An interesting Gizmodo article came into my newsfeed yesterday. It’s about a video created by a commercial pilot to help someone, even with zero flying experience, safely put a Boeing 737 safely down on the ground in an emergency, such as when all pilots onboard are incapacitated. It’s not a situation you want to be in, but it may be worth a read.
The video is entertaining, but not necessarily reassuring. While it does seem that such a dire situation doesn’t have to mean certain death, we know things aren’t all that simple. You know, having the instructions is one thing, but a different matter altogether to understand and be able to follow those instructions. Besides, that’s assuming that there’s a workable access to YouTube during those emergency situations.
The idea of a passenger with no flying skills landing an aircraft is not totally absurd. I have something just a little more reassuring to share, later. But before that I want to talk about another thing this video reveals, that how much complex automation and computerised controls are part and parcel of flying in a modern passenger aircraft these days.
Modern passenger aircrafts can pretty much fly themselves these days. No offence to pilots, whose jobs I know are certainly still very important and require no less skills than before, but their role in normal flight is mostly reduced to that of a troubleshooter of technical problems.
You see, in normal flight, the autopilot and various computer systems work together to fly the plane for the pilot. For an example, check out this YouTube video of A380 Landing KSFO San Francisco. Notice how at the 1:35, 1:57, 2:14, 3:03, 3:40 and 3:58 mins in the video, you hear the air traffic controller calling out a heading, speed or altitude change instruction, and the pilot simply adjusts some knobs on the autopilot controls. At 8:25 mins, a computerised voice reading out altitude levels also calls out “minimum”, reminding the pilot that the aircraft is at a published minimum height above the runway during landing. The pilot must sight the runway visually at this time, otherwise he must abort the landing. At 8:50 mins, the pilot even gets a reminder to “retard” his engines.
When there are small technical problems, you’ll see a situation where the pilots are like end-users working to fix a hardware or software problem with computers. See this other YouTube video of an Airbus A340 Engine Failure Emergency. It’s not all in English, but there is enough English conversation for you to know exactly what’s going on. Notice how the pilots call a “help desk” to consult about a problem that the onboard systems have warned about. They also look up electronic flight manuals on a tablet, which is akin to checking the troubleshooting guide of a user manual. See how the captain even got to the wrong page of the electronic flight manuals? It’s like how a user can be reading the wrong part of the manual. Finally, you can see that the onboard flight systems can tell the flight crew that the problem has persisted long enough, it’s time to take remedial action (turnaround and land as soon as possible).
Doesn’t this all sound similar to troubleshooting problems with your computer, gaming console, or any sort of technical gadgetry?
As clever as modern passenger aircrafts have become, technical problems will crop up. That’s why you have human beings in the cockpit to make sense of and sort out things that the computers can’t do on their own.
Of course, as passengers, we also very much prefer subject matter experts, particularly those with real life experiences, are sitting in that flying tube with us so that we know there are people with vested interest to bring us all down safely. I don’t think you want your pilot sitting in an office safely on the ground, or worse, piloting remotely from their bedroom at home.
In more recent times, and closer home, there was this case of Qantas Flight 32 that departed Singapore bound for Sydney. Their number 2 engine (left side, closer to fuselage) exploded and caused substantial damage to the aircraft. It was a happy ending with everyone safe on the ground, and without casualties. The A380 aircraft was flying with only one fully functioning engine, and flight controls were badly enough damaged that the pilots could not shutdown the number 1 engine after landing. It was fortunate that the flight deck had extra hands that day, and the combined skills and experience of all the pilots managed overcome the flight systems inundated with errors and widespread failures to put the A380 down on the ground safely.
Clearly we still need skilled experienced pilots in the aircraft, even though modern passenger aircrafts mostly fly themselves.
Now, can a passenger with no flight training actually land a passenger aircraft? There’s this video put up by the Baltic Aviation Academy that supposedly tested this idea in a flight simulator. Here, an amateur is given guided instructions to land a Boeing 737. She was gently guided to find the relevant controls. The aircraft was able to use autoland. She was successful. Yeah. Still, remember that this is happening inside a simulator, so it’s happening without any immense fear, pressure or confusion that one might experience in an actual situation.
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