How Does Autopilot Work? A Pilot Explains What It Can and Can’t Do | WSJ Booked
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- Опубликовано: 13 июн 2024
- Think of autopilot like cruise control on a car.
Autopilot is used on nearly every flight, but it’s not obvious just what it does. American Airlines Capt. Sonya Laxo explains the tech behind autopilot, how it’s used and why it isn’t really “auto.” Photo Illustration: Laura Kammermann
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#WSJ #Aviation #Autopilot
Let's thank Microsoft Flight Simulator for making noobs like me understand what these professional pilots are talking about.
Lol exactly. Watching these videos and using it in FSX as we speak
@@Vaultmangary Why don't you just... I don't know... buy FS 2020?
@@notoriousfly9260maybe coz it’s 60 dollars? Or… idk…. maybe because it’s insanely graphics intensive?
You said the 737 max crashes "was an issue of pilot error along with software". thats not true. Pilots were never told of the MCAS system in their planes and thus were very confused as to how the plane responded causing the crash. Boeing negligence killed those people
The Ethiopian pilots left the plane on full throttle the whole way through. They knew what the issue was, they were taking the correct steps to resolve the issue, but the physics of airflow over control surface at several hundred knots made it impossible to manually trim. That would have been avoided if they had throttled down to normal thrust levels.
Not just Boeing but the corrupt FAA is to blame as well. They allowed Boeing to self-approve the 737 Max.
You should have known that WSJ reports are full of flaws.
@@qwerty112311 And the Indonesian Airlines?
Also, general plane design being not really suitable for engines of that size. Smart decision would have been to design a completely new plane that could fit large and more efficient engines, but Boeing decided to cut corners in order to cut costs and remain competitive against Airbus.
Thanks to flying on FSX and P3D, I knew most of this, but I love how clear and concise she was. She must be an amazing pilot!
Autopilot is one of many things that have helped make air travel so much safer. ESPECAILLY ON LONG FLIGHTS.
It's helped pilots make easy money
@@shakazulu5819 you mean victory style easy money
Indeed, the Autopilot does not have a role of thinking, reasoning and decision-making. It executes the pilots' instructions and directions.
Pilot: “autopilot is just a tool that we use, pilots are still actively monitoring and focusing on aviating, navigating, and communicating the whole flight”
WSJ: “in conclusion, pilots only fly for 3 minutes per flight”
They said manually flying the plane, they're right.
who cares, as long as it's avoiding disasters we can breathe easy. statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel.
AND FOR THOSE 3 MINUTES PER FLIGHT THEY GET $250K PER YEAR!!!!!!! NO WONDER AMERICA IS BROKE!!!!
@@manolokonosko2868 not really, they have to still monitor all the systems for the full duration, no airline pays $250k. its not an easy job, you can't just "leave it on autopilot"
@@manolokonosko2868 then you become a pilot since it’s sooo easy
This is so good to know! Thank you for posting this video!!
Indeed, the Autopilot does not have a role of thinking, reasoning and decision-making. It executes the pilots' instructions and directions.
Scary yet fascinating.
Very good information on automation, thanks
Very cool! As a flight sim pilot who also flies Boeings, this is really cool to see someone explain this to people who may not know as much about aviation. I really like to help and see people help others overcome their fears of flying.
Captain with 3 lines?
Come on WSJ, everybody knows a captain should have 4 stripes and not 3!
There is a different between rank and tittle. A person in charge of an aircraft or ship is called a captain (a tittle) no matter what rank he/she has.
@@bluenycom I don’t think it’s that way in aviation, she should be referred to as a first officer
@@mateoreyes1076 Technically, there is no official standard for civilian airliners to classify or rank their pilots since they are not military organizations. The pilot in command sits in the left seat, also known as the "captain's seat". The copilot, AKA the first officer, sits on the right. Normally, the more senior pilot is the pilot in command. Each airliner may have different requirements (hours of flying, exerience, ect) the number of bars on shoulders. In the military, the pilot in command does't have to be ranked as captain.
@@bluenycomwrong. The pilot in command is always the captain except for a few occasions: If the captain is incapacitated or not on board at the moment the first officer can be pic. But every airliner has a captain and that person is always with 4 stripes. She is a first officer. Nothing wrong with calling her that way.
Good explanation. 😊
Nice and simple explanation.....
Keep it up
thanks for the well explained system. cheers
how american airlines and boeing introduce unique advertising techniques. wsj, show how early autopilots worked without electronics
I would've imagined pilots would steer clear of naming something in the cockpit "the box," given the existence of black boxes and when they're helpful...
