttles to a fixed position that depends solely on altitude and desired rate of climb/descent. You'll look those up in a fucking table, and as long as you do, you have a chance to make it. There's going full retard, and it's you.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[internerdj]

Just strongly? Why do you think that you have to be instrument rated for flying in poor visibility. Human velocity sense is adapted for the ground. There are all sorts of things that can go wrong when flying if you just rely on your own senses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_illusions_in_aviation

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[tibit]

It wouldn't be called an auxiliary power unit if it was a battery, it'd be called, you know, a fucking battery. An APU is usually a small gas-turbine-powered generator. That same turbine can also power a hydraulic pump. Many planes also have a wind turbine that can be deployed if you're out of fuel. This turbine IIRC usually drives a generator that can power an electric hydraulic pump, or it includes both a generator and a small hydraulic pump.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[tibit]

In case of loss of air data, the computer is actually precisely just what the doctor ordered. That's because the emergency procedure amounts to a look up of throttle settings in, well, a look-up table. Precisely what computers are great at. So far, the look-up tables come printed out in a checklist for human perusal. No reason at all why humans have to deal with such shit, if you ask me. Heck, the human-targeted look-up table is necessarily abridged, you don't want dealing with no 100-page tables in an emergency thank you so much. The one for automation's perusal could be much larger and take more factors into account (current weight, outside temperature, etc.).

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[dunkelfalke]

One of the more frequent causes for a deadly airplane crash is a spatial disorientation of the pilot. The vestibular system is distorted in flight and if the visibility is low, there is no chance for a human to determine the current position in space without instruments.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[TheRaven64]

With a ground-pointing camera and an estimation of altitude you can use feature detection to get a moderately accurate estimate of speed. This won't work if you're above the clouds, but if you are then doing the same thing with the clouds will give you a rough estimate of air speed, as clouds are approximately stationary relative to the air that contains them.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

The key trick that makes it easier to automate trains and cars than planes or even boats is that if you turn off the power on a train or car it will stop and very soon become inert and quite safe. The passengers are inconvenienced but they aren't dead. So when the computer is confused and can't figure out what to do, it can always just turn everything off and wait for help to arrive. On a plane if you turn off the power you will fall out of the sky, and even in a boat if you turn off the power you are helpless against tides and winds and may soon crash into something.

One part of this is braking. On a train the brakes are so fail-safe that almost everything that could possibly go wrong causes brakes to be applied. If the driving cab is severely damaged the brakes will apply, if one or more carriages are separated the brakes will apply, if the power fails the brakes will apply, and so on. You can't effectively brake a plane in this way, and on boats the available "braking" is very limited, you can deploy an anchor but if you check the math you'll see why anchors are really intended to keep a boat from moving about too much in a sheltered port, not slow it down at sea.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[dave420]

Don't forget that a bunch of pilots have had that exact "benefit" of being able to judge speed screw them over when they refused to believe the instruments and didn't take action to prevent their plane slamming into the ground. It does work both ways. Planes are getting better and better, and pilots simply are not.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[michelcolman]

And in case of Air France, all 3 pitot tubes froze over, making the flight computer completely blind

And you think the pilot's appreciation of velocity was as precise as the pitot tubes? I strongly doubt it.

The same type of incident with pitots freezing over had already happened several times in the past, and was on those occasions correctly handled by the crew, avoiding a crash.

Also, not all of the automation had failed, some of it (especially aural warnings) were still working and actually misleading the pilots. And for some reason the plane kept trimming up, which was exactly what they didn't need. It's not as clear cut as it would seem from certain summaries.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

A human can get an appreciation of velocity even without working pitot tubes, in a middle of a weather system where GPS doesn't work. The flight computer can't handle that, which is why it disconnected and warned in the case of the Air France flight.

OMFG you're clueless! You should read the report - and especially the transcript with commentary - before commenting. The co-pilot was constantly concerned that they were going too fast when the reality was exactly the opposite - in practice his perception was an order of magnitude wrong. He's concerned about the aircraft disintegrating due to overspeed since that's what he mistakes the buffeting as and says "we must have some crazy speed" Human beings are completely useless accelerometers. Not only did Air France decide not to replace the pitot tubes immediately when Airbus told them to but instead as part of their routine maintenance but they also saved costs by originally ordering the aircraft without an optional AOA Indicator and an option for speed approximation, which the computer bases on instruments that are working.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[bmajik]

But there is ONE THING that makes autonomous cars safer than planes: Cutting of the engine is a safe failure mode.

Yes. Fully autonomous flying is fine as long as nothing brakes.

Part of what made the AF crash such a high-stakes affair is that jetliners (AF included) fly up in "coffin corner".

Basically, if you draw a graph where the x-axis is airspeed, and the y-axis is altitude, and plot where the safe alt+airspeed boundaries are, you get a triangle. The far right of the triangle is basically a vertical line -- the maximum allowable velocity of the airframe is basically constant. The triangle starts "near" the origin. And the hypotenuse goes from near the origin to the point of "max speed, max altitude".

It is this point of "max speed, max altitude" that is the coffin corner. The closer you get to that point, the smaller your safe region is. This is because the higher you fly, the faster you HAVE to go in order to maintain sufficient lift in thin air.

It's called "coffin corner" because too fast means an airframe overspeed, and too slow means a stall. Both of these kill you. The coffin gets tighter the closer to maxalt/maxspeed you get.

Of course, the engines get more fuel efficient the further into coffin corner you go. Fuel efficiency is how you make money in this business. So guess where you're going to fly the plane for 10 straight hours.

So, you're flying along at 36,000 feet. Your permissible airspeed range is plus or minus 10kts. Seriously. Then the computers suddenly don't know how fast you're going any more. Whatever they were doing to control your airspeed, attitude, and altitude... they are no longer doing.

You are in coffin corner, you're completely blind, and you have no margin for error.

In the case of the Airbus glass cockpit, the controls have gone into full authority mode (computer isn't smart enough to limit you to a safe flight program), and the electronic haptic feedback in them is now offline.

You're completely fucked.

(As the AF crew discovered)

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Human appreciation is good enough, compared to completely frozen over pitot tubes.

Inertial navigation without input from reliable sensors is useless. If your Inertial navigation systems last received input with a good tailwind, and suddenly you get a strong wind from front and left, but your sensors can't catch that, your Inertial Navigation is worth 0. ATC? Air France Flight 447 was out of range of ATC, and the storm was essentially blocking that anyway. Engine data? Pointless without other data to correlate it with

You're full of crap. Inertial navigation is precisely that - inertial navigation. INS doesn't have any external sensors since it uses accelerometers and gyroscopes to get values for dead reckoning - INS doesn't know if the speed is due to wind or thrust, all it knows is that it "senses" motion. And that is also the method you imagine human beings could use because what other references than what acceleration you've "felt" do you have for determining your speed if it's completely dark outside and the sound is fucking with you? After the stupid crew had pulled back on the stick so that the aircraft effectively stopped when it ascended above its service ceiling they mistook the motions it was making when falling down for extremely high speed when the speed in fact was so low that the computer did not activate the stall alarm since otherwise it would go off when the aircraft is on the fucking ground.

And not even when two air speed indicators show completely different speeds and one is correct are crews able to tell which one is at least closer to the truth (Birgenair 757 crash due to pitot tubes) or when the problems start immediately after take-off and they keep talking to ATC who updates them on their speed pretty correctly from radar during the entire flight until they crash into the ocean when they fear that they're about to hit a mountain (Aeroperu 757 pitot tubes). Did you know that as part of training pilots are taught to trust instruments more than what they "feel" that the aircraft is doing unless the instrument is known to be faulty and that is known from other sources than it showing and unexpected value? Pilots often train for that confusing situation by having the simulator generate entirely different forces to act on the pilot than what the instruments in the simulator show him/her that the aircraft is doing and he/she must learn to fly like that.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

The computer is already programmed to use multiple sensors, such as multiple pitot tubes for example. Despite research, pitot tubes are still the most reliable sensors we have for this application, GPS is way too unreliable. And in case of Air France, all 3 pitot tubes froze over, making the flight computer completely blind(And forget about GPS or other radio based navigational aid in the weather they were in, in the region they were in...)

