Airbus A320 Down

cowman said:
Come on guys we're almost to 1k posts in this thread. You can do it. I believeeee in youuuuuuuu
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That should be easy.

What is everyone having for lunch today?
I just had pizza.
 
Clark1961 said:
Have ya got an equation to describe that process?
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I can't explain the math like Henning can, but I do have this, which is nice.

i9f19lx.gif


As you can clearly see, the thread keeps sucking more and more people into it :D
 
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overdrive148 said:
I can't explain the math like Henning can, but I do have this, which is nice.

i9f19lx.gif
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I can't be certain but that gif might just explain why you should sit beside the fat person on the airplane...
 
Clark1961 said:
Black bean soup - anyone wanna go for a plane ride this afternoon?
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I do . The weather is perfect.
But spending the day at the arcade.

We have this thing called nicklemania where it is all the arcade games you remember and play em for a nickle.
 
Palmpilot said:
I don't think he meant it to be taken as a photo of this accident.
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Posts 58 and 59 indicate otherwise. Regardless, several other posters took the bait and speculated based on very bad info.

Nauga,
with a strong filter.
 
nauga said:
Posts 58 and 59 indicate otherwise. Regardless, several other posters took the bait and speculated based on very bad info.

Nauga,
with a strong filter.
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Looks like you're right.
 
nauga said:
Really. So what is the ready-for-issue system to detect and avoid non-participating aircraft?

There is a tremendous gap in both technology and public acceptance between cockpit automation and autonomy.

Nauga,
and his FBM
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Optical recognition and avoidance. It's already done in a much more target rich environment. The system can have a full spherical view in both visible and IR spectrums.

Then there are also the military radar type systems.

This is all on top of ADS-B. There will be no non participating aircraft in airspace that will be occupied by air carrier aircraft.

Autonomous traffic avoidance can already be handled by a trio of independent methods. Next problem you don't see a technological solution to that is in our arsenal already?
 
Oh man. Can't wait to see some replies to that. :popcorn:

OverDrive148,
Rooting for the overdog (and a page from Nauga)
 
overdrive148 said:
Oh man. Can't wait to see some replies to that. :popcorn:

OverDrive148,
Rooting for the overdog (and a page from Nauga)
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You owe Nauga a royalty, he's got that roving tagline servicemarked dontchaknow.
 
TEFLONSEAN said:
9/11 knee jerk reaction .....is a factor in this crash.

There needs to be override from Captain or FO.....maybe a key....thumbprint....nfc from mobile device...while taking a leak.

2 in cockpit......is laughable....if this guy was hell bent on crashing....1 punch to the face of the stewardess....job still completed.

Not sure much could be done here.....with the policies in place.
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This guy was a coward. He never would have punch a FA in the face. If that was likely, he wouldn't have needed the CA to leave the flight deck.
 
LDJones said:
This guy was a coward. He never would have punch a FA in the face. If that was likely, he wouldn't have needed the CA to leave the flight deck.
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You assume the next one will be the same why? IIRC the Egypt Air guy did it with a fully manned cockpit.:dunno:
 
Henning said:
You assume the next one will be the same why? IIRC the Egypt Air guy did it with a fully manned cockpit.:dunno:
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No, the captain initially was outside the cockpit when that began then came back in and proceeded to try and wrestle control from him.
 
Art VanDelay said:
No, the captain initially was outside the cockpit when that began then came back in and proceeded to try and wrestle control from him.
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Ahh, still, even with a wrestling match, the situation was no less fatal. You cannot prevent people from these events once they decide to. I forget which POTUS quoted it, I think it was JFK, "It's easy to kill the President, all you have to do is be willing to trade your life for theirs."

The only way out of these things is when people aren't willing to trade their lives. That requires doing something different from anything we're doing.
 
