Tdicommuter wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 10:15 am
Landing is only one phase of flight... Does cirrus have an emergency taxi, take off... Etc?
Who would need to taxi or takeoff in an emergency? They didn’t put that in because there was no need for it, not because it was challenging. Tesla has automated cars that can park and drive and even be summoned. Programming a plane to taxi and takeoff perhaps recognizing lit taxi routes, stop bars, and having auto thrust and auto brake do a reject under certain conditions would be relative child’s play.
Do you use CPDLC for push, taxi, take off, approach, landing clearances as well?
Again, no need because we have two button pushers up front. It seems that taking out the middleman and having ATC control the plane directly by CPDLC would make a lot of sense.
Paperwork, tests etc.. literally represent man-hours. You need to pay someone to do those things. You can't just wave a wand and say.. 'ok we are good to go now'
Most of the paperwork and tests are for human benefits and have to be redone because of errors or degradation of human performance. An automated system needs to be validated once.. and then maintained, just like they already are. A self check can be done in a matter of seconds. Does an autopilot need to pass a line check or PPC? No.
And like since the beginning of automation yes you have to pay someone to do those things. Maybe one person among 20 aircraft instead of two for each. And greater upfront costs will be amortized in efficiency and cost savings and probably safety as well. Automation has been key in making air travel safer, and human factors have often been the single cause of automation failing to do its job.
Even the “public doesn’t hear about all the times a human intervenes and prevents an accident” was probably caused by a human error in the first place.
But if you want an automated plane to complete a full flight from start to finish does it interface with a mainframe somewhere? If it does who will encrypt the data to ensure it cannot be hacked. How much money would that cost? How does it interface with NAV Canada... Would it be able to in a country with antiquated ATC.
ATC is super easy to hack right now. All you need is an air band transceiver and a powerful enough antenna and you can start vectoring planes. How does it interface? CDPLC is a good start, and evolving it just like we evolved analog cell signals to a digital internet almost anywhere. Maybe Elon Musk’s constellation would be used? And then you have layers of safety like you do now. TCAS with an auto RA. Automatic EGWPS that performs an escape manoeuvre. The ability to override and control a plane from the ground.
There is First Air, Germanwings, 9/11, and Malaysian that would never have happened with a robot at the wheel or an ability to control the plane remotely.
Even when you look at autoland... Can my airbus land itself now... Yes... Am I allowed to? No. Who certifies what approaches are autoland capable... NAV Canada. If you want every single approach to be a cat 3 that will also be expensive.
And ask yourself why they are certified that way? Because it’s a human at the controls with limits in comprehension and reaction times. Not needed for a computer. Maybe it compares an ILS and RNP and if there is a difference it goes missed. Maybe it uses IR to see approach and centreline lights and if it doesn’t see or if it’s offset it goes missed.
To use a comparator... How many engineers are working at Tesla right now on an automated car? How many years.... How many other companies are also working on the same thing.... How many years. Would you say billions were spent getting there. Unless you can make that back it was a loss. There has to be a direct way to justify that cost. Obviously from the airport's needing upgrading, all the way to the planes the amount of money needed to be invested to get to automated clearly exceeds the savings by getting rid of pilots otherwise we would be gone. At some point will that change... Yes. But not in a real hurry.
And how long did it take? Not very in the grand scheme of things. And didn’t Mr Musk allow the world to use his patents? As always, it’s never going to be starting right from scratch. We are standing on the shoulders of giants. To apply many of those principles to aviation isn’t as big of a stretch as you think. Tesla calls it “autopilot”. They didn’t start from scratch, either.