Damn you're stupid. GPS did work just fine on that flight but GPS is not very useful when you need airspeed and not ground speed (wind can make the two quite different). Pitot tubes measure airspeed and the alarm the crew got when the autopilot turned itself off was "airspeed disagree" and considering that they knew precisely what speed the aircraft had had until then, they could - if humans can do what you think we can - have estimated their speed but you clearly don't know that they didn't even know if they were going slower or faster than before. In reality they first turned the nose up so high that they stopped and were then below stall speed almost all the time as they were falling flat. They were further confused by the fact that whenever the aircraft actually gained enough speed to trigger the stall warning (it doesn't below a threshold) they thought they had slowed down. Precisely the opposite of what happens in your fantasy reality where super humans with hyperaccurate accelerometers and chronometers reside.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[dywolf]

plus different controls can function in each axis depending on current situation. cars not only have only two directions, but 2 very simple control sets that really work in only one way, with little interaction: pedals to go faster or slower, wheel to change direction.

But in an airplane you can control:
-altitude and vertical airspeed controlled by engine thrust at >0 AOA
-indicated airspeed controlled by angle of attack (ie, via pitch)
-yaw as a function of thrust differential, and the possibilty of using it to counteract a crosswind so you can still land straight ahead, even while angled to the side

thats one of things ground school teaches: not just the controls themselves, but the fundemental nature of an aircraft as a moving (flying) equilibrium equation, with multiple factors all acting in multitude of interactions.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Physical relations? Surely you jest, I don't think /.ers know anything about that.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Obfuscant]

Planes receive a unique flightplan and detailed instructions for take of and landing that are steered by a central traffic control to make sure that there won't be any other planes nearby. Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them.

I'll stop you there because you've just shown you don't know what you are talking about. Even if we just limit the discussion to large commercial aircraft, your claim that each receives a "unique flightplan" is ridiculous. The initial parts of the flightplan (departure) are so UNunique that they print them in books and give them names. A common departure clearance would be something like "United 123 is cleared to [destination], Farmington 3 departure, SHADO (an intersection somewhere on the filed flight plan), then as filed, maintain 3 thousand, departure frequency 123.45". Pretty much every aircraft going the same direction gets the same thing.

When the aircraft gets close to the arrival airport, it will get yet another UNunique approach, by name. "United 123 cross BILBO at 5 thousand, cleared for the ILS 14 right approach". That ILS approach will start at some initial approach fix (maybe BILBO, maybe after) and then bring every aircraft on that approach through the same course. The goal of the approach controller is to get them all lined up at a nice, regular spacing all coming down the same ILS with sufficient spacing that as soon as the preceeding one clears the runway the next one is about to land.

An important thing to know about the system is that even with a filed flight plan and a clearance "as filed", the flight plan does not specify the approach procedure. That bit of critical info isn't known until close to arrival. Usually the last approach controller will tell the pilot "expect the ILS 21" or whatever. The automated weather system may contain that planning information, too, but the pilot is free to ask for something else if he wants it, and he isn't cleared to fly that approach until the words "cleared for ..." come out of the controller's mouth. If communications is lost enroute, the rule is that the pilot can fly any appropriate approach procedure.

The second bit of foo is "steered by a central traffic control". The pilot steers the plane. ATC issues clearances and gives instructions, but the pilot steers. And "center", despite its name, it not a "central control". There are a lot of them, and each "center" (New York Center, for example) is split up into sectors. Since we're currently limiting our context to large commercial passenger aircraft, yes, there will almost certainly be a "center" involved in the flight, but they take over only after the aircraft has gone through the departure controller at the airport, and will hand the flight off to the approach controller for the destination airport (for airports large enough to have their own). For destinations that aren't large enough to have their own approach, or their own control tower, this "central control" will actually cut the aircraft loose to talk on the CTAF (common traffic advisory frequency), so this IFR aircraft on a "unique" flight plan will now have to mix in with all the VFR traffic at the airport, even the student who is up in the pattern practicing landings. See and avoid.

These ATC folk don't make sure there aren't any other planes nearby. Only for IFR traffic (which anything above 10000 feet must be in the US) do they provide traffic separation. They will issue instructions to keep two IFR aircraft apart, but the vertical spacing can be just 1000'. In airspace where VFR flight is permitted, and outside ATC control, it is quite possible for another aircraft to be "nearby" and less than 1000'.

And the final nail? "Thats possible because EVERY plane has to receive instructions from them." It's severe clear outside here this morning. I could drive to the airport and fly off to someplace else where there is commercial service, and the only time I'll have to talk to ATC is when I'm within 5 mi

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Obfuscant]

Crazy thing is the airline industry has done a lot of work making sure that problems don't end with catastrophy.

Yep. And what they've done is endless training of pilots in emergency procedures and how to create NEW emergency procedures when the old ones don't fit the problem.

The problem would be if the system itself failed,

Or ran into a failure mode that it wasn't programmed to deal with. Like a complete loss of hydraulics like the Sioux City flight had, where three pilots managed to get the aircraft almost to the ground and saved a large number of lives by doing so.

On the other hand, there was the Airbus in England where the engine controls were cross-wired and a single engine failure wound up with both engines off. Unfortunately, the pilots didn't catch on quick enough because they were too low to recover. I wonder how a perfect computer would deal with this, and would it be programmed to catch on to the fact that shutting the "bad engine" down had resulted in no engines at all?

but there have been times when the squishy flight controllers have all failed as well.

This has convinced me. The fact that human pilots can fail is the perfect argument for putting imperfect computers programmed by imperfect humans in charge.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that automated cars have to cope with many more potential traffic conflicts than an airplane, but the scenarios are much more limited, as are the solutions. When it comes down to it, there are only four things that you can do in a car to resolve a situation: turn left, turn right, accelerate, or brake. If systems start failing, as you mentioned, it's generally safe to just shut down and pull of to the side of the road. The scenarios for aircraft are much more varied and complicated and there will always be scenarios that that the software engineers will not have anticipated, and a couple of important things that humans have that we have not yet been able to code into software is common sense and imagination, both of which are required to deal with an unusual situation. At that time, you would have to resort to a remote pilot who, number one is connected via a delayed (presumably) radio link which is vulnerable to interference or failure, particularly if the aircraft is already experiencing some kind of failure. There are sometimes systems with manual overrides that would have to then rely on additional remote relay/actuator links that may also fail - even something as simple as a circuit breaker would require a dedicated channel and motive position selector. Next, consider that the remote pilot has no visceral feedback of what is happening inside the airplane. Finally, and most insidiously, would you as a passenger rather have a pilot who's ass is in the same boat as yours and is highly motivated to do whatever necessary in an emergency or would you rather have a guy sitting in an nice air conditioned room somewhere safe who's concern may be balanced by liability issues and management/lawyers breathing down his back, thus only willing to do what's allowed by the book and what they can defend in court?

Here are some good flights to read about: Quantas Flight 32 (lots of common sense used), United Flight 232 (lots of imagination used), and of course US Air 1549 (both common sense and imagination). I believe that Air France 447 is an example of how an airplane designed to basically fly itself can really hurt - Airbus' design philosophy centers around making the airplane so automated that you can slap any pilot from a third world country into the cockpit, and you're good to go. As such, the airplane does almost everything for you, including trim, but squanders on some things, like displaying all of the data available to the pilots. One huge piece of information that the airplane had but didn't show was the Angle of Attack; this alone could have saved the flight. Also, once there is a mis-compare between instruments, the avionics (including the autopilot) throws up it hands, gives up, and puts huge red X's in place of the indications in the displays, instead of showing the pilots all the raw data and letting them decide what is reasonable and what is not - this is where the common sense part comes in. We all know how this flight turned out.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

What alternate sensors, that aren't already in use? GPS? Far less reliable than pitot tubes, due to weather, and that's just one example.

GPS is less reliable than pitot tubes? Really? Are there numbers to back up this assertion?

I would think it would be the exact opposite since the tubes (even if redundant) could get iced up or blocked in other ways.

When was the last time the GPS system went down? And we're not talking about in an urban canyon where you could lose the signal, but at FL180 or higher. With GLONASS and Galilieo (plus WAAS and EGNOS, and GPS-III with more civilian signals) we'll be getting more accuracy and redundancy for determining location in three dimensions, velocity, and even time.

