Can a computer land in the Hudson? To generalize, how does the computer decide where to land?
As a pilot myself I can tell you that in EP there are really only a handful of criteria you look for when determining a place to land:
1. Minimize risk of ground personnel 2. Minimize obstructions between air and ground (ie. poles, trees and wires are bad) 3. Maximize straight and flat ground 4. Maximize featureless ground etc...
Given where Newark is, and Sully's flight condition, there was really only one place that would show maximum differentiation in human density and allow for landing: Hudson. The trick is knowing how to land on water with *a passenger jet - something remarkably simple to compute given environmental parameters (CG, load, wind, etc...) and a few simulations.
As was rightly pointed out, the key to success here was calm - something Sully learned starting at the USAF Academy (I'm a fellow grad as well, shout out where you can take it!) and was what let him do computer level calculations so quickly.
Well it did. One of the (probably lifesaving) actions that Sullenberger did was to deploy the RAT which meant electrical power was maintained. This was not a checklist item, merely something he though useful. This meant the computers were still firmly in control when the aircraft ditched and the stall protection they gave certainly helped the ditching.
Interestingly after the accident the NTSB and Airbus made a number of ditching simulations and it showed just how hard it was for pilots to achieve the correct entry mandated by the ditching certification (minimum speed, -1 degree approach). However one pilot, an Airbus test pilot, managed to do much better than this by levelling out at high speed and very low using the radar altimeter. He the allowed the speed to decay until the aircraft touched the 'water'. This unusual proceedure probably couldn't be done by many pilots but it could be done by a computer.
For TransAsia, the point is that a computer wouldn't have needed to land. It still had engine power and could have moved the plane to a stable situation.
The problem is that the TransAsia-type pilots and situations far outnumber the Sullenberger's.
I don't see why this is an argument for full automation.
One thing that most people don't realize is that if Capt. Sully had lost one engine, and turned hard into the dead engine to return to LaGuardia, chances are he would have crashed. He made the right call to confirm (dual) engine failure.
Its also well known that a controlled crash landing is better than trying to stretch the glidepath, and loosing control.
I suspect that "automated" airliners will be programmed with crash landing areas for the 0.00001% its actually needed. There was a mishap when a F/A-18D crashed on final, both engines out, and its theorized that if the pilot had flown the pattern higher the jet would crashed away from the houses. A lot of factors lead to the crash, and 4 people in the houses died.
Of course, flying dead-stick instrument approach with low clouds is almost unheard of.
> The problem is that the TransAsia-type pilots and situations far outnumber the Sullenberger's. That is a huge problem. A lot of training programs are very scripted, regimented, and do not encourage pilots to make decisions like intentionally putting a jet into the water.
NASA trained the shuttle crews for unrecoverable situations (that don't result in an emergency landing) so the crew would still keep functioning and hopefully bailout.
The same way a human does: by assessing all the options, running little simulations to see which is the best one, and then picking that one. When you're over a densely populated area and lose all power, landing on water is kind of a no-brainer actually because all other possibilities lead to certain disaster.
So your powerless computer is going to land the plane?
And just to be clear, if you somehow lose all electrical power on a modern airliner you are completely screwed no matter what or who is flying it, because the controls won't work anymore. The pilot, whatever its nature, immediately becomes a passenger.