
An emergency landing system that small aircraft passengers can activate - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/11/30/an-emergency-landing-system-that-passengers-can-activate
======
nexuist
At this point I think it is fair to say that pilots are only kept around for
passenger comfort. Automated aircraft have been in the skies since the 1940s
and as computers became more powerful we have reached a level in which flying
without computer aides is not only difficult, but literally impossible for a
many new models (aircraft as far back as the F-16 in the '80s are impossible
to fly straight by hand).

Given the strict and well defined procedures regarding commercial air travel,
I see it as only a manner of time until air traffic controllers are giving
commands with keyboards instead of their mouths. That is, until automated air
traffic control completes the circle.

Automated air travel is, by almost all accounts, a solved problem. None of the
ambiguity that plagues self driving vehicles exists in the air. Not only does
the plane have basic location (INS + GPS) and attitude knowledge, but it also
has access to synthetic terrain databases and live weather radar combined with
hundreds of ground radar stations offering NDB and VOR/DME services, and to
top it all off most commercial runways have ILS installations that can bring
the airplane within inches of the centerline and perfect glideslope.

It is a bit of a shame as someone who has wanted to be a pilot for a long
time. I still want to get my PPL, and I wholeheartedly believe GA will be
alive for decades to come even after the Boeing drones come out, but at this
point I can't see it as being a valid career option.

Change my mind?

~~~
brian-armstrong
Autopilot can't deal with unexpected situations or instrumentation failures
particularly well. Take the Sully landing for example - without specifically
setting up parameters for that particular case, how could autopilot save all
passengers on board?

~~~
nexuist
Well, it is called the miracle on the Hudson for a reason. Software is only as
capable as the hardware it is running on. If you pulled the brakes off a Model
3 and brake-checked it, you'd be hard pressed to find a human or Autopilot
version that could solve that problem. In special cases, you might have a lane
open to swerve into - like Sully did with the Hudson - but such maneuvers are
rarely available. To be fair, dual engine loss on takeoff is also not really a
common occurrence.

Truthfully, Sully's incident represents the peak of human ingenuity, and I
concede that it will take us decades if not centuries to reach a level of
automation that can match that. But an autopilot that can react appropriately
to 99.999..% of cases? I think it could already exist. Certainly, if dual
engine loss is on roadmap, proper software could be developed to ensure the
best possible scenario. I think that it's never been a consideration for the
industry because these incidents are so rare, and also because that effort is
better spent in trying to build more reliable engines. An ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure and all that.

~~~
sansnomme
If AI can be cheaper than human pilots, then the cost savings can easily be
thrown into massive parachutes for cabins like those in smaller private
planes. That, or solid state emergency landing thrusters.

------
NickNameNick
Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21407727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21407727)

Vendor page:

[https://www.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/](https://www.garmin.com/en-
US/autonomi/)

------
ec2y
One might think this kind of technology will become particularly important if
we get to the point of having self-flying planes.

~~~
noodlesUK
I mean, should this technology actually be very reliable in adverse
conditions, it’s 50% of a self-flying plane. I don’t know how much auto-
landing currently exists in the commercial airliner industry, but I suspect
it’ll be much easier to build self-flying planes than self-driving cars.

~~~
nexuist
Autoland has existed in commercial airliners since the late '80s. It is really
not much more than a mathematical equation given the feedback provided by ILS
(which tells the airplane exactly how far off it is from the runway in both
lateral and vertical directions).

However, pilots prefer to land by hand mainly because it gives them something
to do (and it's fun). Additionally, not much thought was given to comfort when
these autoland systems were made, and last I heard nobody recommends actually
using them as they have a nasty habit of planting the plane into the runway
(apparently, they're not programmed to flare before touchdown, resulting in
all of the landing gear hitting the pavement at once). This is not really
dangerous, but it does impact the lifespan of the landing gear and also gives
the passengers quite a kick.

These problems are relatively minor and can be fixed in software, but we still
have planes kicking from the '80s, so it will take a while for those changes
to trickle down. Nonetheless, I am confident we can build a comfortable
autoland in the present day.

------
z3t4
Having played many flight simulators I fantasize about landing an aircraft in
a emergency situation.

------
ghgr
Previous submission/discussion (without paywall):
[https://www.piper.com/press-releases/piper-announces-
new-m60...](https://www.piper.com/press-releases/piper-announces-
new-m600-sls/)

------
dexcs
Interesting topic but a paywalled article.