The above versus a bunch of tubes with air rushing into or over them? I'll take all the redundancy (analog or digital) that I can get, but I'd generally trust battery-backed solid state.

As for APUs and power: you need to computer to do everything now on larger planes anyway, regardless of how you get your ground speed. Your displays won't work regardless of whether the speed is done via GPS or the force of the air in a tube. Not many airliners have a six-pack of steam gauges anymore (for better or worse), and so if the power goes out you won't get data from anywhere.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[bickerdyke]

Thanks for all those details. I didn't want to go THAT deep for a comparision between the state of autonomous cars and automated planes. (Yes... of course, commercial IFR only)

What I referred to as "uniqpe" flightplan would have considered time as a factor, so that even if tons of planes are flying the same approach, there is one ATC responsible for a certain segment, that makes sure that that doesn't happen at the same time. what you put in its right place as "seperation".

But all that aside (it rreally was an intresting read) : I think your last paragraph sums it up really nice: Automation is the harder, the more human, unautomated events have to be expected.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[hurfy]

The cockier the pilot the less chance there is WITH the instruments. Hehe, my dad was a flight instructor when I grew up and the ROTC guys were the worst under the hood. People just don't get how hard it really is to not believe what you feel for yourself.

BTW, half the time the instructor puts it in a weird position and hands you back the controls to level it out....you are already perfectly straight and level ;) Students will immediately yank the controls in the direction they FEEL is correct before they check anything...now you DO have to work to get it level again :))

Some time under the hood can make for a great amusement ride tho :)

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of what made the AF crash such a high-stakes affair is that jetliners (AF included) fly up in "coffin corner".

You overdramatized and mischaracterized the coffin corner. Stalling from the coffin corner does not automatically kill you, nor does an airframe overspeed.

So, you're flying along at 36,000 feet. Your permissible airspeed range is plus or minus 10kts. Seriously. Then the computers suddenly don't know how fast you're going any more. Whatever they were doing to control your airspeed, attitude, and altitude... they are no longer doing.

You are in coffin corner, you're completely blind, and you have no margin for error.

In the case of the Airbus glass cockpit, the controls have gone into full authority mode (computer isn't smart enough to limit you to a safe flight program), and the electronic haptic feedback in them is now offline.

You're completely fucked.

(As the AF crew discovered)

You're completely full of shit. The AF447 crew turned what should have been a non-event into a fatal crash. AF447 was not in fact flying right at the coffin corner or any such nonsense. The sequence was something like this:

1. Airplane's in level, stable flight.

2. One of the pitot tubes ices up, causing it to give incorrect (low) indicated airspeed readings.

3a. Autopilot decides it can't handle disagreement between the different airspeed sensors, so it shuts off.
3b. Low airspeed warnings sound.
3c. Controls enter alternate law mode, which is NOT "full authority" and no feedback as you falsely claim, though it does mean stall prevention is no longer active.

4. The pilot flying pulls back hard on the stick, causing the airplane to enter a sharp climb. He would continue to pull back for much of the rest of the accident sequence.

5. Airplane climbs several thousand feet (IIRC somewhere between +5 and +10K feet). Eventually the climb robs it of enough airspeed that it begins to stall.

6. As the plane falls to earth in a stall, the aircrew ignores the stall warnings, possibly due to being too obsessed with and confused by the earlier false airspeed warnings. They continue to provide nose-up or neutral pitch control inputs until just before the crash.

If the AF447 crew hadn't sent the plane into a sharp climb when startled, the airplane never would have stalled and never would have crashed. If they'd paid proper attention to trying to fly the altitude they were assigned (i.e. tried to stabilize their flight path), they would've noticed they were climbing and put the nose back down. If they'd paid proper attention to the stall warnings, they would've put the nose down to avoid stall. And even after the stall began, it was still highly recoverable -- all they had to do was point the nose down, throttle up, and regain airspeed while they still had sufficient altitude. It is simply not the case that they were in some terribly marginal flight condition where they were doomed, Doomed, DOOOOMED the instant the autopilot shut down.

There have been airplanes where the coffin corner was ludicrously dangerous. The famous U-2 spyplane is one. It was intentionally flown at the extreme limits of its flight envelope (since altitude made it hard to intercept), and at those altitudes it actually did have something like a 5 or 10 knot window. It had very little automation to help the pilot maintain the airspeed inside that window, and worse, the airframe couldn't tolerate overspeed whatsoever. It was basically a fragile glider with a jet engine, so too much aerodynamic stress would break it up.

Transport category aircraft are built quite a bit more sturdily than the U-2. As I understand it, the major risk from a mild overspeed is the change in aerodynamic forces as parts of the aircraft begin to experience transonic and supersonic flow (lift can suddenly drop, center of pressure can suddenly shift).

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Anonymous Coward]

And in case of Air France, all 3 pitot tubes froze over, making the flight computer completely blind(And forget about GPS or other radio based navigational aid in the weather they were in, in the region they were in...)

Please stop bullshitting. The flight computers were not "completely blind". In fact one of the warnings given to the pilots was because pitot tube data was in conflict with other data sources. Also it seems as if you think GPS is somehow harder at altitude, above the weather. It isn't. It's easier. You do know that GPS is satellite based, right? Meaning the airplane is actually closer to the satellites than a ground GPS receiver would be? Meaning that there's clear line of sight to more GPS satellites, making a fix easier?

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Paul Jakma]

It's coffin corner because it's relatively easy to stall there, not because the aircraft could go too fast and break up. There is little risk in immediately descending. Certainly, the risks of stalling are far magnitudes greater.

My source: A retired jet pilot who had precisely the same thing happen to them as what happened to AF447 - iced up pitots and loss of airspeed indicators.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[delt0r]

A human can get an appreciation of velocity even without working pitot tubes, in a middle of a weather system

Bullshit. In a airliner with narrow flight envelope, double bullshit.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[richieb]

GPS does not measure airspeed, pitot tube does. Airspeed is needed for flight and that's what the pilot is mostly concerned with.

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[bmajik]

Ok, but the reason it is a "corner" is because there is an upperbound on the airspeed also.

Yes, the airframe will not breakup when you go 5kts above that airspeed, but there's a maximum airspeed for a reason.

Control surface response can also diminish with increased speeds, and nastiness like Mach tuck can happen

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_tuck)

For the A330, the "cruise speed" and maximum cruise speed are only 16mph apart...

Re:In the SIMULATOR?

[Paul Jakma]

The maximum airspeed in coffin corner is because the plane doesn't have any more thrust to go faster - not a structural limit.

I fly manually quite a bit

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as I'm on the STAR, I go _mostly_ manual. I fly the entire approach pattern manually, with the exception of speed control (since that is critical to maintain spacing, I have to make sure I'm not going faster or slower than the ATC suggestion, at risk of being spun).

I also fly my own bird every weekend at least a couple of hours.

I agree there is too much automation in the cockpit, and that it is relied upon too heavily, especially during departure and approach.

Pilots are highly overrated

[Anonymous Coward]

All planes come down with or without pilots.

Re:Pilots are highly overrated

[SJHillman]

Well yes, but pilots help make sure they can go back up again.

DC-3

[Anonymous Coward]

Start them off flying something like DC-3's and 4's like Buffalo Airlines, and you won't have these problems.

It goes both ways

[dunkelfalke]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593

"Despite the struggles of both pilots to save the aircraft, it was later concluded that if they had just let go of the control column, the autopilot would have automatically taken action to prevent stalling, thus avoiding the accident"

And reading this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulkovo_Aviation_Enterprise_Flight_612

I'd rather have a computer flying the airplane I am sitting in, than a hairless ape.

Re:It goes both ways

[MurukeshM]

That quote reminded me of Michael Crichton's Airframe. Was he basing it on that crash?

Re:It goes both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have a computer flying the airplane I am sitting in, than a hairless ape.

No matter what Talespin tells us, a balding orangutan makes for a terrible copilot.

Re:It goes both ways

[nedlohs]

But then you have things like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_1951 in which the autopilot decided that 2000 feet high was a good place to do a landing flare, shortly followed by the expected plummet to the ground.

What you should rather have is the computer flying the plane with a competent human pilot to save the day when something goes wrong (usually with the various sensors the computer it using). But of course, and it's what the article is about, if the plane is almost always under computer control how do you keep the human pilots competent. Since, as you're examples point out and my example points out, incompetent crews make things worse and don't save the day when the computer has issues either.

