Question of the day <----------------------

[mnieuwhof 2]

1. Placed aircreaft on runway.

2. Set 6000 as initiall climb altitude.

3. Set VS t0 500 fpm.

4. Set Loc Capture on with Loc tuned in Nav 1

4. Hit the auto pilot on.

5. Set TOGA power.

6 At 156kts hit the alt hold button.

Hey Airlingus,

This is just the point... can this be done without pilot interaction after initiating the automatic takeoff?

Only do the setup, press the AP button and the plane must do all on your list from step 2 by itself!

Greetings,

Marc

[LufthansaPilot 4]

Have you ever flown an airliner, or even an aircraft at all? I'm sorry blow your bell mate, but I think that what you are saying here is quite nonsense. I don't want to be impolite, but I hate it when people say flying airliners is just like being a system manager at an IT-company. It's just not true. However workload varies from aircraft to aircraft and between long- and shorthaul, pilots are not there just to watch the systems. They are there to fly the aircraft, and the systems are able to take over some workload while they still have to be supervised and controlled by the pilot.

No I haven't flown any aircrafts yet. But - maybe I should have mentioned that before - I am talking about the airbus planes. The Air France A330 crashed in South America is a perfect example. I am quite sure that this crash was caused, due to a major fault of the Computers. How do I know that you may wonder? -There was an incident of an airline (can't remember which airline, I think it was Quantas but I am not sure), with an airbus A330, where the Pilots reported that they have received huge amounts of information as regards eng failure...etc. on the Navigation Display, which were -of course- not true, the engines were running. And the aircraft started freaking around on its own and did a nose-dive! The pilots tried to pull up the plane, but at that moment, it was impossible! The aircraft taught them, that they were not dominating the aircraft! Then the aircraft has regained its conscious and the pilots were able to pull the aircraft out of a dive.

I think it is much more better to have computers on board, supporting both pilots, but it is not okay just to say "Hey let's make everything in the aircraft automatic..." -To a certain extent it is O.K., but the aircraft manufactorers should not exceed this "certain extent"..

[Guest inbrekers1]

According to the FAA pilots can not talk about personal stuff until they reach 10,000 feet.

This should decrease the reaction time of the pilots and to increase the concentration on the flying. However, if pilots would taxi to the runway click a button and the plane would do everything on it's own, pilots would not be nesceccery, so they would start talking about personal life below 10,000 feet. Thus in case of an emergecy situation, which are more likely during take off and landing then during the cruise, they would not be able to preform the required corrections in time to, save the plane from smacking into the ground.

In my opinion the most important reason why they do not have auto take off is to increase the safety of the passengers and the crew.

Pilot's just do not have the time in an emergency to stop talking, concentrate on the plane, move their hands to the controls and make corrections AND think about what the problem might be when they are taking off in a fully loaded 737 in bad weather at 100 AGL...

[flusi4ever 39]

Well, the autopilot could pitch up to much and the heck could hit the ground.

I posted this a few days ago, but I don't know, if you noticed it Mathijs.

It was post #83.

[avrolino 0]

There are too many external factors involved for an autopilot to make an adequate go or no-go decision in an emergency.

Brian

Could be, but are these factors not the same when you need to decide to land or abort? All these comments do make some sense but they seem to ignore the fact that landings are also complex and inherent a mistake is far more problematic.

As long as you are in the air , no matter how complex a landing can be you have a 3D enviroment adequate both vertically and horizontally to maneuvere the aircraft should things not be acceptable to continue either on auto pilot or manually for landing without excessive maneuver . However , to continue what Brian above said , on a runway and especially on a limiting runway you have a very narrow margin to react to problematic situation both in length and width . Automated control systems are slow acting . Btw the factors to decide a go/no go Vs a land/no land are in fact not the same.

[Carlos Domingos 4]

I believe insurance companies have something to do with the fact that airplanes don't take off automatically.

[Albrecht 9]

We still didn't find the answer?

We should hurry up!

Seems, that there are already a lot of test with unmanned aircrafts for Autonomous Take Off and Landing Systems (ATOL).

Could happen, that the first automatic landing of a manned aircraft occurs and we are still puzzling out this question,-)

Albrecht

[Diesel10 2]

Simple:

Because Take-offs are optional, and landings are mandatory!

[bionicCrab 7]

Ok... here it is after looking in a book of Aircraft Avionics, this is the reasonable answer I found.

CATIII certified aircraft can perform landing on the runway, except the pilot needs to take control at the moment of landing. The plane can't taxi off the runway itself the most it can do is flare. The reason for this is the ILS CATIIIa system does not provide the necessary information for the entire length of the runway, for this you would actually require an Airport guidance system which is part of CATIII b, and c. Therefore a takeoff lasting the entire length of the runway is just not possible, only the landing zone itself is really "alive" for automation. Since these systems just don't exist yet, it's not possible to install an autopilot that will do the takeoff.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Guys, girls... I am calling this closed without a winner. As I said I had a team of three pilots with tens of thousands of hours in the seat and I asked them to read the replies. Here is what they wrote to me.

Mathijs, some clever guys on the forum. And a lot of good answers. But I feel the is still something missing.

But first, lets' see why autoland was developed. It was needed because it is very hard to make commercial aviation possible without it. Around 8% of landings now done would not be possible meaning that 8% of flights would end up at other airports or would be canceled. There simply was a huge commercial need to allow aircraft to land under the same condition they can take-off in. The same commercial need was not there for auto take-off. The argument that it is not needed because take-offs are simpler than landings is not true. Also the fact the there is no system that knows exactly where the runway is (ILS does not cover it) is only relative. it would be very easy to add something like that and it's most likely not even needed as navigation systems are more GPS (with ground based correction signals) based. We are rather close to being able to taxi with very little vision with system that warn us when we get close to the edge of the taxiway (and let me tell you it happens that you are able to land but getting to the gate is difficult).

More important however is the fact landings are done with idle or near idle power settings and take-off at max or near max power settings. Just about the most dangerous thing in an aircraft is the loss of power in an engine. Now if an engine fails while you are 1 feet over the runway during a landing you might need to give it a bit of rudder. Nothing real problematic. The same situation during take-off is far more dangerous, in a single engine aircraft you lost all propulsion, in a twin you get a violent shift in the trust vector. Now automation in an aircraft is created to either do standard task more efficient, to lower the work load on the pilot (we are lazy buggers) or to do something a human can't do. There rarely are able to solve a problem. Handing the aircraft to a system in a situation where a problem almost always is a serious problem is simply not straight forward. I feel this important factor was missing from the answers.

No doubt it will happen in the future and we'll all get used to it. Probably the same time when they will put big dogs in the pit to prevent us from touching anything.