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> Cockpit component company Rockwell Collins, for example, made waves at this year’s Paris air show when it talked about developing a “panic button” for commerc
by bonzoesc 15y ago
> Cockpit component company Rockwell Collins, for example, made waves at this year’s Paris air show when it talked about developing a “panic button” for commercial airplanes that would give confused and stricken pilots the option of flipping a switch and letting the computer fly the plane to safety. Not surprisingly, the concept drew ridicule from aviators, who are quick to point out that computers are hardly infallible, as anyone who has ever struggled with a crashed Web browser knows.
One of the more dangerous things when operating a vehicle is cognitive overload; when shit goes wrong, a bunch of stuff tends to get dumped on you and you can't think fast enough to catch up. A way to let the airplane worry about itself for a minute while the pilots can catch up seems to be a decent way to address this side effect of being a conscious being instead of an automaton.
The jab about the unreliability of computers is just that; avionics software is on a much slower release schedule and has a much more fixed set of inputs than a web browser, allowing for a more thorough (or even formal) analysis of its behavior.
> “People say it’s impossible to stall an Airbus, right? It has stall-protection systems and it won’t allow you to exceed the maximum angle of attack where a stall would occur,” argues Paul Strachan, an Air Canada pilot who is the head of the company’s pilots’ union. “But that’s not true. If there’s ice on the wing, that whole detection system isn’t accurate to begin with. I would be pretty hesitant to get on a plane with no pilot.”
Flight control systems can be built to compensate for all sorts of failures[1] that would pose grave difficulty for human pilots, but nobody's really advocating for completely-autonomous passenger planes. The problem right now is that the autonomous systems to reduce pilot workload and improve safety have failure modes that tend to overload the pilots with information. A working, reliable "panic button" would definitely help pilots get back in front of the plane in an emergency situation, but so would fixing the information overload to allow pilots to prioritize important issues (pitot freezing up, speed indicators unreliable) over side effects (unreliable stall warning, alternate law activation).
[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN9f9ycWkOY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN9f9ycWkOY
- a-priori 15y agoIf there were a "Panic button", would pilots actually use it? In the case they mentioned, it sounds like the pilot was quite confident that pitching the nose up further would get him out of the stall. Who knows what his reasons were for doing that, but he had to "outmuscle" the existing automated systems to do it. Does that sound like a person who would push a button and let the plane save itself?
- jedc 15y agoIt sounds like that it's not a "Panic" button that pilots need, but a "Filter" button. Where if you've got 10 alarms going off, the "Filter" shows you the 1 or 2 alarms that matter most and need immediate action. Certainly the computational horsepower for this already exists onboard!
- bonzoesc 15y agoThe logic exists too, but it's stored in binders full of easily-updated paper checklists instead of hard-to-update computer software (hard-to-update because FAA certification takes time).
- PakG1 15y agoThis type of result is attained with experience. My own experience (and many other people I know feel the same) regarding pressure and panic is that you need to have experience to be able to withstand pressure and panic, not better filtered information. Even with only a few alarms, it's easy for inexperienced people to get panicked about something. But the claims of Sullenberger, the pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson river, are sobering. http://www.businessinsider.com/capt-sullenberger-stop-cutting-pilot-pay-or-next-time-plane-will-crash-in-river-2009-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/capt-sullenberger-stop-cuttin...
- khafra 15y agoWould you recommend that airlines publicize the experience of the pilot on each flight, and offer discounts for travelling with less experienced pilots? Because, other than with something like this, "experience" doesn't sound like an alternative to a "panic button" or a "filter button." Where does the experience come from?
- PakG1 15y agoIt comes from training in flight school, smaller planes, the air force, etc. There are lots of ways to get quality experience before making the jump to the big planes.
- wglb 15y agoSo how will this work when none of the instrumentation is giving the computer the correct airspeed? IN the Air France crash, all three of the Pitot tubes had failed.
- anghyflawn 15y agoPitot tubes, even when jammed, are not the only instrumentation a plane has. In this particular case, whatever gyroscope device is available would probably signal that the angle of attack is completely wrong, tubes or no tubes.
- wglb 15y agoBut without Pitot tubes, what indication of airspeed does one have? And without airspeed, I would think that it is the computer that just hit the panic button.
- foobarqux 15y agoAOA != pitch
- anghyflawn 15y agoTrue, of course. Still, any such automated system would have to have massive redundancy and sophisticated heuristics just to get certified.
- bonzoesc 15y agoIf /all/ the instruments are incorrect, you might be boned. However, there's gobs of instruments that can be used to paint a partial picture: GPS can be used for altitude and groundspeed in a pinch; there's accelerometers and gyroscopes in place to monitor heading, attitude, and acceleration; and all of these systems are redundant too. Worst case, add power, level out, and hopefully you'll be stable for a few minutes while the pilots catch up to the airplane.
- foobarqux 15y ago
- anghyflawn 15y agoIt's a fine line. There are cases where we actually know that pilots listening to the computer would have saved lives (as in the Überlingen crash)
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]