Comment by jshier
3 days ago
Even without autoland, I've never understood why there wasn't an emergency system to handle depressurization events when it detects no pilot input. There have been enough ghost flights, even in the last 20 years, that such a system could've saved hundreds of lives. (Helios Air 552) Automatically dropping altitude, or even just changing the transponder to some automatic value, would help.
Some planes have this, but planes are expensive and last a long time, so a lot of them don't.
I guess in some cases lowering altitude could result in flight into terrain or possibly entering airspace where collision with other aircraft would be more likely ?
Not these days, with detailed terrain maps and GPS + GPWS.
The chances of colliding with anything else would be tiny. In case of other commercial jets zero, thanks to TCAS at the least.
GPWS = ground proximity warning system
TCAS = traffic alert and collision avoidance system