131–140 of 154 posts
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The autopilot requires the ILS to land the plane. If the ILS is inoperative, it can't autoland. However pilots do still land planes to keep their skills honed.
Presumably GPS and/or visual recognition system can be used to achieve the same, after all airstrip location is know in advance.
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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.
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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 tru…
> Is it standard procedure to land A320s in the Hudson? Yes, ditching an airplane that has lost all of its engines is a standard emergency procedure. > Prior to 2009, how likely do you think it would have been for someone to have programmed an autopilot with such a capability? What difference does that make? I'm not saying it's a good idea to take pilots out of the cockpit right now , I'm just saying it's a lot more…
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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.
Yes, I am a pilot, albeit not an instrument rated one. Are you telling me you don't do anything? Do you bring a book to read instead of monitoring the instruments? You don't talk to ATC, you never have to make a decision regarding a route deviation? You never take into account weather information and make a decision underway on whether to press on or to find another place to land?
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I'm actually working right now to try to put some kind of overlay over the images for credit situations. My blog is still a WIP. Sorry!
You say that as if giving credit is enough. If you don't have a license/permission to use the image you're violating copyright and the correct response is to take it down.
That said, it is only fair and nice to credit all sources. The web relies on links and being able to source content back to origins.
Curious as to why autopilot isn't being used to land planes yet. My understanding is that pilots can choose to use it to land, but only do so when visibility is very low. (ex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOFs-oa-bbc )
They mention that the ILS was off for repairs. Isn't that a major negative for doing autopilot landing (if indeed it's still allowed/possible without the external location based information).
It goes without saying that my qualifications in aviation matters are only as an aviation enthusiast and for the full cause of the accident, we'll have to wait for the NTSB report (which has access to vital black box data and cockpit recordings). However, I did give this accident some thought as well given the circumstances of the accident and came the pretty much the same final conclusion as the OP. An airline pilot…
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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…
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The short version is there are multiple things on a runway that emit light and I think they're being confused. "Which appears to be due to someone incorrectly reading a post-crash NOTAM which is about the aids being gone due to the crash" OK first of all VASI has been obsolete since I was a kid in the 90s, its all PAPI now. (edited to add, in the USA) Much like people still call the AWOS an ATIS because it does about…
It looks like they mount stuff on CA-92/San Mateo Bridge ( http://www.flysfo.com/web/export/sites/default/download/abou... ) and then from there along the approach. The main issue seems to be the two parallel runways. From when I took photos of the airfield, there were a lot of lights and other things sticking out of the bay on the approach path. Decision Bar is supposed to be 1000' off the threshold so that was prob…
I've been telling myself that for decades and never quite had both at the same time. Often a great excess of one or the other. By the time I finally have both, I'll probably fail my medical with my luck. I did do ground school + a bit more on my own, and I've got a couple hours in the air with an instructor. I do some semi-serious sim flying for fun, mostly the X-Plane. If I ever get serious I'll already be pretty good at navigation, flight planning, reading approach plates, E6B use, METAR decoding, NOTAM decoding, etc.
There's a remarkable number of free electronic E6B apps for most phones. And some paid ones that are marginally better. I find my tablet to be quite helpful when "flying" although I also use old fashioned mechanical E6B... Figure $10 for a paper one that'll last "awhile" and $30 for a lifetime metal one.
The frontier of flight sims right now is no one does NOTAM simulation. Why not shut down some ground stuff occasionally, just like you can shut down aircraft systems and screw around with weather? It may be there's a sim out there that does this that I don't know about.