Comment by cedilla | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cedilla | Hacker News Reader

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This would need to be tested. There's a lot going on already during normal take-offs. Now you're in a situation where the engine fire alarm is going off, probably a few other alarms, you got so many messages on your display that it only shows the most urgent one, you're taking quick glances at 50 points in the cockpit already.

And how would the cameras even work? Are the pilots supposed to switch between multiple camera feeds, or do we install dozens of screens? And then what, they see lots of black smoke on one camera, does that really tell them that much more than the ENG FIRE alert blaring in the background?

Maybe this could help during stable flight, but in this situation, when the pilots were likely already overloaded and probably had only a few seconds to escape this situation - if it was possible at all - I can't imagine it being helpful.

You know how the tail camera works on the new planes? Something like that, which can be far away from the wings, but get the full picture. Am I saying it's the solution for everything? No. But after you go through the memory committed items during an emergency, you can take a look outside and be like "ah, I see better what the problem is".

If we don't try to see how it goes, we won't know if it is a good idea or not.

It'd certainly need more thought put into it than just showing the camera view from the entertainment system. Either just one camera on the tail pointed forwards, so you have one single camera that can show the whole plane, or two cameras in the front, one pointed at each wing. Two cameras is worse than one, but they are less likely to be affected by smoke or blood splatters or whatever. Maybe give each pilot one of the camera feeds. And you'd have to fit a dedicated screen for the video feed so pilots don't need to switch through screens in an emergency.

It'd take lots of testing and engineering. But especially in cases where you have multiple warnings going off I imagine that a quick view at an exterior camera can often give you a clearer/faster indication of the situation

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