Comment by ApolloFortyNine
3 months ago
>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