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Comment by outworlder | Hacker News Reader

> Preflight checks and flight safety. Larry should first build normal small aircraft that can do without constant manual checks before flight.

Omg, this. The amount of checks required for any sort of aircraft is ridiculous. A lot of it involves button pushing and checking status. This could be automated.

For instance, for a cessna 150:

STARTING ENGINE Mixture – RICH Carb heat – COLD Prime – AS REQUIRED Master switch -- ON Beacon Light – ON Throttle – OPEN 1/8” Prop Area – CLEAR Ignition – START Oil Pressure – CHK Radio – ON/SET Transponder – ON / STBY Wing Flaps – UP Mixture – LEAN 1 INCH READY TO TAXI

Most of these things could be set automatically.

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The examples you gave take no more than 30 seconds. Sure, FADEC can eliminate most of them, but they're quick.

Other examples–checking the oil, the tank sumps, the intake, the tires, the flap tracks, the rudder bolt(s), the wing tips, the tailwheel springs, etc.–are the stuff that software largely can't replace, and are the more time-consuming part of taking off.

Put another way, the latest fighter jets and commercial heavies still have significant visual preflights.

> The examples you gave take no more than 30 seconds. Sure, FADEC can eliminate most of them, but they're quick.

Sure. Maybe I shouldn't have picked the engine section as the example.

In the context of this thread, way more than that is needed.

> Put another way, the latest fighter jets and commercial heavies still have significant visual preflights.

And that is fine. The stakes are high, the plane itself is much more complex and placed in high demand, plus they can hire staff.

The "staff" you mention that does the walk-around of the major commercial airliner is/are also the person(s) who will be piloting the plane, IIRC.

I just flew on an a320 and watched the plane taxi to the gate. Someone on the ground crew in an orange vest walked around the plane and did a visual inspection using a flashlight. At no point did someone from the flight crew leave the plane.

This is typically what happens during our hot seat evolutions in the Navy, as well. As Aircrew, I'm more concerned about performing my own walkaround if any maintenance had been performed between flights and/or it's the aircraft's first flight that day.

Curious as to what airline and at what airport? Usually pre-flight is before the plane taxis "from" the gate not when it arrives "at" the gate.

Are you referring to only the first flight of the day?

A plane lands, taxis to the gate. Passengers disembark, the plane gets cleaned and refueled, people on the ground checked it out, new passengers board (me), and it taxis from the gate. At no point did the pilots leave the airplane to "walk-around".

Could cameras at various points of the plane could identify when things are not perfect? Computer vision has limits, but identifying leaks, ripples on a surface that should be smooth, and rivet discoloration seem pretty feasible. Granted, I'm not a pilot, and i've never done a walk around.

I can't figure out how you'd check the tips of the wings, but the leading edges should be visible from up by the nose. Similarly, the trailing edges from the tail.

It's also easy to be extra cautious. bias to 0 false positives. Sure it will detect problems that turn out to be dirt or poor lighting or something, but one visual check seems faster than 20 (or however many are necessary).

in a controlled environment like that, you could require stuff to be painted computer vision friendly colors. Even more, i'd bet oil reflects differently than metal under different lighting. internal stuff could be lit up with IR or some other part of the spectrum for easy detection.

I dunno. seems like perhaps a few pounds of electronics.

With modern FADEC engines, all of this is automated (from what I read...I've never actually flown anything with FADEC).

The recent diesel installs with FADEC that Redbird has been doing in 172s have a one button run up: You just hold the breaks and hit a button and the FADEC does the run up and checks all parameters and gives you a go/no-go.

FADEC - Full Authority Digital Engine Control

And here I thought it was 'Automatic', but I haven't dealt with a FADEC since I wrote avionics test scripts almost 20 years ago.

Very interesting. Do you know how this system handles eventual sensor failure?

Everything you set automatically is now more complicated.

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