4 ms·

There's an old joke about how the new planes have a pilot, for the sake of safety, and a dog, to bite the pilot if he tries to touch the controls. It sounds li

There's an old joke about how the new planes have a pilot, for the sake of safety, and a dog, to bite the pilot if he tries to touch the controls. It sounds like it's time to introduce the dog?

sandworm101 11y ago
There is more to being a pilot than the stick-and-rudder of flying the plane. Judgment calls such as whether to attempt a landing under less-than-ideal conditions are far more important.
detaro 11y ago
More like a dog to gently nudge the pilot if he is relying on a system that isn't working. Most issues I've read about happened when the systems either weren't engaged properly or automatically disengaged because their operating parameters weren't met anymore, suddenly forcing the pilots to take control. Example Air France 447, where (presumably) the airspeed sensors where blocked by ice, which lead to the autopilot to disengage. There is also the theory that the pilots then made some of their mistakes based on the belief that the avionics would stop them from bringing the plane in an unsafe state and didn't realize that the system wasn't able to do so with missing information. (I hope I'm presenting this correctly, but that's what I remember reading afterwards) There is also the training aspect: if a system takes care of something 99,9% of the time, the pilot is less experienced in the 0,1% where it doesn't. There is a reason the safest airline pilots often fly way smaller aircraft as a hobby and get some instinct for manual flying there.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  No need for theories we know very well what happened there in that flight and its basically the copilots who crashed a perfectly fly worthy planed.
  - TuxerLulz 11y ago
    There is no basically in an aircraft accident. If you wish to make such a statement, please explain what actually happened in this flight (icing of the pitot tubes, deactivation of normal flight control law for the fly-by-wire system, flight at night over the ocean and over a storm, stall under the specifications for the stall warning system). It's respectful for the crew.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    There's an old joke about a pilot lost in a deep fog who shouts out the window "Where am I?", hears in response "You're in an airplane!", and immediately realizes that he is over the Microsoft tech support building, because no one else could be so accurate and so useless at the same time. That's what you're doing here. Saying "the copilots crashed it" teaches us nothing; we need to know why they crashed it, what cues they misunderstood and what skills they lacked, so we can keep it from happening again.
- JulianMorrison 11y ago
  That sounds like a UI issue. Like, it shouldn't be too hard to put a blinkenlight on the control that indicates it's under autopilot control (or the absence indicates it isn't).
  - mentat 11y ago
    The actual report states that there was a repeated audio cue that this was the case.
    - adamio 11y ago
      There was also a stall warning that shutoff when the pilot pulled up because it no longer had reliable info, the pilot assumed pulling up was somehow stopping a stall
      - rwc 11y ago
        Under which circumstance does pulling up stop a stall, exactly?
        adamio 11y ago
        It doesn't but the alarm shut off when the pilot pulled up causing confusion. He continued to increase angle of attack the entire time
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Wasn't there also the problem with other pilot pushing down in panic, rudder being so enclosed that nobody noticed, and the fact that plane averaged the two inputs?
- darkmighty 11y ago
  I think the main problem with aircraft is lack of redundancy. They still count on the ability of letting the pilots control the aircraft (e.g. .1% of the time as you mentioned), I think they should just try to go all the way as much as possible. For example, if they had 4 redundant pilot tubes on different places and other redundant methods to measure altitude and airspeed the AP would never have disengaged. For a large plane those sensors are basically free, and it's very easy to tell whether they're working correctly by cross-verification/calibration (i.e. maintenance/reliability is easy) -- they just don't go all the way because they're still on the paradigm that "well if a couple pilot tubes and/or other systems fail we can just hand it to the pilot".
  - Animats 11y ago
    "For example, if they had 4 redundant pilot tubes on different places and other redundant methods to measure altitude and airspeed the AP would never have disengaged." There's a lot to be said for that. The pilots didn't know their altitude and airspeed either. They thought they were overspeeding when they were stalling. Some military aircraft, mostly the stealth ones with terrible aerodynamic stability, need that sensor data to stay in the air at all. If they lose the sensor data or the stability control system, the only option is to eject. So they tend to go in for more sensor redundancy. There's certainly no reason that large transport aircraft can't have more sources of basic attitude/altitude/airspeed info.
  - noxryan 11y ago
    Modern aircraft have excellent redundancy. Commercial aircraft already typically have 3 Pitot* tubes and 3 static ports. They need unobstructed airflow and are placed accordingly. In this kind of aircraft they do cross-verify each other as well, but if they all are reading different values, there's not much to be done. Conditions were such on AF447 that they all experienced some amount of icing until the aircraft descended enough. I don't see how having one more pitot tube is the proper response.
    - darkmighty 11y ago
      Well clearly having altitude/velocity readings is critical to autopilot function, so some kind of redundancy should be put in place. Not necessarily specifically more pilot tubes, but some kind of solution, like heating/deicing the tubes inlets, better placing them, etc -- guaranteeing in some way the chances that all measurements are unavailable is astronomically low.
- Natsu 11y ago
  Yes, the reconstruction was that they stalled the plane deliberately because they thought the autopilot would prevent the stall. They needed to descend to gain airspeed and lift. But they were pulling up and literally falling out of the sky without realizing it.