Thanks 😊
An autopilot from an airliner is merely the aviation equivalent of lane keep assist and auto lane switch to follow a specified route, with no obstacle sensing abilities (e.g. traffic, terrain and bad weather). The more modern integrated systems (e.g. Flight envelope protection) also protects against the pilot from going too fast or too slow, or turn too hard. Sometimes that malfunctions, as seen in Boeing's MCAS debacle.
There is some research into Tesla-style autonomous flying capabilities, such as Garmin's emergency autoland, but they're nowhere near as cutting edge (e.g. no camera/LIDAR and little machine learning) as autonomous driving, and are limited to drones and small private aircraft. The US airline industry and regulators have gotten comfortable with the 2-man flight crew system, as proven by the lack of major fatal accidents in the US since the 2009 Colgan crash.
Well, at least in Airbusses the autopilot system does evade other traffic. Basically it executes TCAS resolution advisories automatically, and does it smoother and more promptly than most pilots do as it does not have a startle factor to deal with.
AI systems are not certifiably in aviation, current regulation requires a fully deterministic system, and AI/machine learning cannot fulfill that requirement. Things might change over time though
Garmin's autoland is under assumption the emergency is pilot incapacitation on a perfectly flyable aircraft. Add a major technical problem, all bets are off.
Indeed, the Autopilot does not have a role of thinking, reasoning and decision-making. It executes the pilots' instructions and directions.
@@dbclass4075yeah honestly I would even go as far to say as a minor issue like a fuel imbalance that's not actually there could trip up an AI.
The auto pilot also can’t read the weather and “recalculate” the route.
... yet 😏
The FMC recalculates the route.
That last comment from her 😂 so you are basically there to taxi the aircraft?!?
And fly it….
For a few years now, the truth is that in the world of aviation, the need for a human pilot is minimal. It is there in case the system fails, and to be the backup for the insurance (it will take the blame if something fails).... They are like the cars of today, if something fails you can't really do anything...take the phone and call the tow truck.
Tesla should include this as part of their Autopilot User Manual.
while on flight and auto pilot is engage, if there is turbulence or plane hit the dark weather, is the auto pilot automatically dis engage? or the pilot manually dis engage?
Either. For most weather, autopilot will handle it as well as a pilot. In fact, it's probably better to leave it engaged while the pilots figure out their strategy - how they're going to avoid the storms - and then input that to adjust the autopilot course. Of course they can disengage any time they like. Also, in extreme situations - maybe if there's huge turbulence and the plane loses a large amount of altitude in a short time - the autopilot can't determine safe flight conditions - and so it'll issue a warning sound and alert light and disengage. It's normally not just one thing that'll make it disengage, it'll be a combination of unusual events and/or pilot inputs.
Also, Airbus and Boeing use different criteria for when an autopilot will disengage or not - that's exactly the issue with the Boeing 737 Max planes. Boeing made a significant change to how it operated in a certain condition, but it wasn't highlighted in any of the training material - they basically implied it'd fly the same as the original 737.
Good things
3:38 why would they choose an image where the gears are halfway lowered?!
Wow this waa. a great PR video for Boeing by WSJ....
5:49 I highly recommend you re-edit this video when you refer to the MAX crashes and cite "pilot mis-steps". It was proven to not be the pilots fault at all in these crashes, rather Boeing and their concealment of the MCAS software. In the case of Ethiopian 302, the did everything right to turn off the MCAS, but only had 7 seconds to process and react to the software before it was too late. Therefore it is not fair to blame the pilots of those crashes in this video under any circumstances. I suggest you be more careful of how you refer to tragic incidents like this in the future.
Pilot missteps? They didn’t know about mcas!
Exactly!!
When you say some afcs doesn't allow pilots to input controls past some parameters, does it simply take hydraulic pilot pressure away from the yolk?
Airbus aircraft are Fly By Wire and the way it’s programmed the computer just won’t take the commands from the sidesticks
The 787 and 777 are also FBW but I don’t think it works the same way
@@vagasint.4345 cheers so pilots dont get control feedback being electric, makes sense keeps oil leaks out of the cabin
@@jaydenritchie1992 not on an Airbus no.
