Who's REALLY Flying YOUR Plane?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
903 words · ~4 min read
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whenever you get on a plane you probably picture the captain as a seasoned pro
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with years of experience who will have your aircraft solidly under control at
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all times and in most cases you wouldn't be wrong except that the captain might
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not actually be flying the plane wait a minute what well there's a tremendous
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level of automation that goes into modern jetliners from redundant safety
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systems that kick in automatically to fly-by-wire controls that don't directly
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connect to the plane's control surfaces these turn the yoke into something less
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like a steering wheel and more like an xbox controller and prevent the plane
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from making maneuvers the system deems too dangerous but even aside from all
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this you may have heard that modern planes can basically fly themselves and
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to a large extent this is kind of true you see after the plane takes off a
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computerized autopilot will usually take over it works by linking to sensors
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attached to the aircraft that track everything altitude wind speed direction
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how much the aircraft is banking or if there's turbulence it's kind of like an
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airborne version of lane assist features on newer semi-autonomous cars
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additionally most modern airliners have a computer called a flight management
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system which allows the pilot to enter a flight plan before taking off which
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includes the destination airport as well as which waypoints the plane should
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reach on the way so after takeoff the autopilot will take all of this
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information and control the plane's speed pitch and direction by quickly
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calculating how to safely move the plane's control surfaces with no input
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from the human pilot required and if air traffic control needs the captain to
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make changes in flight the autopilot can help with that too for example to change
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the aircraft's heading or direction all the captain has to do in many cases is
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to turn a knob to the desired heading and the plane will turn itself newer
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planes can even land themselves using the same information and while the
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thought of rapidly approaching the ground under the control of a machine is
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a little scary the idea is that this kind of automation actually makes planes
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safer decisions about how the plane should maneuver can be made more quickly
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and with more precision than if a human pilot had to manually fly the entire
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time in fact some people have said that they can feel that a plane ride gets
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bumpier when a pilot is flying manually and of course fatigue is a real factor
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think about how easy it is to zone out on a half hour drive now imagine doing
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that on a 12 hour flight six miles off the ground hi karumba however autopilots
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aren't perfect obviously they can't react to most emergency situations or
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make unexpected adjustments that responsibility still falls on the
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captain who is required to monitor what the autopilot is doing and make sure
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it's carrying out the correct instructions many pilots don't think of
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an autopilot as an entity that flies the plane rather the human pilots still fly
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the plane through an automated system and despite the high levels of
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automation part of the reason jet pilots still have to go through thousands of
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hours of training and flight time is that they need to understand if a
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miscommunication between the autopilot and the captain's intention is happening
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for example the recent crashes of a pair of new boeing 737s appear to be related
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to an issue where an automated system pushed the plane nose down because it
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misread sensor data about the plane's angle of attack leading the system to
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possibly think the plane was about to stall and in 2013 the well-publicized crash
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landing of an asiana flight in san francisco was determined to be the
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result of a pilot misunderstanding what mode the plane's autopilot was in
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leading the plane to touch down short of the runway so it may not be surprising
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that on something as complicated as an airplane computers are capable of
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becoming confused just like they're fallible human pilots but the hope is
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that as we learn from mishaps and pilots become more accustomed to using
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automation flying can continue to get progressively safer speaking of safety
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details as well as a special giveaway and that's it for this video guys thanks
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