There's an old joke about how the new planes have a pilot, for the sake of safety, and a dog, to bite the pilot if he tries to touch the controls. It sounds like it's time to introduce the dog?

sandworm101 11y ago

There is more to being a pilot than the stick-and-rudder of flying the plane. Judgment calls such as whether to attempt a landing under less-than-ideal conditions are far more important.

detaro 11y ago

More like a dog to gently nudge the pilot if he is relying on a system that isn't working. Most issues I've read about happened when the systems either weren't engaged properly or automatically disengaged because their operating parameters weren't met anymore, suddenly forcing the pilots to take control. Example Air France 447, where (presumably) the airspeed sensors where blocked by ice, which lead to the autopilot to disengage. There is also the theory that the pilots then made some of their mistakes based on the belief that the avionics would stop them from bringing the plane in an unsafe state and didn't realize that the system wasn't able to do so with missing information. (I hope I'm presenting this correctly, but that's what I remember reading afterwards) There is also the training aspect: if a system takes care of something 99,9% of the time, the pilot is less experienced in the 0,1% where it doesn't. There is a reason the safest airline pilots often fly way smaller aircraft as a hobby and get some instinct for manual flying there.

ekianjo 11y ago
No need for theories we know very well what happened there in that flight and its basically the copilots who crashed a perfectly fly worthy planed.
- TuxerLulz 11y ago
  There is no basically in an aircraft accident. If you wish to make such a statement, please explain what actually happened in this flight (icing of the pitot tubes, deactivation of normal flight control law for the fly-by-wire system, flight at night over the ocean and over a storm, stall under the specifications for the stall warning system). It's respectful for the crew.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  There's an old joke about a pilot lost in a deep fog who shouts out the window "Where am I?", hears in response "You're in an airplane!", and immediately realizes that he is over the Microsoft tech support building, because no one else could be so accurate and so useless at the same time. That's what you're doing here. Saying "the copilots crashed it" teaches us nothing; we need to know why they crashed it, what cues they misunderstood and what skills they lacked, so we can keep it from happening again.
JulianMorrison 11y ago
That sounds like a UI issue. Like, it shouldn't be too hard to put a blinkenlight on the control that indicates it's under autopilot control (or the absence indicates it isn't).
- mentat 11y ago
  The actual report states that there was a repeated audio cue that this was the case.
  - adamio 11y ago
    There was also a stall warning that shutoff when the pilot pulled up because it no longer had reliable info, the pilot assumed pulling up was somehow stopping a stall
    - rwc 11y ago
      Under which circumstance does pulling up stop a stall, exactly?
      - adamio 11y ago
        It doesn't but the alarm shut off when the pilot pulled up causing confusion. He continued to increase angle of attack the entire time
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Wasn't there also the problem with other pilot pushing down in panic, rudder being so enclosed that nobody noticed, and the fact that plane averaged the two inputs?
darkmighty 11y ago
I think the main problem with aircraft is lack of redundancy. They still count on the ability of letting the pilots control the aircraft (e.g. .1% of the time as you mentioned), I think they should just try to go all the way as much as possible. For example, if they had 4 redundant pilot tubes on different places and other redundant methods to measure altitude and airspeed the AP would never have disengaged. For a large plane those sensors are basically free, and it's very easy to tell whether they're working correctly by cross-verification/calibration (i.e. maintenance/reliability is easy) -- they just don't go all the way because they're still on the paradigm that "well if a couple pilot tubes and/or other systems fail we can just hand it to the pilot".
- Animats 11y ago
  "For example, if they had 4 redundant pilot tubes on different places and other redundant methods to measure altitude and airspeed the AP would never have disengaged." There's a lot to be said for that. The pilots didn't know their altitude and airspeed either. They thought they were overspeeding when they were stalling. Some military aircraft, mostly the stealth ones with terrible aerodynamic stability, need that sensor data to stay in the air at all. If they lose the sensor data or the stability control system, the only option is to eject. So they tend to go in for more sensor redundancy. There's certainly no reason that large transport aircraft can't have more sources of basic attitude/altitude/airspeed info.
- noxryan 11y ago
  Modern aircraft have excellent redundancy. Commercial aircraft already typically have 3 Pitot* tubes and 3 static ports. They need unobstructed airflow and are placed accordingly. In this kind of aircraft they do cross-verify each other as well, but if they all are reading different values, there's not much to be done. Conditions were such on AF447 that they all experienced some amount of icing until the aircraft descended enough. I don't see how having one more pitot tube is the proper response.
  - darkmighty 11y ago
    Well clearly having altitude/velocity readings is critical to autopilot function, so some kind of redundancy should be put in place. Not necessarily specifically more pilot tubes, but some kind of solution, like heating/deicing the tubes inlets, better placing them, etc -- guaranteeing in some way the chances that all measurements are unavailable is astronomically low.
Natsu 11y ago
Yes, the reconstruction was that they stalled the plane deliberately because they thought the autopilot would prevent the stall. They needed to descend to gain airspeed and lift. But they were pulling up and literally falling out of the sky without realizing it.