B3nATT4FPkb3G.gif

​

Henning said:
The money has already been spent. The systems have already been developed. The entire surface of the globe was mapped by the Space Shuttle to millimeter levels of accuracy.
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I'm not talking about having a terrain database. I know we have that. How does that help? That has nothing to do with autonomous airliners. Plus, you have to have the ability to override that database anyhow. Airport builds a new runway, it's not in the database. You have to override the GPWS so it doesn't give you terrain warnings when you have a brand new 10,000 foot piece of concrete in front of you. If you can override the database, you have just defeated the purpose of the database.
Henning said:
Automation already shows superior performance.
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No it doesn't. I'm flying probably one of the top 5 advanced airliners in the world. Brand new, off the assembly line Boeing 777Fs. We have all the bells and whistles. We have redundant electrical systems, hydraulic systems, triple redundant autopilots and ILS receivers. The plane is so good that it can perform a single-engine autoland. With all that, I'll tell you that it can't autoland every time all the time. Even with all the redundancies, there are still failure modes that make it a CAT II airplane, and some even more that make it a CAT I only airplane. If you are going to have autonomous airliners you better have systems in place that assure 100% of the time you are 100% certain that you will be able to safely get that plane on the ground and to the gate. If you say that you can only guarantee that 99% of the time, then I'll tell you that you already have that 99% solution in place.
Henning said:
We already have trials going on where ATC contacts the plane at altitude, uploads it the approach profile, then the plane stay up high and fuel efficient until it can chop the power and make a descent straight to the threshold with no level off. This saves thousands of dollars of fuel per flight, and it all happens automatically. We've been doing it for like a decade now and it works well.
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I know, we fly them (and when I say "we," I actually mean "me" unlike your "We've been doing it..." No you haven't... I have)
Henning said:
2 years after Amazon implements their drone delivery service, we will have autonomous air carrier aircraft.
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Are you on drugs? You think that 730 days after Amazon can fly a quadcopter to my backyard from a warehouse a few miles away to bring me copy of the newest "50 Shades" book, that people will climbing aboard an pilotless, autonomous airliner at JFK to fly to Shanghai. You're high. No easing into it with years of maybe one pilot and a ground station, not exhaustive testing... just boom! Hey get in this tube and we're going to shoot you over to China. "I know you just cheated death by driving your car on the Belt Parkway to get here, because there aren't driverless cars yet, but we're going to get you 6,800 miles across the poles to China, and the plane is going to do it by itself. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight."

There is more of a chance of there being autonomous cruise ships taking me to Cancun before pilotless airliners. Think of all the money that the cruise lines could save! You wouldn't even need any crew onboard! All that wasted space that has crew berthing can be replaced with low cost cabins. Not only would you not have to pay any crewmembers, but you can make revenue on the space they formerly occupied, and you don't have to feed them! When that happens, I'll hack the clock for ten years, and then maybe we'll have pilotless airliners.

Henning said:
Optical recognition and avoidance. It's already done in a much more target rich environment. The system can have a full spherical view in both visible and IR spectrums.

Then there are also the military radar type systems.

This is all on top of ADS-B. There will be no non participating aircraft in airspace that will be occupied by air carrier aircraft.

Autonomous traffic avoidance can already be handled by a trio of independent methods. Next problem you don't see a technological solution to that is in our arsenal already?
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All this is going to be triple redundant optical systems, right? What does just one of those systems cost?

I have to ask you... this pilotless airline world... do you think they'd be able to pull it off by retrofitting current aircraft? Or do you realize that every airliner flying today would have to be replaced with an equivalent size gauged, new, pilotless plane.

777s alone there maybe about 1,100 in service today, at an average of $300 million a copy. That would cost the airlines $330 billion to replace just the 777s that are in use with autonomous widebodies. Now extrapolate that across 747s, 757s, 767s, and so on.

I don't know how much you think airline pilots make, but if you think you're going to save billions by getting rid of them, you are mistaken. And that's not even taking into account all the infrastructure upgrade.

I'd say I'm done, but I know I won't be able to sit here when more insanity pops up...
 
There is no problem that cannot be overcome with $100,000,000,000; Google and Amazon have the resources and are willing to spend them. When the UAV ruling came out Amazon said, "We are very disappointed our program was not addressed, and if it is not soon, we will take the technology overseas and develop it there. Within 2 weeks they were green lighted to develop their UAV delivery system.

It IS happening, there was is no argument, denial will not serve your best interest.
 
