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Chapter 8 Process technology 207
Operations in practice Who’s in the cockpit? 1
Modern aircraft fly on automatic pilot for most of their
time, certainly more than most passengers realize.
‘Most people are blissfully unaware that when an aircraft
lands in mist or fog, it is a computer that is landing it’,
says Paul Jackson of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft.
‘It is the only sensible thing to do’, agrees Ken Higgins
of Boeing, ‘When autopilots can do something better than
a human pilot, we obviously use auto pilots.’ Generally
this means using autopilots to do two jobs. First, they
can take control of the plane during the long and (for the
pilot) monotonous part of the flight between take-off and
landing. Automatic pilots are not prone to the tedium or
weariness which can affect humans and which can cause
pilot error. The second job is to make landings, especially
when visibility is poor because of fog or light conditions.
The autopilot communicates with automatic equipment
on the ground which allows the aircraft to be landed, if
necessary, under conditions of zero visibility. In fact,
automatic landings when visibility is poor are safer than
when the pilot is in control. Even in the unlikely event of
one of an aircraft’s two engines failing an autopilot can
land the plane safely. This means that on some flights,
the autopilot is switched on within seconds of the aircraft
wheels leaving the ground and then remains in charge
throughout the flight and the landing. One of the few
reasons not to use the autopilot is if the pilot is training
or needs to log up the required number of landings to
keep licensed.
As yet, commercial flights do not take-off
automatically, mainly because it would require airports
and airlines to invest in extra guidance equipment
which would be expensive to develop and install. Also
take-off is technically more complex than landing.
More things could go wrong and some situations
(for example, an engine failure during take-off) require
split-second decision-making from the pilot. Industry
analysts agree that it would be technically feasible
to develop automatic take-off technology that met
required safety standards but it could be prohibitively
expensive.
Yet some in the airline industry believe that technology
could be developed to the point where commercial flights
can do without a pilot on the aircraft entirely. This is not
as far-fetched as it seems. In April 2001 the Northrop
Grumman Global Hawk, an ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’
(UAV), completed the first entirely unmanned flight across
the Pacific when it took off from California and landed
nearly twenty-four hours later in South Australia. The
Global Hawk made the journey without any human
intervention whatsoever. ‘We made a historic flight with
two clicks of the mouse’, said Bob Mitchell of Northrop
Grumman. The first mouse click told the aircraft to take
off; the second, made after landing, told it to switch off
its engine. UAVs are used for military reconnaissance
purposes but enthusiasts point out that most aircraft
breakthroughs, such as the jet engine and radar, were
developed for military use before they found civilian
applications. However, even the enthusiasts admit that
there are some significant problems to overcome before
pilotless aircraft could become commonplace. The entire
commercial flight infrastructure from air traffic control
through to airport control would need to be restructured,
a wholly automatic pilotless aircraft would have to
be shown to be safe, and perhaps most important,
passengers would have to be persuaded to fly in them.
If all these objections could be overcome, the rewards
are substantial. Airlines’ largest single cost is the wages
of its staff (far more than fuel costs or maintenance
cost) and of all staff, pilots are by far the most costly.
Automated flights would cut costs significantly, but no
one is taking bets on it happening soon!
Source: Rex Features