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What on your aircraft could kill you?

Like starting the An-2 Even the “Commander” here forgot the boost pump or something.



The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Airline management’s wet dream has always been one pilot, one Alsatian, one bag of dog biscuits as the flight deck crew.

The pilot feeds the dog biscuits, and the dog makes sure the pilot doesn’t touch the controls.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

Sorry, Robert, but if you really must discuss airlines and their management and their issues – neither of which are on topic, here – could you at least cite better things than paleontholitic jokes?

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

paleontolithology = the science of stones that existed in the past?

I have a simple vision for a NO-Checklist cockpit: a big huge “phase of flight dial”, with settings such as “taxi”, “takeoff”, “climb”, “cruise”, “approach”, “land”.

The pilot twists it to the next phase of flights, and everything that needs to be set gets a red light until it is done, and if not done in time a voice starts nagging you.

For example – twist if from “approach” to “land”, and the flaps, gear, prop, and mixture levers light up. When you select appropriate flaps, the flap lever light goes out. If you don’t advance the prop levers in the next ten seconds, you get a “Power Setting – Set Max RPM”. warning until you do it or silence it.

Last Edited by Cobalt at 14 Jul 23:39
Biggin Hill

That’s not far off what already exists on bigger stuff. Most large TPs and airliners have a “takeoff config” button, push it and it tells you if the config for takeoff is OK or not.

United Kingdom

LeSving wrote:

If aviation was invented today, it would never ever be “manual”. Everything would be automated. The would be no pilots, no manual ATC. Everything would be designed from the ground up as fully automated logistics systems.

I don’t think so. I don’t really see “us” trusting machines in critical roles without supervision and some override capability. We’re just capitalizing on machines being good at repetitive work (simply put). Hopefully one difference would be communication with ATC via datalink as default.

Peter wrote:

After all, what is the point of displaying a checklist if there is no means for the system to verify that the action was followed?

Some planes (SEPs, to be clear) do display checklists. What is the point? So you don’t have to fumble with a paper checklist and don’t forget where you left off when something distracts you (via a “done, next” button that marks items already accomplished).

Instead of checking whether I performed whatever action I was supposed to, wouldn’t it be easier and better to just check it for me in the first place? That’s how I’d do it – an automatic supervision system that checks the state or configuration based on phase of flight and lists discrepancies (that way it’s useful even when following an alternative procedure).

Last Edited by Martin at 15 Jul 12:34

LeSving wrote:

checklists should pop on a screen when needed

Isn’t the smart checklist app from @Flyer59 designed with just that in mind (as much as possible with a standalone application)?

tmo
EPKP - Kraków, Poland

tmo wrote:

Isn’t the smart checklist app from @Flyer59 designed with just that in mind (as much as possible with a standalone application)?

Indeed, something like that would be excellent. Only, it has to be fully configurable and work on Android (seriously, useless without those two features)

Martin wrote:

I don’t think so. I don’t really see “us” trusting machines in critical roles without supervision and some override capability. We’re just capitalizing on machines being good at repetitive work (simply put).

You have to define “repetitive work”. An Airbus is already 100% fly by wire. You won’t be able to move any control surfaces, engine controls – anything, without those signals going through several computers and activating the right actuators. The error with such a system, is it needs to be taken a step or two further, like on the F-35. It’s the first production fighter with adaptive flight control system. It can lose half the tail, most of the sensors, it just keep on flying as long as it is physically possible. It will find out in an instant if one or several sensors are malfunctioning for instance.

Computers are good at repetitive work, but what they are exceptionally good at is monitoring and controlling complex systems, orders of magnitude better than any humans. Humans are good at taking decisions, planning, things that requires creativity (considering you actually have creative persons at the right places).

It seems to me that accidents in the last decade with airliners are happening because some pilot makes a resolvable situation worse, instead of solving it. The main reason to have pilots there is to monitor and solve dangerous situations when/if they occur. It doesn’t seem to me that this practice is working anymore.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

One more blanket statement with a blatant lack of margin. Now if you were to say

there have been a few cases over the last few years where that practice didn’t seem to work

Then again, why are we discussing airliners and their operations on a G/A forum?

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

An Airbus is already 100% fly by wire. You won’t be able to move any control surfaces, engine controls – anything, without those signals going through several computers and activating the right actuators

Hmmm, you need to have a chat with some real pilots (the ones with the pilot uniforms and the gold braid, and a couple of stewardesses hanging around them) in the airport bar, about the fallback procedures on an Airbus, because even I know that isn’t the case

Only the ailerons are pure FBW, IIRC.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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