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Sluggo63 said:
B3nATT4FPkb3G.gif

​

I'm not talking about having a terrain database. I know we have that. How does that help? That has nothing to do with autonomous airliners. Plus, you have to have the ability to override that database anyhow. Airport builds a new runway, it's not in the database. You have to override the GPWS so it doesn't give you terrain warnings when you have a brand new 10,000 foot piece of concrete in front of you. If you can override the database, you have just defeated the purpose of the database.
No it doesn't. I'm flying probably one of the top 5 advanced airliners in the world. Brand new, off the assembly line Boeing 777Fs. We have all the bells and whistles. We have redundant electrical systems, hydraulic systems, triple redundant autopilots and ILS receivers. The plane is so good that it can perform a single-engine autoland. With all that, I'll tell you that it can't autoland every time all the time. Even with all the redundancies, there are still failure modes that make it a CAT II airplane, and some even more that make it a CAT I only airplane. If you are going to have autonomous airliners you better have systems in place that assure 100% of the time you are 100% certain that you will be able to safely get that plane on the ground and to the gate. If you say that you can only guarantee that 99% of the time, then I'll tell you that you already have that 99% solution in place.
I know, we fly them (and when I say "we," I actually mean "me" unlike your "We've been doing it..." No you haven't... I have)
Are you on drugs? You think that 730 days after Amazon can fly a quadcopter to my backyard from a warehouse a few miles away to bring me copy of the newest "50 Shades" book, that people will climbing aboard an pilotless, autonomous airliner at JFK to fly to Shanghai. You're high. No easing into it with years of maybe one pilot and a ground station, not exhaustive testing... just boom! Hey get in this tube and we're going to shoot you over to China. "I know you just cheated death by driving your car on the Belt Parkway to get here, because there aren't driverless cars yet, but we're going to get you 6,800 miles across the poles to China, and the plane is going to do it by itself. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight."

There is more of a chance of there being autonomous cruise ships taking me to Cancun before pilotless airliners. Think of all the money that the cruise lines could save! You wouldn't even need any crew onboard! All that wasted space that has crew berthing can be replaced with low cost cabins. Not only would you not have to pay any crewmembers, but you can make revenue on the space they formerly occupied, and you don't have to feed them! When that happens, I'll hack the clock for ten years, and then maybe we'll have pilotless airliners.

All this is going to be triple redundant optical systems, right? What does just one of those systems cost?

I have to ask you... this pilotless airline world... do you think they'd be able to pull it off by retrofitting current aircraft? Or do you realize that every airliner flying today would have to be replaced with an equivalent size gauged, new, pilotless plane.

777s alone there maybe about 1,100 in service today, at an average of $300 million a copy. That would cost the airlines $330 billion to replace just the 777s that are in use with autonomous widebodies. Now extrapolate that across 747s, 757s, 767s, and so on.

I don't know how much you think airline pilots make, but if you think you're going to save billions by getting rid of them, you are mistaken. And that's not even taking into account all the infrastructure upgrade.

I'd say I'm done, but I know I won't be able to sit here when more insanity pops up...
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Not wading in on the timing/deployment issue, but when the technology is ready for autonomous flying of airliners, existing airframes should be relatively easily upgradeable, by adding sensors and probes on the outside, and the internal components may not need more space (or electrical power and cooling) than what's already there.
Moore's law rules.
Edit: I can see a bit of extra mechanical stuff for emergency egress etc, but that's another issue altogether. Imagine the ditching on the Hudson without a crew to guide the egress...
(Or the one where the plane went up in flames moments after the crew got the pax safely out.)
 
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Henning said:
There is no problem that cannot be overcome with $100,000,000,000
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Ture, but it's going to cost over three times that just to replace the 777s in the world.
Henning said:
Google and Amazon have the resources and are willing to spend them. When the UAV ruling came out Amazon said, "We are very disappointed our program was not addressed, and if it is not soon, we will take the technology overseas and develop it there. Within 2 weeks they were green lighted to develop their UAV delivery system.
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Do you understand that autonomous airliners are orders of magnitude more difficult and risky than what Amazon is trying to do?
Henning said:
It IS happening, there was is no argument, denial will not serve your best interest.
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Your job at as boat captain will be gone before my job as an airline pilot.
 
Going to the moon was vastly more complicated than flying a V2 as well. It was a really long way from Fermi's reactor in Chicago to Trinity. That took 2 years. 10 years later we had global prolifereration to assure multiple levels of extinction

If you are betting on technical difficulty being an impediment, you are making a bet with historically poor odds.

The only impediment mankind knows is financial determination.
 