Re:It goes both ways

[Desler]

I'd rather have a computer flying the airplane I am sitting in, than a hairless ape.

And when the computer goes down? Or do you really think that these systems never fail?

Re:It goes both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

than a hairless ape.

I'm a hairy ape, you insensitive clod!

Re:It goes both ways

[dunkelfalke]

Well, it was really not a computer issue, but a broken sensor that, for some reason, was not replaced by the techs on the ground. Garbage in - garbage out.

Re:It goes both ways

[nedlohs]

Rght, but sensors do break. At which point a human pilot is going to be preferable to a computer using garbage data.

And some failures occur in flight without any chance for service techs to find and fix them, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

Usually such failures just result in the autopilot turning itself off and the humans taking over - not really an option if you want to ditch the human pilots altogether.

I'm not disagreeing with the basics though. A computer is much less likely to be tired, or have been drinking, or to forget a step. However, our current solution to errors being detected in the sensors is "let the human pilots fly it", I don't think we have another solution for that just yet.

Re:It goes both ways

[bickerdyke]

Both computers and humans have shownthat they're able to fly planes. Ususally safely, even.

The problem starts when computer and human can't agree on a manouver.

We'd need an independant way to find out who of those two parties is screwing up and give full control to the other one. (Like the redundancy already built into an autopilot and into a pilot - it's called co-pilot there) but if those redundant systems are programmed or trained in a similar way, they tend to have similar failure modes.

Redundancy prevents from hardware (wetware...) outages (the proverbial food poisening) but not against flawed conclusions.

Re:It goes both ways

[tibit]

AF593: It's a classic. Aviate comes first, and they didn't, with usual results.

Pulkovo 612: Likely the same thing: aviate, dammit. Fly the plane according to its operating envelope.

Re:It goes both ways

[tibit]

Nope.

Boeing has since issued a bulletin to remind pilots of all 737 series and BBJ aircraft of the importance of monitoring airspeed and altitude

The pilots were not flying the fucking plane. Aviate first. They didn't. The results are always the same. No blaming computers on that one. Good that only 9 people perished, it could have been much worse.

Re:It goes both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

And when the pilot "goes down" (due to, e.g. food poisoning)? Or do you really think that these humans never fail?

Re:It goes both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

The crash investigators found that the sensor could give crazy readings and that nobody seemed to feel it was their responsibility to say "Oh, that's an ERROR, we have to take that sensor out of service pronto". Nobody had even decided that these readings needed to be marked as erroneous and rejected. The software would be told "You're flying like 15m below the ground" and go "Oh right yeah, so, we've landed I guess" because there was a specific "This is error data, ignore it" flag and NOT ONLY was that bit ignored, but the sensor didn't set it anyway. Systematically nobody had cared about the fact that this problem kept happening and would one day kill somebody, and indeed they didn't care after the crash either, just telling pilots they need to be more careful rather than fixing the bug.

This system was silently NOT dual-redundant. The plane had three of these sensors, only one had failed, but the system the pilots relied on was only looking at that one failed sensor because it believed the sensor was working. Why? Given three sensors, all of which claim to be working and two say "We're like 500 m up" but one says "We're 5m below the ground" I think it's a no brainer, but that would have involved more work so that's not how it was designed, although if the COMPUTER was to be trusted to fly the plane rather than merely "helping" by doing a landing flare up in the sky, it would be REQUIRED to use all three sensors to come to a decision. So the humans are kept in the loop mainly because it's cheaper to blame them.

We see this in maritime decisions too. Most ships have official insurance and classification paperwork saying they will make all their course decisions by referring to paper charts. In practice somebody sketches out the vague plan on the paper chart but does all the hard work on a computer. But the paperwork says they use charts, so the crappy computer software they use doesn't have to be up-to-date, they don't need special training, and it can have weird bugs that nobody will complain about. So inevitably someone fucks up, and the accident investigators will say "Well, they were supposed to use paper charts" knowing full well nobody actually DOES use paper charts for this stuff. And people look at the report and nod, and say "Remember we all said we would use the paper charts" and they go right back to using software because it's easier. They COULD buy authorised computerised navigation tools, and learn to use them properly but they won't.

Re:It goes both ways

[minstrelmike]

...what the article is about, if the plane is almost always under computer control how do you keep the human pilots competent?

People on computer help desks everywhere see that same problem daily. Incompetent users trying to operate competent computers.

Re:It goes both ways

[raxx7]

The cause of that accident was poor interaction between computer and human.

Short summary:
Due to a faulty sensor, the auto-throtle dediced to throtle down the plane.
The crew recognized that and manually throtled up again.
But then they made two errors: taking the the hands off from the throtle and without disconnecting the auto-throtle.
The auto-throthle then throtled down again and it took the crew 100 seconds to realize their mistake, at which point it was too late.

Re:It goes both ways

[dywolf]

Air France 447

Re:It goes both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

as you're examples point out

Get your GED, son.

Re:It goes both ways

[gargleblast]

You keep saying that as if it was an argument. It isn’t. It’s just contradiction.

Here, this Monty Python sketch may help.

Well, DUH.

[Anonymous Coward]

Automation uses way less fuel than manual flight. because computers deal with exact numbers, not hunches.

Re:Well, DUH.

[fisted]

exact

As exact as float, or more exact, like double?

Re:Well, DUH.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine if you are able to command the plane with a precision better than 2*10^-308, then you can take over.

Re:Well, DUH.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, exact like int. None of these inexact decimal point thingies.

nt

[A beautiful mind]

Pilots either need more control or we should admit that they're just safety technicians in case something goes wrong and train them accordingly - an air marshall for the plane itself who doesn't do anything under normal circumstances.

I love the pro US swing

[Chrisq]

In a crash the fact that is an airbus has to be mentioned. When an airbus behaves under dramatic conditions it becomes a "US Airways plane"!

Re:I love the pro US swing

[I'm New Around Here]

For the Air France example, it mentions what model of aircraft was involved, the Airbus A330. For a another flight, it didn't bother mentioning the model of the plane. It was an Airbus model? Googleing reveals it was the Airbus A320-214, with 155 passengers. (For your information, I thought it was a smaller commuter flight with a dozen passengers, which is all the more interest I had in the story when it happened. Does that make me a bad American? Or even a bad citizen of the world?)

Maybe the way it is written is more because we, in the US, are more likely to base our ticket purchases based on airline company than model of plane used, but for international stories involving places we'll never go and airlines we'll never fly with, we want more details.

When people mention crashes involving Boeing planes, do you automatically think it's a bash against the US?

Re:I love the pro US swing

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Certain people have stock interests. You didn't think a big national media report on Taser deaths coming out the week before Taser stock went public was a coincidence, did you?

Re:I love the pro US swing

[UnknowingFool]

Airbus is mentioned I think because Airbus simply has put in more automation in their planes and thus some pilots prefer to fly them.

Re:I love the pro US swing

[SomeoneFromBelgium]

In a rare surge of honnesty the Discovery Channel reconstruction of the Hudson miracle concedes that a the fact that the pilot had activated the APU meaning that the advance anti stall protection on the A320 was active clearly contributed to the miracle.
At the time of hitting the water the plane whas flying slower and with a higher angle of attack than a human would safely be able to do...

Re:I love the pro US swing

[raxx7]

Chrisq's poins is that the US Airways plane which landed in the Hudson was also an Airbus, with the exact same type of automation as the Air France which crashed in the Atlantic.

One could also point out that, during the process of landing it into the Hudson, the pilot flew the aircraft into the alpha protection limit, which means the flight control system stopped the plane from landing.
One could argue that pilot knew what he was doing and simply to chose to make the best use of the flight control system
But the flight control system did play a role in landing that plane.

Re:I love the pro US swing

[UnknowingFool]

I don't think that anyone who can read will think automation==bad. From my quick reading of the summary, there are more pilots that are coming through the ranks that rely too much on automation and may not have basic skills required when an emergency happens. Pilot skill is still important. In Air France 447, the crew failed to recognize to follow procedures and failed to understand that a stall was coming even though the plane warned them. In fact the crew reacted the wrong way by trying to climb instead of diving to avoid a stall.

