Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

airspacemag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 81 posts

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#31

Post by sliverstorm »

0x12 wrote: post #30
sliverstorm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your parent is probably skeptical because in 1906 total human powered winged flight time could reasonably be measured in minutes. Europe still believed it was a hoax. Pilots didn't even have instruments let alone a cockpit. If you were a pilot, odds are your name was either Orville or Wilbur. Remember, the Wright brothers first flew in 1903. As another reply points out, it was likely blimp, balloon or some other form…

You forgot about Santos-Dumont, and many others besides. Europe definitely didn't believe it was a hoax, in fact there were lots of people working at attempting powered flight. That does not diminish the accomplishments of the Wright brothers in any way, but to make it seem as though Europe did not believe powered flight was possible is not true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_history The time was simply ripe,…

I don't mean Europe thought it couldn't be done, I meant they didn't believe it had been accomplished yet.

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#32

Post by dalke »

mkr-hn wrote: post #15
0x12 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a simple trick for that: I know the consumption of my car on a level road in 5th gear at 90 km/h, so when I'm in doubt about whether or not I'm going up, down or level I look at the fuel consumption indicator. If it is higher than 6.6L/100km then I'm going up, less is down. If you don't have a fuel consumption indicator then that will not work but lots of cars have them these days and I think using them as a l…

This is the first I've heard of fuel consumption indicators. What kind of car is it?

First I saw was in a Saab 9000, around 1991.

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#33

Post by ispolin »

electromagnetic wrote: post #28
ispolin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the fatal scenario: http://www.aerosafe.net/page6.html As a VFR pilot, you've received basic instrument training. Remember that training, trust your instruments, and you'll make it though.

With an altimeter, an artificial horizon and an airspeed indicator, you would expect a VFR pilot to be able to get through any light cloud safely. Untrained, never having touched the cockpit of a plane, I can get the meaning from these instruments. Is it simply that pilots fly without these, or that they simply disregard them during flight?

Neither. In US, your plane has to have the 6 basic instruments to be certified as airworthy by FAA. The reasons pilots die in non-visual flight conditions are twofold.

As the original article pointed out, the first reason is that the sensations are so compelling that doing what the instruments tell you will feel VERY unnatural and you will keep thinking that your instruments are broken or stuck (hence you HAVE to trust your instruments). And even if you remember not to trust your instincts, you will still often unconsciously apply slight pressure to the controls.

The second reason is that for every change in the plane's orientation and speed, several instruments will start moving at once. Without training it is very hard to integrate what the 6 instruments are telling you into a complete mental picture of what's going on with your airplane.

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#34

Post by apaprocki »

antoinehersen wrote: post #23
apaprocki wrote: post #10

Given the analysis of what happened in the recent Air France crash, I can't imagine why the industry does not write better software to help combat this. It seems as if the programmers writing the software are more concerned about writing valid code to fit the designed system ("the pilot signaled us to climb at exactly 40 degrees, so do it") rather than writing code that models the real world situations accurately. I…

Pilots are very reluctant to hand over control to any kind of computer. It goes completely agains their self image. This is more true in certain company than other. A very similar phenomenon is how the USAF crashes more drones than the Army since they use pilots that insist on flying them in manual, vs the Army operators that do not consider themselves pilot. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/29/young_usaf_predato…

Very interesting.. Pilots that want to be rated for Cat II/III ILS landings have to perform them every now and then to stay rated, so I bet a lot of people have been through computer controlled landings without even knowing. Definitely whenever the weather is unmanageable, they have to turn over control already. Here's a really good example of something that would be very difficult for a human to do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXJCHUmuUyw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe_pEK_kRVw

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#35

Post by ra »

crikli wrote: post #29

"According to a 2004 study, the average life expectancy of a non-instrument-rated pilot who flies into clouds or instrument conditions is 178 seconds." This statistic is the aviation equivalent of the "Bill Gates is going to give you $5" email forward. The study was in 1954, not 2004, and the pilots that were tested had zero instrument time (at least three hours are required to get a license now). They were put into…

I've never flown a bonanza, but the 'doctor killer' [1] has quite a reputation.

[1] http://aviatorcollege.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/why-is-the-“d...

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#36

Post by learc83 »

Seems like the perfect scenario for sensory augmentation. There was an article on HN a while back about attaching electrodes to the tongue to replace vision in blind subjects.

One of the precursor experiments was attaching electrodes to the hand that were tied into a compass. The subjects were able to eventually feel North.

A similar device could be attached to something like an altimeter or other instrument.

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#37

Post by abrowne »

Highly recommended piece by William Langewiesche on the same subject:

  The Turn
  At the very heart of winged flight lies the banked turn, a procedure 
  that by now seems so routine and familiar that airline passengers 
  appreciate neither its elegance and mystery nor its dangerously 
  delusive character. The author, a pilot, takes us up into the subject.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.htm

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#38

Post by gnaffle »

apaprocki wrote: post #20
0x12 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the pilot will do to keep the passenger and plane safe can't be foretold by software written in static situations on terra firma. Sensors can lie, equipment can break. Your software may have no better idea of the true situation than the pilot. In the end it is a judgment call and if you limit the ability of those judgment calls to a bunch of software then you are saying that those in a different time and place h…

I think a more robust model of N completely different systems (both mechanical and electrical) to compute the same variable could be found so that the probability that it is computing a value outside of x% of the actual real value is lower than the probability that the human could make a mistake. Even if a speed indicator model in the event of pitot tube loss had a 25% margin of error, autopilot could have done the r…

I'm not downvoting you, but I think this is a kind of problem that seems solvable on the surface, but is very, very difficult to get right. You will always have situations where all speed indicators fail in a similar way leading the software to believe that the speed is correct. With all the erring on the side of caution that aircraft makes have used, we've had a couple of cases where the software "decided" something and caused incidents.

Studies in N-version programming (such as used in Airbus planes) show that software written by different teams often fail in the same corner cases (with differing outputs).

Eventually you might have software with "situational awareness" that can be trusted to make fewer mistakes than humans, but we're not there yet.

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#39

Post by scott_s »

3pt14159 wrote: post #6

How are there not heads up systems that detect this? A simple "warning 5 seconds to impact with the ocean" would at least warn the pilot.

The end of the article talks about systems that will automatically take over if a crash is imminent.

Re: Why do pilots still die from not knowing which end is up?

#40

Post by scott_s »

apaprocki wrote: post #10

Given the analysis of what happened in the recent Air France crash, I can't imagine why the industry does not write better software to help combat this. It seems as if the programmers writing the software are more concerned about writing valid code to fit the designed system ("the pilot signaled us to climb at exactly 40 degrees, so do it") rather than writing code that models the real world situations accurately. I…

The end of the article talks about software that does exactly this.
Post reply on HN