5 ms·

I think in the near term a possible remote override from air traffic control would make more sense.

by jcfrei 12y ago

danellis 12y ago
Right, because that signal would never get hacked.
- fapjacks 12y ago
  That's not what he's saying. The world isn't as black-and-white as "it can be hacked, so it's not worth it"... He's talking about raising the barrier to entry for this kind of situation via automation, much like TCAS would have prevented the Uberlingen collision.
  - Piskvorrr 12y ago
    Preventing accidents and stopping a rogue insider are very different issues. Remote control opens a bunch of new attack surfaces, while not helping with the original problem.
    - fapjacks 12y ago
      Just because they're "very" different issues doesn't preclude there being a technical solution that helps solve parts of both problems.
      - Piskvorrr 12y ago
        No, no, no, no. There is no technical solution to this non-technical issue. I understand the frustration of "but surely there MUST be a scriptable way out of this," but IMNSHO there isn't (short of strong AI).
        fapjacks 12y ago
        This issue of humans in the cockpit? You're saying there's no technical solution to this ....... except AI, which would be a technical solution to this issue.
        Piskvorrr 12y ago
        Except that strong AI is not current technology, or even near-future technology. In other words, "hmm, this wouldn't be a problem if only we could do abracadabra and solve it with magic; therefore it's not a problem. We can't do abracadabra, and hence can't solve it this way? La la la, I can't hear you!" (Not sure I'd call that a technical solution, but let's assume so.)
        fapjacks 12y ago
        We could make planes fly themselves today. This is (mostly) how military drones work. On a couple of my tours, we worked with drones that flew themselves almost completely. My best friend in the universe reenlisted just to fly them, and they fly themselves for most of their missions. Trust me: Planes could fly themselves using today's technology.
        Piskvorrr 12y ago
        Emphasis on almost. I'm not going to reiterate what's been said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9289225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9289225 , so just the TL;DR version: in case of major trouble, a CFIT of an unoccupied vehicle is a viable safety option, for that 1% that almost works. Try that with an airplane full of people...and you would become a terrorist. Tiny, tiny difference, nothing to worry about.
Rooster61 12y ago
That's a nice thought, but how would ATC determine what needs to be done? We are only finding out that this was an intentional act long after the plane has hit the ground. For all ATC knows, opening the door to the cockpit could be the WRONG action. If no one is responding from the cockpit, they have no clue what is going on other than the telemetry they are getting from radar and the plane's systems (which in this case wouldn't tell them much). In fact, pilots are trained to communicate AFTER they have gotten the plane in a state to where they can either continue the flight or ditch safely if communication would distract them from the task at hand. ATC knows this, so even if they saw the plane dropping like a sack of rocks, they would probably assume that there was a problem and that the pilots are in a position in which a steep dive will help mitigate the problem (which can happen, such as depressurization).
- jcfrei 12y ago
  If you add some additional information on the status of the plane (engines, electronics, etc) in addition to the telemetry you could infer much more on the current situation aboard the plane. In this case the simple reversal of the initiation of the descent (as a precautionary measure) might have prevented the unfolding of events. Obviously we can all think of corner cases where the pilots and the ATC would come to different (and potentially disastrous) conclusions while being unable to communicate and resolve these differences. Ultimately I think that remote control or a comparable safety measure will become a necessity in civil aviation, because passengers will demand it to feel safer.
  - Rooster61 12y ago
    "In this case the simple reversal of the initiation of the descent (as a precautionary measure) might have prevented the unfolding of events." I think you might have missed my point. What telemetry do you think would have given ATC enough information in 8 minutes that would tell them reversing the descent is the correct course of action? If anything, the data in this flight would have indicated that the dive was initiated by the pilot, and would suggest allowing him to continue the actions. And how long would they have to discuss what should be done? The descent started 8 minutes before the plane hit the ground. That is a very short amount of time for people on the ground without full information to make the call. They would probably spend at least half that time trying to make contact with the pilot. The bottom line is that the person best appraised of how to fly the plane is the one behind the controls, and that is how aviation has traditionally treated these situations. If a pilot wants to bring down a plane bad enough, it's mighty hard to stop them. Anyways, and this is my speculation, I am fairly certain that remote control has been brought up many times before in aviation, and that there is a good reason why it isn't presently implemented. And as for the corner cases, those corner cases matter. This isn't a software engineering problem we are talking about.
Piskvorrr 12y ago
Now you have two problems: instead of worrying about rogue pilots, you have to worry about rogue pilots and rogue remote control. Oh, and latency in remote control is also a nice thing to have. And signal loss. And jamming. So, five problems (actually, that's just a random sample). Such a terrible idea in such a short sentence...
- jcfrei 12y ago
  The chance that multiple operators in a collective are actively abusing their control (and try to crash the plane) is decreasing in probability. History shows that such actions are usually performed by individuals. Even high latencies would not have prevented a successful intervention in this case (they've had a window of about 8 minutes for an intervention). Jamming is a possibility and an issue with the current communication systems the pilots already rely on.
  - Piskvorrr 12y ago
    Multiple? One is quite sufficient: hack the control channel, and you have a plane to play with.

