Comment by ApolloFortyNine
3 months ago
We have planes moving hundreds of miles an hour being managed exclusively by audio channels.
Does this not blow anyone else's minds? This seems like a clear case of 'because we've always done it that way'. There's no way if a system was being developed today they'd say to hell with screens, lets just give them instructions over audio and assume they'll follow them to a T if acknowledged.
there are already a lot of screens and things to look at in a cockpit. and in emergency situations, screens can fail. audio has the advantage of being highly backwards compatible and extremely reliable, so long as the pilots are alive and conscious (and if they're not, the plane is most likely SOL anyways: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522)
Also, you can process and respond to audio without taking your eyes off of whatever they are on, and without taking your hand off the stick/yoke.
I hear in my headset "Clear for the option runway two-five-right, number two behind a cessna, two mile final, on the go make right traffic" and I know exactly what is expected of me without having to look at a screen. A digital display would be a step backwards.
It doesn't sound like GP is saying we have to do away with audio, just that it's absurd to stick to _just_ audio. Great to have a screen that shows "Clear for option 25R etc etc". I think I saw the latest Cirrus planes have something like that, doing live transcription of tower/ATC calls.
EDIT: I will add I get that adding something like that to a general aviation cockpit is much easier than putting it on a commercial 787, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
3 replies →
>and in emergency situations, screens can fail.
Audio makes perfect sense as a backup, but 99.99% of flights would benefit from having a screen showing object and current planned route.
In this particular case, simply having that information available would have allowed an onboard computer to predict a collision.
such a system did exist on the American airlines jet, but it does not autocorrect or advise below 1000 feet, since an automated correction in such a busy, low area could make things worse. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1idrsl6/...
Take a fly on an airliner in MS flight simulator sometime or watch any of the YouTubers that show this stuff. CitationMax is a good one. The screens tell the flight plan, altitudes, traffic, weather, terrain and more. The audio part is, as mentioned above, extremely efficient and shared. The audio is used for clearances from one step to another ( very loosely speaking) This improves everyone’s situational awareness. This may have been an issue at DCA where the commercial flight was on VHF and the chopper was on UHF.
If a plane loses comms there are well defined procedures and everyone knows exactly what that plane will do as they proceed to their destination.
Onboard computers did predict the collision
There are some technical issues in moving beyond that. For example I was talking to a pilot in Africa and apparently for long haul between Europe and South Africa the local controller in the various countries en route were considered a bit useless go they had a particular frequency where they would occasionally say this if flight x over country y heading so and so direction and altitude and other planes on that frequency could here where they were - the radio range is ~200 miles. I'm not sure how you'd replace that other than with something like starlink which is quite recent.
That there is a computer at ATC that a human looks at, reads what it says with their eyes, speaks those instructions over the radio in a specific protocol, another human listens to it (and confirms within that protocol), and inputs those control signals into the airplane.
Computer -> human -> radio(spoken protocol) -> human -> plane.
There aren't a lot of practical reasons it can't just be
Computer -> radio(digital protocol) -> plane
(There are nonzero reasons, such as the presence of weird situations, VFR aircraft, etc., but it's not a lot.)
Sometimes having humans in the loop is a feature, not a bug.
In that case the pilot would still be able to override controls
In the latest crash, the heli was on VFR, and that situation happens often at DCA since it also serves general aviation.
Fun napkin-view ADS-C ("control"-capable successor to broadcast-only ADS-B).
Reporting integrates approach and flight tunnel envelopes. Envelopes are specified with coordinates, not just sequential points + altitude.
Cryptographic authentication in subsequent position broadcast from plane flight systems efficiently confirms receipt and acceptance of prior control messages.
Flight systems warn on countdown to envelope exception not only actual envelope exception or altitude exception.
For passenger planes, ability of ground control to command autonomous landing with blessing of federal government in an emergency (eg. no pilots conscious, interface borked), and to send urgent, cryptographically authenticated ATC command requests (change altitude or heading immediately, etc.) for pilot consideration in the event of ATC-detected potential emergent danger conditions.
> and assume they'll follow them to a T if acknowledged
That's not how ATC works.
Welcome to aviation. Where we last innovated 50 years ago.