Synthetic vision

[webmaster]

There seems to be more press lately from Boeing and Airbus working towards incorporating more synthetic vision into aircraft. Many of the aircraft I have flown (military and civilian) have had upgrades for their EFDS to display out of control flight recovery directions to the pilot. You have HUD displays on 737 and 787 aircraft. And the article discusses taking that further with VMC day equivalent displays.

http://m.aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/airbus-boeing-set-sights-synthetic-vision

I like technology and items that help situation awareness and reduce workload, but I wonder about how this factors in with automation dependency. What happens when all the Gucci gear doesn't work, and you have pilots that have grown used to it? Curious to see where all this goes in future aircraft, and if due to costs will just not get purchased by companies.

 

[nittany03]

There seems to be more press lately from Boeing and Airbus working towards incorporating more synthetic vision into aircraft. Many of the aircraft I have flown (military and civilian) have had upgrades for their EFDS to display out of control flight recovery directions to the pilot. You have HUD displays on 737 and 787 aircraft. And the article discusses taking that further with VMC day equivalent displays.

http://m.aviationweek.com/commercial-aviation/airbus-boeing-set-sights-synthetic-vision

I like technology and items that help situation awareness and reduce workload, but I wonder about how this factors in with automation dependency. What happens when all the Gucci gear doesn't work, and you have pilots that have grown used to it? Curious to see where all this goes in future aircraft, and if due to costs will just not get purchased by companies.

IMO it's on the instructors to teach. I told a high school friend of mine when he was in the process of getting his PPL to, at a minimum, get an instrument rating and/or some aerobatic training ASAP. Even coming out of Primary, where I was still far from the most experienced thing out there, I was amazed at how much more I understood intuitively some of the basics of why doing some things in a situation was necessary, and doing other things was stupid.

i.e. "don't hold the stick back in your lap when you just stalled your airliner" type things.

 

[squorch2]

How often does the gear fail vice how often does it reduce bad decision making?

 

[Gatordev]

IMO it's on the instructors to teach.

Eventually people don't fly with instructors regularly, though. I've seen guys who don't want to run through an area of airspace where there's multiple control towers if the DAFIFs didn't load from the card. Why? Because they're not really sure how to identify the boundaries of the Class D with out little circles drawn on their display. I also flew with a very junior H2P a few months ago who was very uncomfortable getting from point A to point B, when point B was pretty much due north of point A for only 30 miles and there were two roads on each side to use as boundaries (and a TACAN...both points were airports). Instead, he wanted to put a Fly-To point so he knew when he got there. It amazes me how people seem to not want to pull out a chart and just look at it for a minute and instead want to rely on the electronic box, which regularly doesn't work 100% of the time (or the batteries die, etc).

My point is that at some point, the individual has to want to push himself/herself to not become dependent. You can't just leave it up to an instructor who may not be there all the time.

 

[Swanee]

How often does the gear fail vice how often does it reduce bad decision making?

ASO school quote: "You can't prove a negative". ie- you can't prove how many mishaps you've prevented. Human Factors are a huge focus in aviation now- especially when it comes to preventing error.

We'll never remember the times technology has saved our bacon, but we'll always remember the one time it failed.

 

[sevenhelmet]

Reliability is a big concern, but these days it isn't as difficult to make a highly reliable system as it once was. We all rely on systems now that 30 or 40 years ago (less in some cases) people might have rolled their eyes at and said "what happens when it fails?".

Just like with HUDs, GPS, fly-by-wire, FADEC, etc. systems will continue to be developed which improve automation for better safety and reliability than we had in previous generation equipment. Anyone have stats on how airline schedules have improved over the last 30-40 years? I'll bet the number of delayed/cnx flights has gone down.

HAL is gunning for all of our jobs...