Comment by n_ermosh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by n_ermosh | Hacker News Reader

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We'll still encourage and require the same proficiency checks that pilots do today.

Our hope is that GA pilots will no longer need to do things like train stall recovery. We are moving into an era of aviation where aircraft (not just airplanes) will be complicated enough that computers have to be in the loop to handle things like that, because it allows us to create more interesting aerodynamic aircraft that are more efficient and have better performance.

regarding something like AF447, the immediate answer is we have the ballistic parachute as a final backup in case the pilot is unable to land the plane, for whatever reason. Realistically, it would depend entirely on the exact situation our plane was in, what systems have failed vs which haven't, and the pilots actual skill level

> Our hope is that GA pilots will no longer need to do things like train stall recovery.

I hate everything about this thought process. Every pilot should know how to handle stall recovery, for the same reason that every driver should know how to handle loss of traction whether they have traction control or not. Driving the skill bar to the bottom intentionally will just result in more and more people flying without a clue what they're doing, just like we have on the roads today.

My point about AF447 was:

  - even with redundancy, there can be enough failures that the computer no longer has enough information to make the right decision, one thing humans seem to be good at.

  - people who had been trained in stall recognition and recovery, but probably had not kept proficient at it (unlike pilot of slow airplanes like GA and glider pilots) failed to recognize it (only 1 of the 3 pilot did) and did not recover from it.

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