I think in the near term a possible remote override from air traffic control would make more sense.

by jcfrei 12y ago

I think in the near term a possible remote override from air traffic control would make more sense.

danellis 12y ago

Right, because that signal would never get hacked.

fapjacks 12y ago
That's not what he's saying. The world isn't as black-and-white as "it can be hacked, so it's not worth it"... He's talking about raising the barrier to entry for this kind of situation via automation, much like TCAS would have prevented the Uberlingen collision.
- Piskvorrr 12y ago
  Preventing accidents and stopping a rogue insider are very different issues. Remote control opens a bunch of new attack surfaces, while not helping with the original problem.
  - fapjacks 12y ago
    Just because they're "very" different issues doesn't preclude there being a technical solution that helps solve parts of both problems.
    - Piskvorrr 12y ago
      No, no, no, no. There is no technical solution to this non-technical issue. I understand the frustration of "but surely there MUST be a scriptable way out of this," but IMNSHO there isn't (short of strong AI).
      - fapjacks 12y ago
        This issue of humans in the cockpit? You're saying there's no technical solution to this ....... except AI, which would be a technical solution to this issue.
        Piskvorrr 12y ago
        Except that strong AI is not current technology, or even near-future technology. In other words, "hmm, this wouldn't be a problem if only we could do abracadabra and solve it with magic; therefore it's not a problem. We can't do abracadabra, and hence can't solve it this way? La la la, I can't hear you!" (Not sure I'd call that a technical solution, but let's assume so.)
        fapjacks 12y ago
        We could make planes fly themselves today. This is (mostly) how military drones work. On a couple of my tours, we worked with drones that flew themselves almost completely. My best friend in the universe reenlisted just to fly them, and they fly themselves for most of their missions. Trust me: Planes could fly themselves using today's technology.
        Piskvorrr 12y ago
        Emphasis on almost. I'm not going to reiterate what's been said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9289225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9289225 , so just the TL;DR version: in case of major trouble, a CFIT of an unoccupied vehicle is a viable safety option, for that 1% that almost works. Try that with an airplane full of people...and you would become a terrorist. Tiny, tiny difference, nothing to worry about.

Rooster61 12y ago

That's a nice thought, but how would ATC determine what needs to be done? We are only finding out that this was an intentional act long after the plane has hit the ground. For all ATC knows, opening the door to the cockpit could be the WRONG action. If no one is responding from the cockpit, they have no clue what is going on other than the telemetry they are getting from radar and the plane's systems (which in this case wouldn't tell them much). In fact, pilots are trained to communicate AFTER they have gotten the plane in a state to where they can either continue the flight or ditch safely if communication would distract them from the task at hand. ATC knows this, so even if they saw the plane dropping like a sack of rocks, they would probably assume that there was a problem and that the pilots are in a position in which a steep dive will help mitigate the problem (which can happen, such as depressurization).

jcfrei 12y ago
If you add some additional information on the status of the plane (engines, electronics, etc) in addition to the telemetry you could infer much more on the current situation aboard the plane. In this case the simple reversal of the initiation of the descent (as a precautionary measure) might have prevented the unfolding of events. Obviously we can all think of corner cases where the pilots and the ATC would come to different (and potentially disastrous) conclusions while being unable to communicate and resolve these differences. Ultimately I think that remote control or a comparable safety measure will become a necessity in civil aviation, because passengers will demand it to feel safer.
- Rooster61 12y ago
  "In this case the simple reversal of the initiation of the descent (as a precautionary measure) might have prevented the unfolding of events." I think you might have missed my point. What telemetry do you think would have given ATC enough information in 8 minutes that would tell them reversing the descent is the correct course of action? If anything, the data in this flight would have indicated that the dive was initiated by the pilot, and would suggest allowing him to continue the actions. And how long would they have to discuss what should be done? The descent started 8 minutes before the plane hit the ground. That is a very short amount of time for people on the ground without full information to make the call. They would probably spend at least half that time trying to make contact with the pilot. The bottom line is that the person best appraised of how to fly the plane is the one behind the controls, and that is how aviation has traditionally treated these situations. If a pilot wants to bring down a plane bad enough, it's mighty hard to stop them. Anyways, and this is my speculation, I am fairly certain that remote control has been brought up many times before in aviation, and that there is a good reason why it isn't presently implemented. And as for the corner cases, those corner cases matter. This isn't a software engineering problem we are talking about.

Piskvorrr 12y ago

Now you have two problems: instead of worrying about rogue pilots, you have to worry about rogue pilots and rogue remote control. Oh, and latency in remote control is also a nice thing to have. And signal loss. And jamming. So, five problems (actually, that's just a random sample). Such a terrible idea in such a short sentence...

jcfrei 12y ago
The chance that multiple operators in a collective are actively abusing their control (and try to crash the plane) is decreasing in probability. History shows that such actions are usually performed by individuals. Even high latencies would not have prevented a successful intervention in this case (they've had a window of about 8 minutes for an intervention). Jamming is a possibility and an issue with the current communication systems the pilots already rely on.
- Piskvorrr 12y ago
  Multiple? One is quite sufficient: hack the control channel, and you have a plane to play with.