Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe • Hacker News Board

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#161

Post by phil21 » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 4:06 PM UTC

OptionOfT wrote: post #101

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ 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 You spend most of your time on documentation and develop with outdated tools.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.

Well, I'm glad it's that slow. I can't shake the idea of the horrors it would be to get a glucose pump whose software has been vibe-coded.

I certainly get it. But I also am very frustrated with the snails-pace development of closed loop glucose pump system. The tech has existed for quite some time to implement them in theory. Body hackers have already done so a decade ago.

I often wonder if we have created the correct balance here. How many quality of life years have been lost due to the decades lost by being conservative? And how much of the conservative pace is done for the “right” reasons vs personal or corporate CYA?

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#162

Post by charcircuit » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

nottorp wrote: post #144

charcircuit wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've confirmed with my own 2 eyes cars driving on the road without humans in them. I've also rode in a Waymo which had no driver. They definitely exist. Teslas also have self driving.

Is that self driving in the sense of fully autonomous, or it only works on whatever Waymo/Tesla have mapped to the milimeter? I've never seen any clear info about that.

It's in the sense that there is no human driving the car.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#163

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #157

CamperBob2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are basically Moon-landing deniers. They crop up a lot these days, sadly. I wish they'd crop up somewhere else.

I define “self driving car” as level 5. Or at least 4. It should’ve able to drive itself under almost all circumstances. And well. Tesla isn’t that. Nor Ford. Nor GM. Nor anyone else. Waymo is closest, but they limit the domain and clearly still have issues. Stick a Waymo in snow on rural roads is it good to go? Doubt it.

I define "self driving car" as anything that drives as well as I do.

We won't get into what happens when I drive on a rural road covered with snow and ice... no, really, let's not go there. Moving right along...

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#164

Post by asa400 » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #161

OptionOfT wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm glad it's that slow. I can't shake the idea of the horrors it would be to get a glucose pump whose software has been vibe-coded.

I certainly get it. But I also am very frustrated with the snails-pace development of closed loop glucose pump system. The tech has existed for quite some time to implement them in theory. Body hackers have already done so a decade ago. I often wonder if we have created the correct balance here. How many quality of life years have been lost due to the decades lost by being conservative? And how much of the conservati…

It's a question of incentives.

For safety regulators, the incentives are all on the side of limiting acute downside (e.g. a plane crashing), not maximizing potential aggregate upside (e.g. millions of tons of fuel saved per year and millions of tons of C02 not in the atmosphere).

Society punishes regulators that approve products that kill people, so regulators adapt to this and as a result tend to be very conservative.

Regulators don't capture any of the upside (reputational or otherwise) when a new product enters the market and cures disease, makes cars more efficient, helps planes land on their own in an emergency, etc.

I don't know what "right" should be here, but you've hit on a good point. It's complicated.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#165

Post by OptionOfT » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 6:09 PM UTC

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #145

AlotOfReading wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on team managing safety critical code. Management has asked to increase our AI usage, especially for generating requirements.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I often encounter badly written or conflicting requirements. An AI may be better at detecting problems or gaps than humans.

Yes and... no.

I find the risk here that the requirements are the average of all requirements, so the exceptional things don't really get highlighted.

Because you now get this giant amount of text shoved in your face, you switch from thinking to validating. Is what's there correct, vs starting from a blank canvas. The doc already curtails your thoughts.

Kinda like all cars are starting to look the same. No one takes risks anymore.

No-one wants to / feels empowered to / has the knowledge to ask the really difficult questions.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#166

Post by DarmokJalad1701 » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 6:12 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #26

There needs to be a button on the console of every airplane which is "return the airplane to straight and level".

Most modern avionics stacks have one. Examples:

- https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/aviation/blue-button-helpi...

- https://pilotsupport.avidyne.com/kb/article/50-dfc90-wings-l...

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#167

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 6:41 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#168

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 6:50 PM UTC

Mawr wrote: post #155

filleduchaos wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, one of the pilots put the plane into an aerodynamic stall because they had failed sensors giving them erroneous airspeed information and he kept overriding the other pilot who was doing the correct thing to recover from the stall he had put the aircraft in. What exactly was a computer at the time supposed to figure out with unreliable data, especially after a stall had first developed? Also in fairness I was a bi…

"and he kept overriding the other pilot who was doing the correct thing to recover from the stall he had put the aircraft in." Yep, the real design problem here is the idiocy of allowing dual input.

I will repeat this as I have had to say it before:

There is no engineering fix to AF447. You cannot protect a plane from what is essentially a rogue pilot who is not restrained.

It would have happened exactly the same in a Boeing. The problem was a supposedly trained and tested pilot responding to a somewhat normal event (loss of awareness and disorientation) by freaking the fuck out and throwing a plane into the ocean from 30k feet. The copilot knew what was going on with 3 minutes left until impact, and was trying to fix things, and was using the feature to override dual input, and was still being hampered by a pilot who was refusing to do the only safe thing he should have: Sit back and shut the fuck up.

The actual solution is regular testing of pilots in stressful simulations to ensure they react predictably in bad situations. That can never be perfect though.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#169

Post by andix » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 7:32 PM UTC

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…

Is there any option for passengers to chose another airport? Or for ATC to force the plane to use the next best airport? For example if the runway is under construction and severely blocked.

Re: Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe

#170

Post by arcfour » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

andix wrote: post #169

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…

Is there any option for passengers to chose another airport? Or for ATC to force the plane to use the next best airport? For example if the runway is under construction and severely blocked.

I would imagine it is aware of NOTAMs that indicate runways being closed when it picks where to land.

It's probably a possibility in some bizarre & unlikely set of circumstances with perfect timing, but even then it's still a better outcome than flying into the ground uncontrolled. See the Gimli Glider where a 767 flown by humans was forced to make an emergency landing at a runway that was actively being used as a dragstrip during the landing—everyone survived.