Re:I love the pro US swing

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been examples of commercial airliners ditching in water with few or no casualties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing#Passenger_airplane_water_ditchings

What was "miraculous" was Sully's lightening quick assessment, decision making, and rapid maneuvering for a ditch in the Hudson. I'll grant you that the computers may have turned it from a 1 or 2 person casualty situation to a 0 casualty situation. But it was Sully who brought the flight back from an everybody dies situation.

Re:I love the pro US swing

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you're referring to Mayday aka. "Air Crash Investigation", which is a Canadian TV series. However, if that is what they said about the A320, it was factually wrong and not the first time that that TV series has facts wrong. At that height and at that speed the flight envelope protection does not prevent stalling since that's pretty much what you would do when you land normally. An APU is necessary for practically everything on an aircraft - not just the computer. .How do you otherwise power flight controls? Sully has also gotten too much praise IMO - the one thing he really did right was to decide to land in the Hudson and I don't think even he knows how much of it was conscious thought and how much was a "gamble". Any average airline pilot could then have done the water landing since they all train for it and that particular crew performed it poorly. They didn't press the ditch button, which would've sealed cargo hatches and made the aircraft float almost indefinitely (although US Airways should get most of the blame for that since it's their own water landing checklist that has it so late). As far as the landing is otherwise concerned, he did - as already noted - have an actual concern about stalling since whilst the altitude wasn't an issue in a normal landing scenario, this landing was more likely to be successful, if he kept it just above the water as long as possible so that when it finally did touch the water, it would have as little speed as possible. If somebody calculates how well he did that compared with most pilots, we can then decide how much further praise he deserves.

I do agree, though, that the better safety record and greater sales numbers of Airbus have caused some penis envy in the US. Both are bad metrics of "better aircraft manufacturer" since the aircraft design is usually the least significant factor in an air crash and crew error, bad maintenance and poor training the deciding factors. Thus it's very much about "luck" from a manufacturers POV even though the A380 and the 787 have been most memorable due to the problems with entry in service. The 777 crash in Heathrow is the latest one I can remember in which the primary cause really was a design flaw that enabled the ice crystals to form and cause fuel starvation at a crucial moment but the fact that all survived of course shows how good the design was... And as far as sales numbers are concerned, both Airbus and Boeing receive blowjobs from governments so measuring success that way is stupid. It's like enabling cheating and then keeping track of the score. The success of a business has a metric and that is how much it increases shareholder wealth - even more important to remember in aircraft manufacturing when a design is expected to take decades to pay back the development costs. Profits are a meaningless metric when used in isolation because whilst dividends might not be possible, having a successful design + lots of orders + lots of interest = lots of profits in the future but maybe not now.

Re:I love the pro US swing

[Anonymous Coward]

Two different consequences of the same advantage. The extra automation allows you to fly in situations where a human would have difficulty controlling the plane. This feeds back into the design so the plane spends more time is difficult flight regimes.

They're sometimes required to fly on autopilot

[Jay Maynard]

There are a couple of parts of the flight where the pilot is required to use the automation. The biggest is during cruise in what's known as RVSM airspace, where the vertical separation minimums are reduced from what was standard before RVSM was implemented. There, if your autopilot quits, ATC will send you down below the RVSM floor. RVSM is in use above some altitude in the 48 states and on transAtlantic routes. (I don't recall the exact altitude.)

The other is in flying an instrument approach to very low altitudes, known as a category III approach. IIRC, those must be flown on autopilot in order to continue below category III minimums.

Re:They're sometimes required to fly on autopilot

[tlhIngan]

There are a couple of parts of the flight where the pilot is required to use the automation. The biggest is during cruise in what's known as RVSM airspace, where the vertical separation minimums are reduced from what was standard before RVSM was implemented. There, if your autopilot quits, ATC will send you down below the RVSM floor. RVSM is in use above some altitude in the 48 states and on transAtlantic routes. (I don't recall the exact altitude.)

The other is in flying an instrument approach to very low altitudes, known as a category III approach. IIRC, those must be flown on autopilot in order to continue below category III minimums.

There's also RNP (Required Navigation Performance) approaches for aircraft that arrive to land - RNP approaches typically are shorter as they require a minimum navigation performance (triple GPS (all locked onto satellites and working properly), dual autopilots, a bunch of other equipment as well) which gives you approaches that instead of having to follow a long winding path of beacons in, let you cut to the chase and arrive at the airport in an orderly fashion. It can save easily 5-10 minutes of flying "the long way around" because RNP can take you closer and lower to terrain and provides more direct routing. A lot of approaches were designed to handle wider separations between aircraft as instruments are crude and imprecise.

Anyhow, the "good pilots" probably also maintain their own little Cessna or Piper single engine where basic flying skills get emphasized - typically for fun or recreational flying. (I recall a time when I was getting checked out in the "luxury" Cessna 172SP our flight school had - we used the autopilots, GPS and other things (because for the most part that's what the differences are), and the instructor said "Let's go home. Using whatever you want, get us back to the airport". Of course, it was a trick question - being at 1500' and only 10 minutes away, the answer was hand-fly it since there wasn't enough time to prepare the automation and do the required preparations).

Re:They're sometimes required to fly on autopilot

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything above FL290 is RVSM in most of the world now.

There were shitty pilots before automation

[JoeyRox]

The majority of plane crashes are caused by pilot error, either in isolation or in response to equipment failure and/or adverse environmental/weather conditions. Flight systems were automated to help avoid or minimize those errors by reducing the mental workload required to manage the plane in those scenarios. Great pilots utilize that automation to improve the overall safety of their flight operations. Bad and lazy pilots use automation as a crutch for their poor airmanship. In the absence of automation bad pilots would still be bad pilots but the number of adverse incidents caused by pilot error would be higher. The solution is better employment screening, skills monitoring, and training, and not cutting back or removing the automation.

Re:There were shitty pilots before automation

[Desler]

The solution is better employment screening, skills monitoring, and training, and not cutting back or removing the automation.

Couldn't even be bothered to read the summary? Nowhere was it mentioned to cut back or remove automation and more training was specifically mentioned as requirement to make sure the pilots where competent.

Re:There were shitty pilots before automation

[JoeyRox]

Couldn't even be bothered to read between the lines? I read the summary and the article, The natural reaction to stories like this to debate whether automation is a good idea, so I offered my opinion on that matter.

Re:There were shitty pilots before automation

[bickerdyke]

Of course!

usually human action is only neccessary when the machines already failed.

Yes, manual flight much better!

[jobsagoodun]

Especially when you park your DreamLifter at the wrong airport

Re:Yes, manual flight much better!

[kj_in_ottawa]

Read the comments on CNN. Most of the best one-liners from "Airplane" are there.

Nice for a morning laugh

The Airbus helped

[jfdavis668]

When Capt Sullenberger landed on the Hudson, the aircraft software worked to prevent his stall. But his flying skill is what safely landed the plane. His knowledge of what the aircraft can and cannot do was critical. He even realized he needed the APU for the computers to continue operating, and turned it on early in the emergency. His actions showed that he understood his plane and how to fly it. Some pilots are forgetting the "fly it" part.

Re:The Airbus helped

[Animats]

When Capt Sullenberger landed on the Hudson, the aircraft software worked to prevent his stall.

That's exactly right. There's a book, "Fly by Wire", by William Langewiesche, one of the best aviation writers (son of Wolfgang Langewiesche, who wrote "Stick and Rudder", the 1944 classic for pilots). Langewiesche points out that it was the Airbus control system which delivered the super-smooth ride right on the edge of a stall down to the river. Once Sullenberger had decided to land in the river (the right decision; he didn't have enough altitude and airspeed to make it back to LGA or to Teterboro), everything else followed from that and was relatively straightforward. His co-pilot admits that.

The really lucky thing was that there happened to be enough nearby boats to rescue the passengers before they were dumped into the Hudson in winter.

This is such great news for son

[Loundry]

My son is 13 years old and has been training to be a pilot since he was 11. He has taken off and landed a small airplane (with the PIC in the airplane with him, of course) quite a few times. It just goes to show that landing an airplane isn't as difficult as some people think it is ... it just requires focus and passion. Both of which my son has in spades when he's flying an airplane.