I Wonder how an autopilot work under very severe vertical downward gust. I don't know whether you see this kind of weather . Yes you see microbursts. But can such micro bursts occur at higher Attitude. Would the Auto pilot be turned off under such situation
If i remember correctly, it was actually the physics of the engine placement on those planes that caused those 2 crashes. Yeah, they programmed the computers to compensate for bad physics, but that's like building a car whose front wheels face all the way to the right and have the cars computer set them straight. as soon as that computer fails, your wheels will veer to the right and now you're crashed. and the computer always fails eventually. its like Jurassic park all over again.
If you're referring to the Max 8s it was faulty angle of attack sensors and problems with the MCAS. The computer thought the plane was angling up and forcing the nose down. The pilots were not sufficiently trained on the new system and were unaware how to turn it off.
"sensors monitor the aircraft" VOR antenna gives of a VHF signal, the receiver on the aircraft picks up the signal sends it to the Auto Pilot control box, gives an input to the servos motors which move the flight controls a certain way to allow the aircraft to correct the deviations of the aircraft.
How come this captain only has 3 bars on her shoulders?
That is because she is NOT a captain but a senior officer just about to be a captain if she passed her exams to be a captain during trainning at her airline academy in the future.WSJ sucks.
Lol +1. Some sharp Journalisming on WSJ behalf
3:55 - Autothrottle and even AP for lateral control can be enabled at takeoff.
Auto throttle yes
Autopilot is always off for takeoff
What do you mean by "at takeoff"? At the beginning of the runway or at liftoff? LNAV doesn't _engage_ until 50 feet. Heading Select is not going to keep you on the runway. Moving the ailerons with your wheels still on the ground is not going to do very much.
@@ImperrfectStrangerprobably another flight sim buff who had this work for X-plane and thinks it will work in real life
serious question.. during cruise, the autopilot controls ailerons.. but looking out the window why dont they ever move?
they only move on final when the pilot disengages AP
cant find this anywherre
They move in minuscule amounts. It doesn't take much change, given the surface area of the ailerons compared to the surface area of the wings themselves.
Listen.. if it saves lives and limits errors its going to be used it really is a mental boosters for pilots. Allow them to think more abruptly and efficiently.
I mean - uless you are flying something passengers commercially - there can be ways to fly completely autonomously... Drones, rocket ships etc etc..
elevator for lateral and rudder for vertical?
@3:43 who creates the route for autopilot ?
Ugh u still wanna know like who codes the software where does one even go to find such jobs?
wow.
It’s curious how she is a veteran at American and has been there for like 25 years yet she is still a first officer/copilot.
I CALL IT RACISM!!
0:05 It says that she is a captain. Also, she is sitting in the captain's seat. Or am I missing something?
@@arpandrozario7959 , look at her stripes. That's 3 stripes. Afaik, Captains have atleast 4 stripes
Could be seniority reasons. Better schedule and flexibility than if she upgraded.
Likely flying a new aircraft that she has recently received a type rating for, meaning she starts back from the bottom on that aircraft
Referring to the FMS by "FMC", is that a Boing terminology?
The FMS consists of the FMCs.
in the age where drones are flown without any pilots on board... It's hard to believe that pilots are actually flying the craft...
Nice video
3:37
Hahaha the gear is half down
Or half up hehe
I haven’t watched the rest of the video yet - but she’s a captain wearing three stripes?
MCAS caused the 737-max crashes. Pilot error played no part. I’m disappointed WSJ would try and skew the facts.
Autopilot is like cruise control. You simply cannot just let the plane fly itself. You still have to watch lol
Have a nice day
Nah she's been a pilot for 23 years
@@lostinthelookingglas ya.... I was wrong.
Thanks
🙂
I dont think it's fair to say pilot missteps if they weren't told about MCAS
Boeing made you say the 'pilot error' in the 737 Max crashes, didn't they?
It's the Wall Street Journal, of course it's gonna get aviation wrong
Now I know why we praise for hundreds of hours of flight experience to be a pilot.....
GSR
Boeing was selling safety features as an upgrade. But if you don’t buy it you die. That’s what happened to the plane lost in the Arabian sea
If she is a captain why does she have 3 stripes when a captain has 4 stripes
That’s what I’m thinking
JARVIS is my co-pilot
5:40 No Pilot error or missteps. Pilots were never aware of MCAS because Boeing wanted to sell 737 Max's as regular 737's to entice airlines to purchase new Max's but at no cost of re-training Pilots on a new 737 variant.
Greed caused the Ethiopian and Indonesian 737 crash.
Will still never get on a max
Why is the captain wearing shoulder straps with 3 stripes instead of four?
