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Comment by privacypoller | Hacker News Reader

This is generally seen as the path to full automation - you can couple autonomous "easy" highway driving with a remote driver taking over for the final mile. How long until we have aircraft doing the same thing ? ;)

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Well once airborne, aircraft already fly themselves and do everything except the last 100 feet of landing already.

Aircraft have six degrees of freedom. But for the ground, birds, weather, and other aircraft there is nothing a plane can run into. At 20,000 feet that mostly reduces to other aircraft. And still humans on the ground orchestrate among the flights and provide specific direct oversight of each and every flight in real time. Watching for weather. Watching for birds.

Don't get me wrong, I find aircraft automation impressive. But there is a massive human workforce that makes it possible for the cabin crew to run planes on autopilot. There's a mountain of rigid regulations, licensing and certifications that control every part of that workforce. Every part of each aircraft. Every piece of communication.

That's not how the roads work.

And for avoidance of aircraft: except for some last-second emergency reaction, this is the opposite of automated. We have specially trained, highly competent people on very short shifts under pretty much ideal working conditions ensuring that.

We just don‘t place them inside the aircraft.

We place them _both_ inside the aircraft and on the ground. While ATC does provide separation, conflicts still can and do happen. Aircraft have onboard systems to warn of conflicts and even to suggest corrective action, but the pilots must be the ones to make the correction.

Indeed, I believe TCAS is one of the only places where planes and pilots override ATC, in that if ATC tells you to go down, and TCAS tells you to go up, you go up

Unfortunately, the pilots at Lake Constance didn‘t really act this way.

In fairness, cars can stop or divert in a couple of seconds. Planes, not so much.

> Aircraft have six degrees of freedom. But for the ground, birds, weather, and other aircraft there is nothing a plane can run into.

I would also add that aircraft are monitored by ground control stations, while cars are controlled by the driver alone.

> Well once airborne, aircraft already fly themselves and do everything except the last 100 feet of landing already.

That's only if nothing goes wrong. On the other hand, if the airplane I'm in loses both its engines and has to land on the Hudson River[1], I'd much prefer to have an experienced pilot and copilot in the cockpit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

Black swan events are not very useful points of comparison - this event is not dubbed Miracle on the Hudson for nothing.

With constant, vigilant monitoring

For some definition of constant, planes aren't seconds away from disaster like cars/trucks are pretty much constantly.

Since the context here is "autoland", yes, that means "do not stop monitoring the bird, be always ready to take control." Landings are one of the trickier parts: you are moving at hundreds of mph, on an almost-collision course with the runway, by definition: the plane is supposed to stop flying very few feet above the concrete, AND not drop too hard.

Actually, most modern passenger aircraft can land autonomously on properly equipped airports with CAT 3 autolandings.

(Note that it's not fully autonomous, the pilots still need to do quite a few things like lower flaps, extend the landing gear, ....

Yeah he knows.

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