This news story struck me as wonderful news. My son has wanted to be a pilot since he was three years old. If you are one of the lucky few (I am not) who knew what he wanted to be for his whole life, then I envy you as much as I envy my son for having a singular great dream. The notion of drones and computerized pilots scares me because it threatens that dream. Stories in which autopilots and drones are slandered make me happy.

Re:This is such great news for son

[Anonymous Coward]

If you haven't looked into it yet, try finding a local soaring organization. The FAA requirements are looser for sailplanes, your son could potentially solo as early as next year!

Also, good on you for getting your son flight lessons! My parents bought me flight lessons as a teenager, and I'm very grateful to them for doing so. I never finished my license because time and money ran out when I went to college, but now that I have a job and free time I'm flying again - only much more cheaply because I don't have to pay for (nearly as much) fuel.

Re:This is such great news for son

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

My Droid phone wants to be a pilot, too, but I said no. It's not that it can't handle it, it's that it's still stuck under this Verizon contract.

Re:This is such great news for son

[Rob Riggs]

My son is 13 years old and has been training to be a pilot since he was 11. He has taken off and landed a small airplane (with the PIC in the airplane with him, of course) quite a few times.

Really?!? You're kid is flying a plane with a PIC? So, he's essentially being trained to fly by a drone. Is there anything a robot can't do anymore?

Re:This is such great news for son

[Anonymous Coward]

It just goes to show that landing an airplane isn't as difficult as some people think it is

No, it doesn't. Your son has landed a single type of plane, probably (certainly) in good weather conditions with a veteran pilot sitting right next to him. Yeah, that IS fucking easy. Now have him go hop in a twin engine plane and solo that bitch with a crosswind thrown in for fun! Get life insurance updated first.

That being said, kudos to your kid for learning. Aviation is a great field to be in.

Re:This is such great news for son

[NoImNotNineVolt]

The notion of drones and computerized pilots scares me because it threatens that dream. Stories in which autopilots and drones are slandered make me happy.

Further confirmation for my theory that parents are the most selfish people on this planet. Thanks for almost giving a fuck about the rest of the human race. God forbid that advances in technology result in safer and cheaper air transport for everyone if it threatens your kid's chosen career.

Re:This is such great news for son

[Anonymous Coward]

My son has wanted to be a pilot since he was three years old. If you are one of the lucky few (I am not) who knew what he wanted to be for his whole life, then I envy you as much as I envy my son for having a singular great dream.

Yeah, I'm sure that was totally his own dream and in no way influenced by you. Just try not to be too hard on him when he decides to do something else.

Re:This is such great news for son

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if anyone ever manages to perfect a fully-automated piloting/navigation system, he'll just have to dream bigger to keep it alive -- "astronaut" has a nice ring to it.

Autopilot is like password fill-in

[tompaulco]

The autopilot functions similar to password fill-in on your web browser. It makes it much more convenient for you to login to all of your sites without having to remember all those passwords.
The autopilot failing is like when your computer crashes, and now neither your browser, nor you, remember your passwords.

exemplified by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, cause more all-engine failures then. That's the only reason he had to be manually flying.

Going to hell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wi Tu Lo

Re:Going to hell.

[I'm New Around Here]

Can you believe the idiot newscasters actually read that list on the air?

Everyone in that newsroom should have been fired for extreme stupidity.

The Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a manager at a world leading flight training company targeting major airlines all around the world, we train cadets from scratch on small aircraft and flight simulators in order to develop these basic skills and beyond (eg: ATPL and HPAT, type specific training etc.). I assist with developing syllabi and ensuring their compliance with numerous safety authorities all over the world. We looked into the Air France disaster to see how we can improve out syllabi to give students the skills to handle these atypical situations. To make a long story, the growing trend for airlines to want to cut costs on training and even remove what they call "unnecessary" training from syllabi is what is leading to this problem. The MPL is the prime example of this, this is my solution:
- Stop treating us like a factory, each student is different and can they can take longer to learn certain concepts. Fixed length integrated courses don't work if they don't have good margins for this.

- English is the language of aviation. If you bring us cadets who can't speak it, we have to teach them english within your timetable which degrades outcomes.
- Redo the MPL and bring back spinning, hand and feet skills etc.
- Whilst the MPL has a heavy focus on simulators, it needs to be a much bigger part of their renewals and professional development in order to re-enforce what they learnt during early stages of their career and training when they start working.
- Some airlines have poor quality control in their recruitment phases, is susceptible to corruption or have too many "token" cadets. Some people just aren't cut out to be pilots, identify this early not late.
- Airline and safety authority audits are a joke, Standards/QA Manager(s) should be mandatory, I've seen our competitors teach students very bad techniques because of a bad instructor or two and it poisons entire batches of students. Auditing needs to be proactive, integrated into systems and workflows and not just a visit a few times a year. to look through paper records or merely reactive in the case of a safety incident.
Remember, the training doesn't stop when the student is finished their course. Operators and manufacturer (Airbus, I'm looking at you) need to stop treating pilots like bus drivers and focusing only on fuel optimisation.
- This is minor but still important. Shock material. We aren't allowed to show students the imagery of air disasters any more. They can be and usually are gruesome by statistically effective, safety incidents in classes that were shown this material were halved compared to classes that weren't.

This opinion is my own and doesn't reflect that of my employer, doing it anonymously because our media policy prohibits these types of comments. I'd love to hear people's feedback on how training could be furthered improved, it's what gets me up in the morning, trying to fight the system.

Re:The Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for the mistakes, I'm typing these comments out on my phone.

Re:The Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

...while flying

Re:The Problems

[I'm New Around Here]

Well, pull over to the side of the highway and type it out.

Re:The Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

How long before the pilot flies the plane remotely from china/india? And landing/takeoff is pure autopilot guided by the local ATC?

Re:The Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

OP here: I think it'll start with freight aircraft first before RPT. The big question will be, will we see large fully automated aircraft or fully automated cars first? It'll be interesting to see how ICAO adjusts to the advent of large scale commercial UAVs.

Re:The Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding the shock material, I suggest it because it's been effective in the past, we use to use it as part of certain safety briefing on certain scenarios and the impacts, it has especially been effective on students who have been lazy with their checklists. Whilst there is a lot of red tape I think the only way you're going ensure that all instructors and teachers at a training organisation teach the same thing is by having a dedicated manager ensuring this actually happens, you find them already in other higher education institutions. Everyone is trying to cut costs and won't employ one unless it's actually mandated or dump it on someone else who hasn't got time to do a thorough job.

Unfortunately, building a safety culture can be difficult across company borders, as airlines often to their pilot re-currency training themselves as opposed to a service provider like us, it's up to the airlines to maintain such a culture, we can only try to instil it from the beginning.

No one company or organisation can shift the industry with big paradigm shifts, and the groups of them that can take decades to do so. Meanwhile, we're training thousands and thousands of pilots every year right now. China is undergoing massive growth in their aviation sector, we need to do something even if that something isn't completely effective, we can't simply wait for top-down solutions or else we will have generations of pilots who will not be properly equipped to deal with emergency or unusual scenarios. That safety record has been built by mature organisations but the rapid development of some country's aviation sectors is causing new participants to quickly outpace traditional operators in terms of volume, meaning, the high standards we are use to will not be as prevalent unless we act now.

Stick and rudder skills are testable

[Anonymous Coward]

Just require the pilot to demonstrate glider Silver badge proficiency once a year.

http://www.ssa.org/BadgesAndRecords#Silver

Re:Stick and rudder skills are testable

[LVSlushdat]

Just require the pilot to demonstrate glider Silver badge proficiency once a year.

http://www.ssa.org/BadgesAndRecords#Silver

Sounds like the AirCanada 767 pilot who landed the "Gimli Glider" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider back in 1983 might have those credentials...

So, do you think ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... automation was behind this? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25032380

Re:So, do you think ...

[PPH]

Don't know if this has anything to do with it, but my car's GPS lost satellite connections for a while yesterday. It was a beautiful, sunny day. My hiking GPS carried on with the GLONASS constellation. Eventually, everything came back up.

Did someone push a s/w update to the satellites?

Landing at the wrong airport?

[wcrowe]

I read the /. piece, then I came across this news item. Even with automation, how do you land at the wrong airport?

