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Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

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Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#111

Post by inoffensivename »

nradov wrote: post #54
ultrarunner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of my biggest frustrations with aviation— the certification required to get this done is hugely onerous. The whole basis of certified aircraft is that they may not change, which makes improvements like airframe parachutes, auto land systems, and even terrain awareness, engine monitoring, etc. very costly to obtain. I think there is an argument to be made that there should be a pathway to airframe recertif…

There is simply no way to retrofit a parachute into an existing airframe. The airframe has to be designed around it from the start with appropriate stress points.

There are retrofit ballistic recovery systems available as a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for several existing airframes, e.g. https://brsaerospace.com/cessna/

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#112

Post by shrubble »

Animats wrote: post #96

This is Garman SafeReturn, and this is its first real save. Here's a demo.[1] It's been shipping since about 2020, originally on the Cirrus Vision Jet. There's a lot going on. The system is aware of terrain, weather, and fuel, but not of runway status. So it gives the ground a few minutes to get ready, sending voice emergency messages to ATC. If you watch the flight track, you can see the aircraft circle several time…

Famously the golfer Payne Stewart and the total of 6 people on the LearJet 35, died after a sudden loss of cabin pressure incapacitated everyone including the pilots. A system like this, would have detected it and possibly saved them.

I wouldn't expect a whole lot more detail, as that airport is often used by defense contractors like Ball Aerospace, who have a large office nearby.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#114

Post by tjohns »

charcircuit wrote: post #104
segmondy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did you see the disruption to air traffic? everyone that needed to land had to go into a holding pattern. the plane was communicating to tower and was going to land since it was emergency. it was not observing other traffic, part of landing is knowing the location of other aircrafts to avoid collision. This doesn't seem to have collision detection/avoidance and space coordination with other aircrafts and entering hol…

If they designed it to be used for every landing those issues would be resolved. The rarer you use features like this, the more disruptive they will be.

That's a really big if, especially since not all traffic has a transponder, and not all airports are towered.

It would need to understand how to visually look for traffic with a camera, and understand what intentions other pilots are communicating on the radio.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#115

Post by tjohns »

WalterBright wrote: post #58
CamperBob2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, they were dealing with frozen pitot tubes or other sensors that were keeping the air data computing hardware from getting valid input. An automated "Get me out of trouble" button might have had the opposite effect.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the captain figured out what was wrong immediately, but he was too late. BTW, my dad taught instrument flying in the AF. He said it was simple - look at the instruments. Bring the wings level, then the pitch level. Although simple, your body screams at you that it's wrong. He carried with him a steel pipe, so he could beat a student unconscious who panicked and would not let go of the contro…

> He carried with him a steel pipe, so he could beat a student unconscious who panicked and would not let go of the controls.

Most flight instructors just keep a spare pen in their pocket to jab an uncooperative student in thigh with. (Thankfully almost never used.)

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#116

Post by tjohns »

mmooss wrote: post #87
joshribakoff wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without even getting into latency, just consider the fact that you could lose the signal altogether

So then it's handed off to the autopilot and you are no worse off. But as much as possible, I'd much rather have a human pilot in control. Militaries have been flying UAVs for awhile now, which must have the same challenges.

The problem is every aircraft model flies differently. The remote pilot would need to be familiar with that particular type of aircraft to safely land it.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#117

Post by justinclift »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #36
ryandrake wrote: post #28

Absolutely amazing. Well done, Garmin. Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives. Fantastic systems engineering work.

“ Imagine getting to go to work everyday to work on something that actually saves lives.” I work on medical devices that improve and save lives but the work actually kind of sucks. You spend most of your time on documentation and develop with outdated tools. It’s important work but I would much prefer “move fast and break things”. So much more interesting.

Oh, you could "move fast and break things" in your current job. For a while... ;)

(please don't)

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#118

Post by throwawaysoxjje »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #76
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #12

If you're one of the many developers at Garmin who worked on this, I can't imagine a better Christmas gift!

[flagged]

Kinda weird you had to bring Stripe developers up where there’s pacemaker, and insulin pump, and ventilator developers.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#119

Post by mmooss »

tjohns wrote: post #116
mmooss wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then it's handed off to the autopilot and you are no worse off. But as much as possible, I'd much rather have a human pilot in control. Militaries have been flying UAVs for awhile now, which must have the same challenges.

The problem is every aircraft model flies differently. The remote pilot would need to be familiar with that particular type of aircraft to safely land it.

I'm thinking of higher-level contributions such looking at the weather and saying 'fly to this airport and use this runway'; or asking the passenger, 'what does this gauge say?' or 'look at the left engine; what do you see?'; or talking to air traffic control.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#120

Post by jshier »

shrubble wrote: post #112
Animats wrote: post #96

This is Garman SafeReturn, and this is its first real save. Here's a demo.[1] It's been shipping since about 2020, originally on the Cirrus Vision Jet. There's a lot going on. The system is aware of terrain, weather, and fuel, but not of runway status. So it gives the ground a few minutes to get ready, sending voice emergency messages to ATC. If you watch the flight track, you can see the aircraft circle several time…

Famously the golfer Payne Stewart and the total of 6 people on the LearJet 35, died after a sudden loss of cabin pressure incapacitated everyone including the pilots. A system like this, would have detected it and possibly saved them. I wouldn't expect a whole lot more detail, as that airport is often used by defense contractors like Ball Aerospace, who have a large office nearby.

Even without autoland, I've never understood why there wasn't an emergency system to handle depressurization events when it detects no pilot input. There have been enough ghost flights, even in the last 20 years, that such a system could've saved hundreds of lives. (Helios Air 552) Automatically dropping altitude, or even just changing the transponder to some automatic value, would help.
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