Posted on 11/24/2009 4:03:38 AM PST by tlb
“Fly by Wire” isn’t muckraking, exactly. Mr. Langewiesche doesn’t dispute the events of Jan. 15, 2009, when US Airways Flight 1549 successfully ditched on the Hudson River. Nor does he dispute that the flight’s pilot, Chesley B. Sullenberger III, a k a Sully, is,...a “superb pilot.”
But Mr. Langewiesche does bang a few light dents into Sully’s hero aura. What the public doesn’t understand, he writes in “Fly by Wire,” is the extent to which advances in aviation and digital technology have made pilots almost superfluous, perhaps even “the weak link in flight.” Mr. Sullenberger’s airplane, an Airbus A320, was nearly capable of guiding itself gently to the ground, even after losing both of its engines.
No knock against Sully, he suggests, but almost any decent pilot could have done it.
Mr. Langewiesche, the author of “American Ground” (2002) and “The Outlaw Sea” (2004) and a pilot himself, seems annoyed that Mr. Sullenberger has yet to praise publicly his Airbus plane and its sophisticated design. He seems annoyed, too, that Mr. Sullenberger has spoken of the problems of automation failure since his flight, while his own plane’s automation “had emphatically not failed.”
“He was no Charles Lindbergh, seeking to make history, no Chuck Yeager breaking the speed of sound,” Mr. Langewiesche writes. But he crashed during a slump in the American mood, and overnight he was transformed into a national hero, at a time when people were hungry for one.”
This book’s true hero — this will be an additional insult to some of Sully’s admirers — is a Frenchman, a former test and fighter pilot named Bernard Ziegler
In the 1970s and ’80s, working for Airbus, Mr. Ziegler and his colleagues perfected a revolutionary system known as “fly-by-wire control,”... to make almost perfect flying machines.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My first guess is a structural failure, though apparently the plane was operating at a corner of its operating envelope (a normal situation not considering weather turbulence).
A typical NYTimes article about people who are already forgotten, critical of someone who will be remembered.
I’m a pilot and I would not have wanted to have had to make a landing like that.
He is the consumate Professional.
Load of BS. Left to the Autopilot, that plane would have made a ‘landing’ in the middle of the Bronx.
That was my thought; sounds like sour grapes. He wishes he were the pilot.
...and in the case of an emergency, a pre-recorded message comes over the plane's intercom: "Is there anyone on board that knows how to fly an airplane?" LOL!
Sure, that’s right. Successful widebody ditchings in water happen all the time, because the planes are so superbly manufactured.
Oh, wait. No, they don’t...
And sure, a "land on the Hudson" control system might possibly be developed in theory, but it wouldn't be practical to attempt it. Hence, I'm certain that it wasn't done. :)
A few lines ahead you can read
In the 1970s and ’80s, working for Airbus, Mr. Ziegler and his colleagues perfected a revolutionary system known as “fly-by-wire control,” ...
The airplanes that resulted — including the Airbus A320 — are not only easy to fly and filled with redundancies that make mechanical backup systems unnecessary, but they will also not let pilots make certain mistakes. The airplane “will intervene to keep people alive,” Mr. Langewiesche writes.
So the aircraft's fly-by-wire control would have intervened just in case Sullenberger may have stalled the aircraft or reached some other limitations. So I can only imagine the aircraft made the decision to lower the nose automaticly due to insufficient thrust in case Sullenberger’s stomach realized the situation a second to late.
The decision where to land and how was Captain Sullenberger’s decision. Therefore he is a hero. No technique applied by Monsieur Ziegler intervened in that moment.
Individual heroism is a danger to the left.
If individuals perform heroic deeds, then people may realize we are all individuals capable of self sufficiency.
Self sufficiency is a danger to the control of the state.
At the very least you would have to stick some weapons grade ground search radar or ir camera to search for clear landing sites. I would not want to be on the team programing the algorithm that determines which one to use though. The first time one lands on some soccer fields and smashes a hundred 4th graders I might be out of a job. Besides, avionics engineers should not do everything. got to make the pilots feel important, don’t ya know.
Sully: The Right Stuff
I am well aware of DARPA and their annual unmanned ground vehicle competition and research efforts.
Fact is, things are a LONG way off from being fielded. Simply too rudimentary and unreliable to get near, or even on the same planet as, the industry standard for safe operation of unmanned vehicles in a mixed, manned and unmanned environment (10 x -9th power). Very few of the entrants finish the course, let alone do so without complications and failures along the way.
Thanks.
Wait - the pilot is going to remotely fly passengers? We're all up in the air, and he's all safe back on the ground, and hey if something goes wrong, he gets to walk away?
That's a commercial airliner I won't be flying on.
I’d want Sully to be my pilot!I’m not terrified of flying but it does make me a bit ill at ease.
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