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Armchair air crash investigator

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Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#101

Post by snom380 »

lisper wrote: post #95
sneak wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact of the matter is that there are no technological barriers to making aircraft completely autonomous, but pilots want the world to remain in denial about this for as long as possible for the sake of their job security. Two words: anomalous conditions. As we both know, pilots aren't needed in the vast majority of commercial flights. The plane is perfectly capable of taking off, navigating, avoiding collisions…

That's true, but 1) anomalous conditions are very rare and 2) as often as not the pilot is the anomalous condition. Pilot error is the most common cause of aviation accidents. EDIT: Notice that you had to go back 30 years to find your third example of a human pilot saving the day. And automation technology has improved a lot since then.

Most of the time when a pilot saves the day he just disconnects the autopilot and writes an incident report. There's been at least four inflight upsets due to autopilot or sensor malfunction in the past few years that I can recall. Some of these caused serious passenger injury. Latest one I heard about here: http://www.aibn.no/Luftfart/Rapporter/13-18 Another one: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#102

Post by CamperBob2 »

bdonlan wrote: post #98
CamperBob2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's-advocate: fine, OK, we still need pilots, for the time being. But do they actually need to be on the planes? In the case of two recent crashes (AF447 and this one, assuming pilot error turns out to be the cause as seems likely), it's safe to say that a computer would've easily done a better job than the pilots. Would be interesting to hear Capt. Sullenberger's take on the question.

If you're going to use remote pilots to deal with anomalous conditions, you'd better have an emergency electrical supply that'll keep your remote control running for however long it'll take to glide at the plane's maximum range. You'll also need a communication system that'll work over the ocean, in poor weather conditions, while the plane is having difficulty maintaining a stable attitude (good luck maintaining the…

If you're going to use remote pilots to deal with anomalous conditions, you'd better have an emergency electrical supply that'll keep your remote control running for however long it'll take to glide at the plane's maximum range. You'll also need a communication system that'll work over the ocean, in poor weather conditions, while the plane is having difficulty maintaining a stable attitude (good luck maintaining the alignment of a satellite dish when the autopilot disconnects due to a sudden upset).

(Shrug) Sorry, but given the complexity of the rest of the aircraft's systems, none of these engineering tasks sound impossible. 40 years ago we did this stuff on the freakin' Moon.

Although yes, I tend to agree that any move in this direction amounts to fixing something that isn't broken. (In the "freakin' Moon" example, the human pilot still had to handle the tricky part.)

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#103

Post by snom380 »

lisper wrote: post #96
snom380 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither can humans, but humans can handle a lot more situations. We can take into account a lot of information and come up with creative solutions, while current computers will need a set of humans to come up with and program potential scenarios beforehand. I think we'll have computer level AI that will perform better in accidents eventually (AI is improving and our brains are not) but it a long way into the future,…

Actually, it is extremely rare for a human pilot to come up with a "creative solution" to an emergency. The vast majority of emergency responses are established procedures for which pilots train. Most of the time they're following a check list. I can only think of a single example of a "creative" response to an in-flight emergency that actually helped, and that was UA232 in 1989.

Aircraft accidents are extremely rare in the first place, so that's a given. The question should rather be whether computers would do a better job than pilots in the same situation, and currently the answer is no. The actual flying of the airplane which autopilots do today is just a small part of the pilots job, and automating the rest of the tasks a pilot performs is non-trivial.

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#104

Post by VladRussian2 »

cpncrunch wrote: post #59

It looks like this was an unstabilized approach right down to the ground. It would be interesting to see what the company SOP is. Any safe airline has a no-fault go-around policy for unstabilized approaches, and you'll actually get in trouble if you continue with an unstabilized approach and you don't go around. From what pilots are saying on the message boards it seems that a lot of Asian airlines have pretty much t…

pretty much looks the same to me - the guy stalled and when he finally, at the last second (actually - well past the last second), decided to go around, he did jerk up the nose and that increased the stall, so they fell. Reminds me about the AirFrance fall in the Atlantic some years ago - that guy was trying to gain altitude by jerking the nose up (i.e. increasing the "angle of attack") instead of "pressing the accelerator pedal".

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#105

Post by lisper »

snom380 wrote: post #103
lisper wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it is extremely rare for a human pilot to come up with a "creative solution" to an emergency. The vast majority of emergency responses are established procedures for which pilots train. Most of the time they're following a check list. I can only think of a single example of a "creative" response to an in-flight emergency that actually helped, and that was UA232 in 1989.

