Airplane lands itself after in-flight emergency, in a first for aviation automation | CNN
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An airplane has, for the first time, automatically landed itself after an in-flight emergency, according to the system’s manufacturer.

An airplane has, for the first time, automatically landed itself after an in-flight emergency, according to the system’s manufacturer.

Two people emerged unscathed from the Beechcraft Super King Air 200 after it stopped on the runway at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Denver, according to video posted by emergency responders.

The twin-engine turboprop landed under the control of Garmin’s Autoland system, which the company says is now installed on about 1,700 airplanes. “This was the first use of Autoland from start-to-finish in an actual emergency,” Garmin said in a statement.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    157·
    1 day ago

    This falls in the same category as the MCAS crashes. An automated system wrested control from the pilots, and the system evidently could not be disabled. That is the exact scenario that caused the MCAS crashes. While the outcome here was much more positive than “it crashed”, an automated system refusing to allow pilots to exert manual control is Not Okay. The positive outcome is incidental; the refusal of the automation to allow resumption of manual control is the core issue. That is a flaw that should ground the system until a bug fix is deployed. My dogmatic opinion on this comes from having worked in aerospace previously - this isn’t ivory tower speculation/assertion.

    Edit: rtfa lol - the pilots left it engaged intentionally. There’s nothing wrong here - this wasn’t a control authority override.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      pany CEO Chris Townsley in a statement. Autoland “automatically engaged exactly as designed when the cabin altitude exceeded the prescribed safe levels” and Townsley said.

      the pilots “made the decision to leave the system engaged,”

      the pilots made the decision

    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
      10·
      2 days ago

      This falls in the same category as the MCAS crashes. An automated system wrested control from the pilots, and the system evidently could not be disabled. That is the exact scenario that caused the MCAS crashes.

      The only thing though, is that is absolutely not what happened here, at all.

      Here’s a quote from the (quite short) article:

      Autoland “automatically engaged exactly as designed when the cabin altitude exceeded the prescribed safe levels” and the pilots “made the decision to leave the system engaged,” Townsley said

      The pilots saw the warnings and presumably could have taken over by doing just about anything, but with no passengers to put in jeopardy, they decided to sit back and see what happened.

      There is no flaw here, no bug, this is not a problem. This is what happens when everything works.

      Edit: Well, not everything was working, that beechcraft does have to have its pressurization system checked out for sure.

    • ThisGuyThat@lemmy.world
      8·
      2 days ago

      Yea not every airport has a tower. The Garmin system cannot detect obstructions. It announces an intent to land and lands.

      • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        If it finds an airport with an ILS runway, and it has even remotely up to date aviation charts with minimum altitudes what obstructions does it need to avoid?

        Uncontrolled airports probably aren’t where this system is programmed to fly into in an emergency. Not only would that be more difficult to program, but I suspect there wouldn’t be emergency crews to assist with whatever the emergency was either.

      • frongt@lemmy.zip
        1·
        2 days ago

        Does it only choose suitable airports? Like ones where they have a system to support automatic landings? I would think those should have ATC

      • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        2 days ago

        So… my $1400 DJI Avaya2 has a more sophisticated automatic landing system? Yeah… lots of stuff just started making sense 🤣

          • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
            23·
            2 days ago

            And presumably lots of other expensive acronyms that I don’t care about, because I’ll never own a plane 🤣

            • Riskable@programming.devEnglish
              6·
              2 days ago

              Think the acronyms are bad now? Wait until your plane is in the cloud!

              “Plane pod bay doors open unexpectedly! Engaging emergency AWS FaaS! AWS unavailable! Engaging GCP FaaS! GCP unavailable! Local CDN AZ cannot be found! No MSP available! Engaging SRE! Blaming DNS!”

              Pilot: “We haven’t even taken off yet! Also, I told you to open the doors, you dumb AI!”

              “Good catch! Would you like me to continue blaming DNS?”

              • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                2 days ago

                I mean that’s essential when your HAL malfunctions right? ;-)

                I have the upmost respect for pilots… I don’t know that many personally… although one flying lesson comes acutely to mind:

                I was in the back of a small plane, not even sure there was a seat… though I believe there was a lap belt. My old boss was in the passenger seat, his friend was giving the lesson, the GPS was blaring “Altitude, altitude, altitude!” every 30 seconds…

                Took all my self control to concentrate on not crapping my pants :-) But still an amazing experience. Glad I went!

                You make a wonderfully narrative point about the necessity of all those acronyms. I’m curious what was in your pods?

              • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
                12·
                2 days ago

                I would have called it a sarcastic discussion… I make an ass of myself for the amusement of the “class”. People laugh, people cry, a good time is had by all.

                I do appreciate the achievement here, sounds very cool and I’m looking forward to learning more. Seems like I need to learn a lot more acronyms first though ;-)