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While I am not a pilot I have been on the flight deck of a 747. Can confirm that the pilots do not touch anything for hours at a time. IIRC they mostly checked
by keanzu 7y ago
While I am not a pilot I have been on the flight deck of a 747. Can confirm that the pilots do not touch anything for hours at a time. IIRC they mostly checked the weather, fuel, engines, altitude and heading infrequently. The aircraft flew itself all the way to the Heathrow pattern. I asked what would happen if they did nothing. They claimed the aircraft would circle above the airport until it ran out of fuel.
The plane flies on its own for hours or at least 747s do.
- ben_bai 7y agoAnd it'll fly happily into a mountain or other plane, if unmonitored. Now the problem is streets are a little more crowded.
- keanzu 7y agoThere are no mountains at the cruise altitude of a 747. TCAS will provide a warning 30 seconds before collision and the Airbus A380 has an autopilot with integrated TCAS avoidance. So it will hit neither mountains (too low) nor other aircraft (automatic avoidance). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...
- mopsi 7y agoIt will circle the last entered waypoint and then crash once fuel is depleted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
- ben_bai 7y agoI'm well aware that there are no mountains at 40k feet. Well airplane autopilots can avoid obstacles... about time after 100 years of development. (The first aircraft autopilot was developed by Sperry Corporation in 1912. The autopilot connected a gyroscopic heading indicator and attitude indicator to hydraulically operated elevators and rudder.)
- keanzu 7y ago> Well airplane autopilots can avoid obstacles Technically speaking yes. But the obstacle does need to have a working TCAS transponder! An A380 won't be able to detect or avoid a military jet for example because they tend to not be too forthcoming about their locations. Some birds, most notably the Ruppell's griffon vulture, can fly into airliner airspace topping out at 37,000 ft. However, by general agreement, only aircraft on IFR flight plans are allowed into the airliner zone and therefore pretty much all the obstacles (not military jets or birds) do have TCAS or ATC clearance. Lastly while some aircraft do have TCAS integrated autopilot it is uncommon. Some airlines are still operating aircraft 40 years old.