Yo dawg

[Anonymous Coward]

They might put a simple flight simulator in the cockpit, so the pilot can practice flying while... you get the idea. Only one pilot at a time, of course.

The real problem with the Air France crash

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

There's a somewhat lengthy and hard to find (too lazy to look now) article on the Internet where some magazine did essentially a minute by minute recap of what the black box told about the infamous Air France crash. That happened basically because (inexplicably) the captain put the most junior of his 2 co-pilots in charge when flying through some very bad weather. After the crash it was determined that the co-pilot was not properly trained for the conditions he encountered and Air France has made changes to pilot training in simulators as a result. It was a jaw dropping series of events where a quick decision had to be made and in every case, the wrong decision was made. Had just one such decision been different (ie. the captain took a later break, the more senior of the 2 co-pilots was put in charge, the plane avoided the storm it flew into, etc.) we wouldn't be talking about this as a crash. The plane would have safely reached its destination. So I'm not sure that mentioning this particular flight is a good example. It was an amazing perfect storm of bad decisions all of which had to be wrong for the plane to crash and unfortunately they were all wrong. Another good thing that came out of it (besides training changes) was that it was quickly realized before the black box was found that likely the infamous defective air speed tubes were to blame (indeed, they started the sequence of events that led to the crash) and those began to be replaced. I believe that all Airbus planes have had those tubes replaced with better models from another company. The co-pilot basically panicked and misunderstood (due to inadequate training) the situation he was in and he put the plane into a stall, causing it to crash. Neither the other co-pilot nor the captain (he re-entered the cockpit about 1-2 minutes before it crashed) realized the plane was in a stall until it was too late to correct it.

Re:The real problem with the Air France crash

[koan]

"all of which had to be wrong for the plane to crash"

And all human.

Re:The real problem with the Air France crash

[u38cg]

The AF plane was not at risk of stalling. However, the freezing pitot tubes led the stall alarm to sound due to airspeed being under-reported. The pilots, not realising, put the stick forward and kept this up all the way into the deck.

Re:The real problem with the Air France crash

[jfdavis668]

No, the pilot pulled the stick back the entire time, not forward. As the pitot tubes froze, the entrance first became smaller. This speeds up the air entering, and gave the pilot an overspeed warning. In other words, he thought he was diving. When all speed indication went away, he didn't know what to do, and continued to climb to maximum plane altitude. He didn't level off, he tried to continue to climb higher than the plane can. It then stalled. The pitot tubes cleared early in this event, and the plane correctly warned of stall. The co-pilot in control continued to climb the aircraft, even though diving is the correct solution to a stall. Only when the other pilot realized what the first was doing did they start to correct it, but hit the water before he was able to point the nose down. The pilots were doing everything except looking at the gauges to see what the plane was actually doing.

Re:The real problem with the Air France crash

[Cochonou]

Actually, when the pitot tubes of AF447 froze up, the computed and indicated speed fell down. They went back up to correct values when the tubes unfroze. You can check the relevant figure on page 89 of the BEA report.

That line

[koan]

We are at that line where machines become autonomous in an useful way and the rest of us finally realize how incompetent humans are at flying and driving.

One day people will look back and wonder what it was like when a human actually controlled the vehicle.

Disagree

[DaMattster]

Actually, I have several friends that are Airbus 330 and 321 captains that actually would like to have more control over the plane and less automation. To some degree, they are hamstrung by the company, Airbus Industrie, that is relegating to pilots to "flight management" duties instead of actually "stick and rudder" flying. Most pilots I know lean towards type A and would much rather have control over their plane then hand it over to avionics and flight management systems.

Re:Disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what profession is willing to let itself be outautomated? Certainly not one that first costs and arm and a leg to train for and that for many has been a dream since childhood.

As a member of the flying public, I know that every time I fly, I put my life in the hands of other people - the engineers that designed the plane, the workers that built it, the mechanics that maintained it and the pilots that fly it. I have no categorical preference of which field of work the fuckup should be in, if it causes my plane to crash and instead prefer that the likelihood of a fuckup is minimized. Because both accident statistics and my own common sense support automation to the point that pilots are no longer on board, I would board a fully automated flight today, if I could.

The planes are basically drones at this point

[Karmashock]

I'd like to actually see some commercial cargo planes go fully UAV.

As to human pilots in passenger planes. You could make it so that every third flight they had to go fully manual. Pick an interval.

Real Flying LOL

[Pope]

"Real flying is exemplified by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, says Casey, who famously landed his US Airways plane without engines on the Hudson River and saved all the passengers in what came to be known as the 'Miracle on the Hudson.' "

Yeah, and how many times a year is that needed? JFC.

Re:Real Flying LOL

[minstrelmike]

"Real flying is exemplified by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, says Casey, who famously landed his US Airways plane without engines on the Hudson River and saved all the passengers in what came to be known as the 'Miracle on the Hudson.' "

Yeah, and how many times a year is that needed? JFC.

Skills like that are needed probably once every ten years.
imo, most of the folks carping probably think they themselves are good drivers and it makes me wonder exactly what they would do in a vehicle when the brakes don't quite stick or the car starts to slide in a skid. The reason new cars have ABS (Antilock Brake Systems) is because _most_ people panic and stomp the brake and hold it so the braking system takes care of figuring out how to use the available friction.

Invalid expectation

[s.petry]

Drones have a horrible safety record, and are exactly what you are claiming is the fix. In the case of drones since humans rarely get hurt you don't hear about all of the crashes. At least two within the last week have caused damage to people so we heard about those.

The problem is really that people sitting outside expect or demand perfection where it can't really exist, given our current "air lift" flying technology.

Well trained humans combined with computers has gotten us to an extremely good record with safety. Wi To Lo or whoever the pilot in training was from Asiana was not trained and the one guy that was trained on the plane didn't do their job. Computers that should have caught the problem didn't for what ever reason.

Claiming computer guided is the only way is fine until an anomaly wipes out electrical systems. While it would be difficult for a human to land a large passenger plane without electricity at least there is a chance.

Re:Invalid expectation

[jp102235]

UAV's (drones) have a horrible saftey record, true, but it is because the automation on them is quite poor. At this point, very few of them are "autonomous". The problem is not too much automation, but automotion that is not sufficiently rigorous, testable, nor capable to handle somewhat common contingencies.

I have multiple thousands of hours in heavy aircraft, and I can tell you that 'hand flying more' is not the solution to the problem either.

A well placed, rigorously programmed, redundantly powered backup system that could auto-land when normal power goes out is a much better soln than trying to land a heavy with no electrics (think: at night, in fog, heavy winds, ice, nuns/babies on board, etc).

Re:Invalid expectation

[TangoMargarine]

The problem is really that people sitting outside expect or demand perfection where it can't really exist, given our current "air lift" flying technology

In much the same way laypeople expect complex software to work perfectly from release...

Re:Invalid expectation

[s.petry]

UAV's (drones) have a horrible saftey record, true, but it is because the automation on them is quite poor. At this point, very few of them are "autonomous".

Autonomy was not the point, the point was that even with protection systems "shit happens". Wind sheers come immediately to mind. Most of the military drones do fly autonomously, though operators _can_ override (reaper, predator) and they crash much more frequently than manned vehicles.

A well placed, rigorously programmed, redundantly powered backup system that could auto-land when normal power goes out is a much better soln than trying to land a heavy with no electrics (think: at night, in fog, heavy winds, ice, nuns/babies on board, etc).

The human operator is the fail safe today. Claiming there should be human no fail safe is foolish. Computers and electronics do fail, even the backups fail on occasion. I agree we need backup computers, and in fact nearly every aircraft has them, including UAVs. But to claim we should remove the humans is illogical and irrational. Some chance is better than no chance when electronics fail.

Re:Invalid expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

Drones have a horrible safety record,

So do manned military aircraft. They crash a lot more often than civilian jet transport aircraft, for many reasons, despite the US military's notoriously excellent pilot training (which is a notch above what the civilian airlines do). Lots of these crashes have nothing to do with piloting, either. Military fighter jets typically need a lot more maintenance than civilian passenger jets, and suffer proportionally more unrecoverable in-flight mechanical failures.