Aircraft accidents are extremely rare in the first place, so that's a given. The question should rather be whether computers would do a better job than pilots in the same situation, and currently the answer is no. The actual flying of the airplane which autopilots do today is just a small part of the pilots job, and automating the rest of the tasks a pilot performs is non-trivial.

Are you a pilot? Because I am, and I'm telling you from firsthand experience that you're wrong. Except for takeoff and landing, there's next to nothing I have to do. And the only reason I have to do the landing is because my plane is a small GA aircraft without autothrottle or autoland technology.

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#107

Post by omegant »

bajsejohannes wrote: post #80
Lusake wrote: post #4

Here is graphical comparison of safe landing and Asiana crash: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOhIDCWCUAApHFV.jpg:large . Also it appears that runway was modified: http://metabunk.org/sk/HL7742_777_Crash%2C_Korean_Asiana_Air...

This is comparing one single safe landing to a crash landing. Does that gain us new insights? Not really. For that, we'd need the crash landing compared to the average landing, and also to other (safe and unsafe) extreme landings of the past. And to get all Tufte of the graphics: Most of this is chart junk. The 3d view only serveres to hide information, and overlaying the paths (in 2d) would actually let us compare m…

Average aircraft approach is a 3º glide slope. And usually all of them look exactly like that (only minor deviations due to the wind). If that chart is true is easy to see that they where high on the (non working) glidslope.

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#108

Post by nknighthb »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #102
bdonlan wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to use remote pilots to deal with anomalous conditions, you'd better have an emergency electrical supply that'll keep your remote control running for however long it'll take to glide at the plane's maximum range. You'll also need a communication system that'll work over the ocean, in poor weather conditions, while the plane is having difficulty maintaining a stable attitude (good luck maintaining the…

If you're going to use remote pilots to deal with anomalous conditions, you'd better have an emergency electrical supply that'll keep your remote control running for however long it'll take to glide at the plane's maximum range. You'll also need a communication system that'll work over the ocean, in poor weather conditions, while the plane is having difficulty maintaining a stable attitude (good luck maintaining the…

> 40 years ago we did this stuff on the freakin' Moon.

...

> In the "freakin' Moon" example, the human pilot still had to handle the tricky part.

Since you're apparently well aware that the Apollo missions were conducted with manual docking and landing, why bring it up?

Especially given the relative simplicity of "final approach" on the moon, given the lower gravity, zero wind speed, and slower pace, I don't understand what your point is.

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#109

Post by nknighthb »

lisper wrote: post #96
snom380 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither can humans, but humans can handle a lot more situations. We can take into account a lot of information and come up with creative solutions, while current computers will need a set of humans to come up with and program potential scenarios beforehand. I think we'll have computer level AI that will perform better in accidents eventually (AI is improving and our brains are not) but it a long way into the future,…

Actually, it is extremely rare for a human pilot to come up with a "creative solution" to an emergency. The vast majority of emergency responses are established procedures for which pilots train. Most of the time they're following a check list. I can only think of a single example of a "creative" response to an in-flight emergency that actually helped, and that was UA232 in 1989.

Is it standard procedure to land A320s in the Hudson? Prior to 2009, how likely do you think it would have been for someone to have programmed an autopilot with such a capability?

Do pilots typically glide unpowered 767s to landings at abandoned military airfields? (A result, incidentally, that could not be reproduced by other crews in simulators; are you sure it's the crews, and not inadequate programming? Still trust the computer?)

Are you willing to bet your life that the computer on a 737 that looked like this[1] could find its way to a safe landing?

As programmers, we should know better.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243_...

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#110

Post by CamperBob2 »

nknighthb wrote: post #108
CamperBob2 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to use remote pilots to deal with anomalous conditions, you'd better have an emergency electrical supply that'll keep your remote control running for however long it'll take to glide at the plane's maximum range. You'll also need a communication system that'll work over the ocean, in poor weather conditions, while the plane is having difficulty maintaining a stable attitude (good luck maintaining the…

> 40 years ago we did this stuff on the freakin' Moon. ... > In the "freakin' Moon" example, the human pilot still had to handle the tricky part. Since you're apparently well aware that the Apollo missions were conducted with manual docking and landing, why bring it up? Especially given the relative simplicity of "final approach" on the moon, given the lower gravity, zero wind speed, and slower pace, I don't understa…

Just pointing out that it's not valid to argue that this stuff is impossible, or even impractical.
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