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Emergency Pilot Override
"Attention pilots of flight AB123. Cockpit and flight profile monitoring has detected a threat. Your aircraft will be automatically landed at the nearest airport." | |
Cameras and data uplinks are constantly monitored for
pilot
deviations from the flight plan beyond standard acceptable
adjustments. Upon monitors detecting a threat, the pilots
are
immediately contacted by ground control personnel. If their
response is not forthcoming or indicates a possible
criminal
takeover of the plane, the following emergency override
system is activated.
The controls are disabled and the autopilot is locked into a
pre-programmed landing
profile
that will fly it to an automated landing at the nearest
available airport suitable for that aircraft. Now here's the
important part: these landing profiles are installed in the
plane before takeoff and can't be changed by anybody once
airborne. The only thing the pilot override can do is tell the
plane to safely land at the nearest airport. You can't hack in
and fly it into a building or a mountain.
Upon activation any air marshals on the plane are notified
as are the passengers. The airport is also obviously notified
that there's an emergency landing with a possible criminal
takeover in progress so emergency procedures can be in
place as necessary.
This might seem like overkill for the very rare instance that
a pilot might do harm to his own plane, but the bigger
picture is it would make hijacking of a
plane by somebody other than the pilot impossible. Pilots
would also have the ability to activate this emergency
landing option should they feel in danger of loosing the
aircraft.
I think this is a pretty good idea.
Autolander
Autolander [theircompetitor, Mar 28 2014]
Like this?
http://www.complex....flatable-auto-pilot ,...virtually obligatory Airplane film reference [not_morrison_rm, Mar 29 2014]
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Annotation:
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I hope there's a weather uplink and some ability for
the air traffic controllers to override this, given the
need to fly around storms, make adjustments in
crowded conditions, avoid guys in balloon-lifted
lawnchairs... |
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" I think this is a pretty good idea. " |
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There are several ways that pilots can reset,
override, adjust or interact with the autopilot. All
of these would have to be modified. |
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Given about 50-60 million flights per year, I think
that embedding equipment so intimately linked to
the plane's controls is more likely to cause accidents
than to prevent hijackings. |
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I'm thinking the practical way to do this would be
going forward, have new aircraft implement this and
it
would be relatively easy. Certainly nobody
would argue against all new airliners being able to
land
themselves. The override option to this system would
be a minor adjustment if incorporated into a new
design. |
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I'd rather spend a little more money on mechanical
fixes to hijackings than having my junk x-rayed every
time I get on an airplane. The cost of treating
everybody like a criminal before they get on a plane
isn't cheap so you need to take that into
consideration as well. |
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I also like the idea of a solution that's not satisfying
to the hijacking community. There are people in the
world who no doubt are proud that people stand in
long lines at airports as an homage to their having
made the skies a more dangerous place. This would
be a way of saying we outsmarted the scumbags on
our terms. |
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//I'm thinking the practical way to do this would be
going forward// |
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You're almost certainly right - reversing a plane to a
safe landing is especially tricky. |
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I once landed a Grob 109 in a kind of reverse take off
i.e. the wind made my airspeed enough to make my
ground speed negative. |
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I was thinking maybe just lose the airliners and go back to airships, that way the buggers don't get the chance to rapidly flee to obscure parts of the world... |
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Perhaps it could include an override with a keypad for which the pilots are given 2 codes, one for 'pilot in control, but deviating from flight path' (useful for when engines fail etc and the nearest airport might not be best suited for an emergency) and one for 'this is a hijack' just there to immitate the system turning off, but actually alerting those who need to know. |
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Of course, having to type in a code adds one more thing to do in an emergency when pilots have more on their minds. |
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// lose the airliners and go back to airships, that
way the buggers don't get the chance to rapidly
flee// |
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I think the fundamental problem with MH370 was
that the plane shouldn't have been allowed to
rapidly flee in the first place. They had it on
military radar, and if anyone had been watching
the screen they could have tracked it in realtime
and sent fighters up to shadow the thing. |
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All of these responses to MH370 miss the basic
point that this thing only happened the way it did
because of a truly mind-boggling series of major
failings. It doesn't require a technological fix - it
just requires people who do their jobs. |
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//It doesn't require a technological fix - it just
requires people who do their jobs.// |
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Well, on the very slight off chance that people might
not do their jobs from time to time, have technology
step in and help out. |
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//this thing only happened the way it did because of
a truly mind-boggling series of major failings// |
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That or there was only a single malfunction, that of
the pilot who went nuts and knew how to skirt
systems designed to avoid a plane being lost. |
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Anyway, I like the idea of flying on a plane that goes
Terminator on any would be hijackers and shuts down
human
control if
necessary. If it
were hard to do that's one thing, but planes being
able to fly and land by themselves have been around
for a long time. I suggest this should be used as a
backup in case of hi-jacking either by pilot or
passenger. |
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It would also come in handy in an accident where the
crew became incapacitated due to a fire, loss of air
supply etc. There's still some speculation that this
was a ghost jet flying with a dead or incapacitated
crew. It has happened before. The ability for ground
control to throw a "Land at nearest airport" switch
could be useful. |
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My friends it is possible that this incident was an example of hacking. A digital hijacking, either from within the plane or without. Has this possibility been entirely eliminated? |
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Snowden? I don't think he's going to suddenly go missing without some sort of stink happening. I'm thinking more along the lines of a can-bus spoofing scheme that lets the hacker disable critical systems then hijack the instrumentation or autopilot system. |
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The 777 is on a unified fly by wire system. From what I read the entire cockpit, controls and instrumentation is on a common network, the entire damn plane runs the same network protocol and the power regulation and fuse systems that could disable the communication equipment is also accessible. On some level it is completely possible to take complete control of a 777 without being in the cockpit. |
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I'm not bunning this until it has the over-ride pilot is like the autopilot on Airplane. |
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A similar system might ... |
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In an elevator - move to the ground floor open and freeze. |
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In a computer - reboot or freeze |
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In an auto, bus, truck - slow down, pull to the curb, and be very harder to restart. |
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In a cruise ship - nearest pier that can handle the situation. |
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In a mall - dim lights and ask people to leave |
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I'm leaving right now - put my drink in the freezer. |
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they are all soft drinks...<opens another bottle of Pocari Sweat> |
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I have an idea, let's change the skill requirement to
hijack a plane from "get past security, understand
much of the workings of the plane, have a way to
break open the cockpit door, probably know how to
fly, and be ale to fight off planeclothes officers" to
"break into a secure computer system". And let's
change the level of risk from "try once and you're
done" to "unlimited chances as long as you're not IP
traced". |
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// "break into a secure computer system". And let's
change the level of risk from "try once and you're
done" to "unlimited chances as long as you're not IP
traced".// |
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The most you'd be able to do is make the plane land,
not hijack the plane. Kind of a lot of work to risk
getting busted for air piracy just to throw some
passengers off their schedule. |
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//<opens another bottle of Pocari Sweat>// |
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Did you know that a pocari is the supportive strap
worn by Turkish wrestlers? |
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Pocari Sweat is very well named. |
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// I'd rather spend a little more money on mechanical fixes to hijackings than having my junk x-rayed every time I get on an airplane. The cost of treating everybody like a criminal before they get on a plane isn't cheap so you need to take that into consideration as well. // |
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I agree to some extent, but this idea protects against someone taking control of the airplane. It doesn't protect against bringing the plane down with a bomb. |
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So even if this idea was workable, it wouldn't get us out of the insane security circus. |
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//us out of the insane security circus. |
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For some reason west to east leads to more checks than east to west |
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