Airliner crash-lands at Heathrow
Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
Well, any landing everyone walks away from is a good landing. A great landing would require the airplane to be flyable again afterwards.
"preemptive killing of cops might not be such a bad idea from a personal saftey[sic] standpoint..." --Keevan Colton
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
"There's a word for bias you can't see: Yours." -- William Saletan
-
Dartzap
- Sith Acolyte
- Posts: 5969
- Joined: 2002-09-05 09:56am
- Location: Britain, Britain, Britain: Land Of Rain
- Contact:
Beeb
Engine fault caused crash-landing
Engine failure has been blamed for the crash-landing of a plane at Heathrow in a preliminary report.
The two engines did not respond to demands for thrust when the jet was two miles from touch down, air accident investigators said.
The flight had been normal until that point but the Boeing 777 "descended rapidly" and struck the ground short of the runway.
The British Airways jet was being controlled by co-pilot when it landed.
EBC: Northeners, Huh! What are they good for?! Absolutely nothing! 
Cybertron, Justice league...MM, HAB SDN City Watch: Sergeant Detritus
Days Unstabbed, Unabused, Unassualted and Unwavedatwithabutchersknife: 0
Cybertron, Justice league...MM, HAB SDN City Watch: Sergeant Detritus
Days Unstabbed, Unabused, Unassualted and Unwavedatwithabutchersknife: 0
-
Broomstick
- Emperor's Hand
- Posts: 28846
- Joined: 2004-01-02 07:04pm
- Location: Industrial armpit of the US Midwest
"Autothrottle", huh? Sounds like they had the plane on autoland and something malfunctioned - which is EXACTLY why we still have human pilots on airplanes that can land themselves. Can we cross-reference this with that F-22 thread going on currently?
In any case - good job for the pilots to pull everyone's ass out of the fire.
In any case - good job for the pilots to pull everyone's ass out of the fire.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
Another report indicated that after the autothrottle failed, the pilots manually tried adjusting thrust and that failed, too. I don't think the automatic systems are necessarily to blame here.Broomstick wrote:"Autothrottle", huh? Sounds like they had the plane on autoland and something malfunctioned - which is EXACTLY why we still have human pilots on airplanes that can land themselves. Can we cross-reference this with that F-22 thread going on currently?
-
Broomstick
- Emperor's Hand
- Posts: 28846
- Joined: 2004-01-02 07:04pm
- Location: Industrial armpit of the US Midwest
No, but the autoland can't handle an off-runway landing. That's one of the reasons why we need humans in the loop for passenger planes.
I'm taking a WAG guess that the fault wasn't in the autopilot but rather in the throttle mechanism or in the engines themselves so the autoland didn't fail - but it also couldn't salvage the situation, either. We still need humans for that.
Will we still need humans for that in 50 years? I don't know - in many ways I'd prefer machines that can truly sense their surroundings and avoid hurting people unintentionally and/or deal with emergencies autonomously, but to my mind it's clearly NOT just a matter of a better decision tree.
We have this same issue with people who want "flying cars". Either you need an AI that can really take over and save your bacon when the shit hits the fan, OR you need to train the driver/pilot throughly enough to handle likely emergencies. Since we don't have that sort of AI at any price right now we rely on pilot training. It's not that difficult to go through the training (heck, I've done it) but you do have to be motivated and there is some actual work involved. You have to really master the material, not because some examiner will grade you (although that will happen before you get your license) but because the laws of physics don't make exceptions - being connected, rich, a Christian, whatever will cut you no slack. For some reason this annoys people.
I'm taking a WAG guess that the fault wasn't in the autopilot but rather in the throttle mechanism or in the engines themselves so the autoland didn't fail - but it also couldn't salvage the situation, either. We still need humans for that.
Will we still need humans for that in 50 years? I don't know - in many ways I'd prefer machines that can truly sense their surroundings and avoid hurting people unintentionally and/or deal with emergencies autonomously, but to my mind it's clearly NOT just a matter of a better decision tree.
We have this same issue with people who want "flying cars". Either you need an AI that can really take over and save your bacon when the shit hits the fan, OR you need to train the driver/pilot throughly enough to handle likely emergencies. Since we don't have that sort of AI at any price right now we rely on pilot training. It's not that difficult to go through the training (heck, I've done it) but you do have to be motivated and there is some actual work involved. You have to really master the material, not because some examiner will grade you (although that will happen before you get your license) but because the laws of physics don't make exceptions - being connected, rich, a Christian, whatever will cut you no slack. For some reason this annoys people.
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Leonard Nimoy.
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice
Now I did a job. I got nothing but trouble since I did it, not to mention more than a few unkind words as regard to my character so let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid.- Malcolm Reynolds, Captain of Serenity, which sums up my feelings regarding the lawsuit discussed here.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy
Sam Vimes Theory of Economic Injustice