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RotorDude said:
Not wading in on the timing/deployment issue, but when the technology is ready for autonomous flying of airliners, existing airframes should be relatively easily upgradeable, by adding sensors and probes on the outside, and the internal components may not need more space (or electrical power and cooling) than what's already there.
Moore's law rules.
Edit: I can see a bit of extra mechanical stuff for emergency egress etc, but that's another issue altogether. Imagine the ditching on the Hudson without a crew to guide the egress...
Click to expand...
I don't know about the technology issue, and I understand what you're saying bout the electrical issues, but I'll tell you about aircraft retrofit. FedEx is the only company to fly the MD-10. We took our DC-10-10s and DC-10-30s and paid for a conversion to take the cockpit from a 3-person DC-10 flightdeck to a pseudo-MD-11 one with only 2 people. It was an unmitigated disaster. By the time everything was all said and done, we were paying more per copy for a converted DC-10 than we could have bought a used MD-11 for. And even with that, they were never able to get the Air System to interface properly with the automatic controllers, so the MD-10s always had the Air System in manual mode. And that conversion wasn't even on the scale of what would be attempted here.

Again, even on the planes I fly, there are still steps that have to be accomplished manually. It's going to take a lot of redundant servos to get to where you won't need me to pull the occasional circuit breaker or turn off hydraulic pumps.
 
Henning said:
If you are betting on technical difficulty being an impediment, you are making a bet with historically poor odds.

The only impediment mankind knows is financial determination.
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Have you read anything I've typed? This is what I've been saying all along!

I know I'm replaceable. I know humans the weak link in most airline accidents. But I am cheap compared to the alternative. I don't think you understand the vastness of the scale or cost it'll take to remove two warm bodies from the front of an airplane. We have a 99.9% good solution right now. The cost to get the other .1% reliability is going to be prohibitive, and you're kidding yourself if you think autonomous airline flight will have a 100% success rate. It won't. Maybe you'll go from 99.9% accident free to 99.99% accident free. What is the cost to get an extra nine hundredths of a percent better? More than the cost of what the airlines are paying now for us. Until that changes, I feel safe.
 
Sluggo63 said:
I don't know about the technology issue, and I understand what you're saying bout the electrical issues, but I'll tell you about aircraft retrofit. FedEx is the only company to fly the MD-10. We took our DC-10-10s and DC-10-30s and paid for a conversion to take the cockpit from a 3-person DC-10 flightdeck to a pseudo-MD-11 one with only 2 people. It was an unmitigated disaster. By the time everything was all said and done, we were paying more per copy for a converted DC-10 than we could have bought a used MD-11 for. And even with that, they were never able to get the Air System to interface properly with the automatic controllers, so the MD-10s always had the Air System in manual mode. And that conversion wasn't even on the scale of what would be attempted here.

Again, even on the planes I fly, there are still steps that have to be accomplished manually. It's going to take a lot of redundant servos to get to where you won't need me to pull the occasional circuit breaker or turn off hydraulic pumps.
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Exactly! I didn't say it would be an unmanned cockpit. Humans just won't have direct operational control. Pilots will be replaced with Flight Engineers. If I was a young pilot with a desire to stay in the aviation industry in the future, I would be looking around at UAV programs of study to keep up on, and learning the technology. That will leave you relevant in the future. This is no different from the maching industry when I was a kid. When I learned machine work, it was all mechanical drives using the graduate wheels for precision by hand. Then CNC started coming in. The guys who remained in the industry, took the initiative to learn the new technology. Now they run a bank of machines from their desktop, and the primary human interaction on the shop floor is servicing the machines with maintenance and raw material.
 
I know that pilots may see this comment as insulting, and with master hackers around it may even be a bad idea. Would it be possible to have a emergency ground based control override for airplanes? That way in the even that something like this happens, a terrorist gets control of the plane, or crew becomes incapacitated, the plane could be controlled by a ground based pilot.
 
Henning: vague words and concepts
Other people: well thought out and expressed reply
Henning: more vague words and concepts, not related to the counter points that sink his argument completely
 
drotto said:
I know that pilots may see this comment as insulting, and with master hackers around it may even be a bad idea. Would it be possible to have a emergency ground based control override for airplanes? That way in the even that something like this happens, a terrorist gets control of the plane, or crew becomes incapacitated, the plane could be controlled by a ground based pilot.
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We do have that ability in some planes already. It's not set up for that purpose, but the function is the same. It's not really controlled from the ground with stick, the ground uploads a program to the FMS.
 
