Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Fully automated plane?

Most of you have probably seen video: I want to set something straight here.
This was a new fly-by-wire Airbus. Fly-by-wire means that there are no direct cables to control the control surfaces(rudder, aileron, etc). It's not the same as an autopilot. There was a pilot in this plane and he was activly flying. 3 people(out of 130) died in this accident. The manoeuvre was part of a flight show and the plane was not supposed to land. Fly-by-wire has been proven to be very reliable and this accident had most likely nothing to do with it. What caused the crash is not well known or generally accepted; the Flight Data Recorder was substituted by someone. It might have been a computer or pilot error, or a combination of both. Just note that this plane wasn't (fully) flown by a computer. I know many people have seen this video on teh INTERNET and I can't stand when such a bad image about autopilots is created. Sorry for annoying you with this.

4 comments:

  1. Wow, 127 people survived this?
    Where did this program air and how come they got it wrong?

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  2. just another airplane crash, only this time there were a lot of suvivors. It's not the first plane that crashes at a flight show.

    How come people link this to autopilot? Maybe because they're ignorant and stupid?

    Anyway, I hope they'll keep develloping on this technology, and don't stop it like the Zeppelin.

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  3. When did this happen? Do you have a link to the story?

    ReplyDelete