You're assuming the military drone safety record is bad because safe computerized flight is impossible, but there's plenty of evidence that the military is quite willing to live with higher accident rates if this (on average) increases mission capability, decreases the time to field a new system, and so forth. With drones, where the lives of their own personnel are seldom at risk in an accident, and the price of each airframe is very low compared to manned aircraft, I can only assume they are even more willing to compromise.

It's the struggle between

[kilodelta]

Automation and manual control. Sure, the autopilot drops out for various reasons, most of which have to do with the sensor suite for airspeed and things of that nature. Pitot tubes are notorious for freezing up, etc. rending auto-pilot relatively useless.

Solve that problem and you can automate the entire flight. I never understood why they don't just GPS the entire flight.

Re:It's the struggle between

[Anonymous Coward]

GPS can only give you ground speed, not airspeed.

Automation and Intelligence

[jcdr]

First sorry for my English.

Automation work very well in fully tested conditions and bring many advantage in term of safety, cost and comfort. The problem is that the real life is not always contained into the fully tested conditions, and that even with an massive and continuous development effort, this assertion will never be proved false.

The current state of the aircraft operation is that basically the human endorse the full responsibility to engage the automation, monitor his work, disable it in case it is not appropriate, and manually operate the aircraft. This is manly because the today automation level don't include the capabilities to replace the human for those meta-tasks. But there is technically no reason to not includes them, and I believe that the future automation will take this direction. The consequence is that the human will have even less opportunities to operate an aircraft in sustainables conditions and that the remaining out of tested condition case will be so unmanageables situations that only a few exceptional pilots will eventually be able to survive. Until this extreme level of automation is in operation, we will inevitably see pilot error due to untrained operation like in the AF443, like in Kazan a few day ago, like many others accidents...

What is important to understand here is that the concept of "untrained operation" (or not enough) for an human is not so different from the concept of "untested condition" for an automatic system. From the aircraft essential operations like aerodynamic and motors, this make no difference if the action (or inaction) in from a human or from a computer. The point is to how to know what is the good action to do at each time in the operation. The only solution here it to have a very very depth knowledge in a lot of specific fields, a massive quantity of information to choose from, and a very quick reaction time to analyse all of them. Human brain can archive fantastic things from the eyes of others humans, but have still several hug limitations. He is specifically unable to focus on a task for a long time, sensible to external stress, limited in his precision and repeatability, and usually slow and error prone in untrained operation. An automation yield better result for most of those metrics, but is completely unable to handle untrained operations (out of tested conditions).

Did you get the idea ? Having a slow and error prone human trying to resolve untrained operation is better than having only an automation that will do nothing relevant at all. This is what we commonly call intelligence: trying to solve something new. Just a note: while our human body have evolved to integrate some basic survival action generator in case of emergency situation, there are really not effective for an today aircraft operation; don't mix them with the required intelligence. At this stage you maybe feel the problem: Out of the automation tested conditions, automation is for nothing, and human is a mediocre performer, but we have no other choice yet. Having the pilot trained to replace the automation working into tested conditions is not the solution, because the real problem don't lie into the tested conditions, but outside of them.

Now a level higher. Training a pilot on a unexpected situation is a long process. From a very general point of view, you can decompose this process into some basic parts: 1) recognize the situation; 2) select the appropriate action; 3) do the selected action. In practice this is implemented into a written procedure and the pilot train this procedure. What is important to understand here is that this way of training the pilot is to make an unexpected situation managed more by his experience than by his intelligence, because experience is fast, while intelligence is slow. We essentially try to extend the "tested condition" manageable by his brain, much like we can extend the tested condition of an automate. I predict that in the future, the computers will be less limited than the human brain in the extension of the teste

Inaccurate supposition

[Anonymous Coward]

As a commercial pilot, I know a great many other commercial pilots. While the focus on systems is paramount due to ever-increasing aircraft complexity, I can't say that I know of a single pilot who does NOT have exceptional pilotage skills, and with whom I would be perfectly happy having fly an airplane in distress on which I was a passenger.

The vast majority of pilots LOVE to fly, and spend some of their off-time flying small aircraft for FUN, and to keep their pilotage skills sharp.

Re:Inaccurate supposition

[rotorbudd]

As an A&P for over 35 plus years I've known a great deal of commercial rated pilots.And it seems that over the last fifteen years or so I've seen the basic competency of younger pilots degrade to the point that I sure as Hell wouldn't want to be in the same plane with them during an emergency.
They lack a basic understanding of the systems and how they work, and don't seem to be interested in learning them.
If I was getting into a plane everyday and climbing to 40 thousand feet in it I'd at least want to have a clue of "how does the fuel get from the wing to the engine"?
This does't mean everyone of them is like that, but many seem to be nothing but button pushers.

Children of the Magenta

[cpghost]

You may want to watch this very on-topic keynote.

Airline travel losses are already trivial.

[couchslug]

The reason for spending huge effort chasing tiny loss rates is that people are afraid to fly but not afraid of things likely to kill them.

Automated flight ops are doing so well that involving meatbags more in operations may cost more lives than it's intended to save.

Fixed That For You

[Anonymous Coward]

Airline Pilots Rely Too Much On Automation, Says Safety Panel

The Human Race Relies Too Heavily On Automation, Says People Who Aren't Idiots

Wrong!

[Anonymous Coward]

Simulator time counts as simulator time but simulator time can be counted to your ATPL hours if it is in a Level D simulator. Whilst not a single revenue pilot has received their entire training in a simulator, ZFT (zero flight time) conversions between types are made (in Level D simulators). That is, an otherwise experienced pilot can be flying a particular type of aircraft for the first time for real as a normal revenue flight.

'Real Flying' with a lot of help from Fly-by-wire

[conoviator]

Sully may have been able to ditch successfully without it; but, William Langewiesche makes a strong case that the Airbus A320's fly-by-wire software was an important factor in the favorable outcome of the procedure. See http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906 and the expanded account in Langewiesche's excellent book, 'Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson.' I'm an instrument-rated private pilot who is in awe of both Captain Sullenberger and the Airbus engineering team.

Refresher Courses / Tests

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really that complicated?

Lowest annual death rate since before WW2

[Skylax]

Meanwhile annual death rates continue to fall every year.
We still have about a month to go but it looks like 2013 will see the lowest number of air traffic casualities since
the beginning of world war 2:
Casualties since 2010

I wonder if that is because of more and more automation or despite of it?

Automated flying

[danielpauldavis]

You may not mention Captain Sullenberger in your bemoaining the loss of skill in favor of automation for pilots because Captain Sullenberger EXACTLY landed a powerless plane because his Airbus craft had an autopilot able to feather the controls much more delicately than he or any other human could. The computer is what saved those lives, not the human.

Re:Automated flying

[richieb]

"feather the controls" !?!? you have no idea what you are talking about. Do you?

... and in the other news

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nearly all people connected to the software development industry agree that higher level languages have helped to dramatically improve software development processes over the past 20 years but Jimmy Neutron reports at Dilbert News that according to a new Free Software Administration report software developers rely too much on higher programming languages and are losing basic low-level programming skills. Relying too heavily on context-assisting, auto-correcting and auto-building IDEs now pose the biggest threats to software development world-wide, the study concluded."

Semi automatic cars

[MichaelSmith]

Its going to be the same say. Introduce a little bit of automation and drivers get complacent. The only way out is zero or 100% automation.

Aviation Safety

[Anonymous Coward]

gosgog:
  I have close to 7000 hours, all pilot in command. Most every thing I flew was piston engined single & multi,, from old P&W round engines, to both continental & lycoming turbocharged stuff,also I flew highest at 30,000 feet & around the Volcano in Hawaii at 30 feet AGL (and that had to be tight cause there were others including choppers all of us showing tours.
1st...the FAA pilot training...quit teaching SPINS, years ago, theoretically they teach spin recovery, but actual minimum of at least three turn spins no.
2/. They do not manditorially teach aerobatic flying. I took aerobatic lessons long ago and kept up aerobatic flying from time to time. The confidence difference it makes to a pilot is incredible and it saved my ass on many occaisions, 'cause most of what I flew was old, old aircraft...believe me that aerobatics will make you a hell of a lot safer a pilot & get your IFR rating too....
HOWEVER DO NOT TAKE SOMEONE UP SCARED OF PLANES & DO AEROBATICS !!
I'm 80 now, triple bypass back in '91 & yeah I miss it, but never got rich!