Henning said:
We do have that ability in some planes already. It's not set up for that purpose, but the function is the same. It's not really controlled from the ground with stick, the ground uploads a program to the FMS.
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And I still have to hit a button labeled "EXECUTE".
 
overdrive148 said:
Henning: vague words and concepts
Other people: well thought out and expressed reply
Henning: more vague words and concepts, not related to the counter points that sink his argument completely
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Since you're young I'll give you a piece of advice; when you limit thinking, you limit opportunity. Your attitude does not serve you well, and the way you project yourself is probably why you can't get a job. You don't even know me, and you believe you have earned the right to insult me.:lol: **** you you little inbred ****.
 
drotto said:
I know that pilots may see this comment as insulting, and with master hackers around it may even be a bad idea. Would it be possible to have a emergency ground based control override for airplanes? That way in the even that something like this happens, a terrorist gets control of the plane, or crew becomes incapacitated, the plane could be controlled by a ground based pilot.
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Not insulted at all. I know what you're saying, but if the ground station can take control from me at any time, what if the bad guy is on the ground. Then we have a new scenario, just with the perpetrator sitting on the ground and both pilots locked out from saving the aircraft. If the pilots can override the ground station in that scenario, then we're back to square one with the bad actor in the plane.
 
Henning said:
Next problem you don't see a technological solution to that is in our arsenal already?
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Yes. Detect and avoid (see post 791). You've offered up a technology shopping list worthy of 'Popular Science' for potential ways of detecting but nothing on deconfliction or avoidance. You also propose adding an EO/IR search and track and an A/A radar, a full-authority flight control system, and autonomy to every commercial transport in the fleet. You've also proposed excluding every non-participating aircraft from any airspace where autonomous transports are operating, with no contingencies or reversionary modes. Oh, and it will be done two years after Amazon drops boxes from a low altitude quadcopter in previosuly deconflicted airspace and for less than the combined annual salary of the worldwide cockpit crew.

You have absolutely no concept of the scope of what you think is just around the corner.

Nauga,
who thinks there must be a pony in here somewhere
 
nauga said:
Nauga,
who thinks there must be a pony in here somewhere
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The pony is the post count - gotta get this thread to 1,000 so Greg will win his bet.
 
nauga said:
Yes. Detect and avoid. You've offered up a technology shopping list worthy of 'Popular Science' for potential ways of detecting but nothing on deconfliction or avoidance. You also propose adding an EO/IR search and track and an A/A radar, a full-authority flight control system, and autonomy to every commercial transport in the fleet. You've also proposed excluding every non-participating aircraft from any airspace where autonomous transports are operating, with no contingencies or reversionary modes. Oh, and it will be done two years after Amazon drops boxes from a low altitude quadcopter in previosuly deconflicted airspace and for less than the combined annual salary of the worldwide cockpit crew.

You have absolutely no concept of the scope of what you think is just around the corner.

Nauga,
who thinks there must be a pony in here somewhere
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:confused: Haven't we been actually doing this with TCAS for a long time? Collision avoidance is the simplest problem posed, seriously, determining the best vector to open a gap is a simple calculation. The systems already do it.

This is flying, big skies, not driving a cab in Manhattan.
 
RotorDude said:
Not wading in on the timing/deployment issue, but when the technology is ready for autonomous flying of airliners, existing airframes should be relatively easily upgradeable, by adding sensors and probes on the outside, and the internal components may not need more space (or electrical power and cooling) than what's already there.
Moore's law rules.
Edit: I can see a bit of extra mechanical stuff for emergency egress etc, but that's another issue altogether. Imagine the ditching on the Hudson without a crew to guide the egress...
(Or the one where the plane went up in flames moments after the crew got the pax safely out.)
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Sorry, I'll disagree. Writing all the ways this can go pear-shaped, well - there aren't enough electrons. Just the transmitter part of it would boggle the mind. Dual independent channels, with a sideband channel for redundancy. Fully crypto, with decrypt onboard, and there's a million things I'm not covering. Look at the limitations of drones today, and multiply that systems reliability by about 100x.
 
Henning said:
Now they run a bank of machines from their desktop, and the primary human interaction on the shop floor is servicing the machines with maintenance and raw material.
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Well, crap... I was going to get into machine maintenance and raw material servicing as my post airline pilot gig in a couple of years, but if I'm replaced as a pilot, I'm sure all these maintenance jobs on the machine floor will have already been taken over by robots.

Now I have no idea what I'm going to do with my time. Maybe I'll get my Coast Guard NMC Charter Boat Captain's license. It sounds like those guys are irreplaceable...
 
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