Smaller planes need this technology
They have simpler versions. It can be a simple as wing lever. It can have control panel only (no flight management computer). It can be airliner-style avionics. It depends how the owner want to configure their plane, and if the plane is certified for Instrument Flight Rules.
They have it - and even more advanced versions of it. Cirrus developed an autopilot that has a panic button for passengers which makes the plane land automatically and the closest suitable airport totally without interaction. It manages every stage of the flight from that point onwards giving feedback and communicating to atc meanwhile doing it's maneuvers. This technology has existed since basically the Apollo capsule and it's accompanying rocket which had the first digital flight computer. With analog computers and autopilot (which did/do exist) it would have been next to impossible to implement. Today the technical implementation is trivial though the regulatory certification especiallybin commercial space is very difficult.
@@rkan2 It's not limited to Cirrus, it is any aircraft with compatible Garmin avionics. Although, the assumption of emergency autoland is that the nature of emergency is just pilot incapacitation. Add technical problems in the mix, all bets are off.
The typical course of action in case of automation malfunction is to stop. Planes does not have such luxury.
@@dbclass4075 Yes, you are correct, but as the system is certified as a system (at least currently) - it is only Cirrus that has managed to achieve it by now even if it the Garmin avionics that provide it. What comes to reliability - the human is still very much in the loop so all bets are off from the getgo anyway.
Look young for 23 year vet
NO she has been a pilot for 23 years
@@parthgutka3454 you are lacking reading n comprehension skills smh 🤦♂️
According to Airbus, autopilot is the real pilot.
If it's a Boeing, I ain't going!
Pretty
Thank you CNBC for shutting down all the complaints that Tesla is falsely advertising by calling their feature "Autopilot". You just showed that it's very close to aircraft Autopilot, and even more capable in some ways.
SQ
It’s more capable in pretty much every way
Dei
No matter how intelligent auto pilot is, we need human pilot.
Gonna disagree here. Human is still the weakest link.
@@rkan2 Humans are the weakest link but an insurance policy in the event of systems failures. And comparatively, it doesn't cost that much to keep them in the cockpit.
Why is a captain wearing first officer epulates?
The autopilot on a Boeing aircraft can control both the elevators and the horizontal stabilizer, although indirectly for the elevators.
Horizontal stabilizer: The autopilot primarily adjusts the horizontal stabilizer for long-term pitch control. This adjustment influences the overall pitch of the aircraft.
Elevators: The autopilot doesn't directly control the elevators. Instead, it makes small adjustments to the horizontal stabilizer to indirectly influence the elevator position and maintain the desired pitch. Pilots can still override the autopilot's adjustments to the stabilizer using the control column.
A captain that wears First Officer epaulets?
Pilot input error for the two 737max crashes , what baloney
Who clicked on this video because the AP (Autopilot) did crash your plane in Msfs2020 when relying on the autopilot in MSFS20
No newspapers ! Thats it , I'm not joining up to become a pilot .
veteran? so she's not a pilot anymore?
did you mean senior pilot?
"Veteran" can, and frequently does outside of the military, mean long-time.
Looks like a first officer
She is not wearing captain stripes.
Let her talk
Captain with 3 stripes?
THEY DONT HAVE TIME FOR READING NEWSPAPER BUT SLEEPING
Are they going to explain how autopilot works?! All they said was autopilot controls the plane based on a route with some sensors… what sensors? How does it know it’s off the track? Etc.. Wall Street journal putting together a high school student presentation here. Must be the interns assignment. What a joke
Wrong seat
Captain with FO strips!!!???🤔
I was a bit skeptical when I heard about it but right now I’m glad I took that decision to see 👆 they pro and legit
In all honesty, I am a tech guy / engineer and also pilot. To get airlines to reach fully autonomy isn’t really that much of a problem. It’s just matter of time and the public needs a little time to lean into it. It will come in 10 years or so. Remember; over 95% of accidents is caused by human errors. In the future people will look back and think how “cool” and crazy we piloted our self and not to say drive 2 ton killing machines on the road. It’s just the nature of it.
Yeah that’s why I think the day that many people can have a self flying drone/car… it needs to be only AI controlled since too much damage can happen to those on the ground with human error/crazy emotion.
The biggest barrier now is the ability for automation to handle emergencies. Usually, the default action when there is an issue is to stop. That's isn't possible in planes; they have to keep flying on their way to diversion airport, or whatever non-airport area it has to land on.
I mean... There is already fully automated commercial flying in the forms of rocket ships.. There are very few actual technical challenges and even they are simple to solve. Most are regulatory. Drones have been flying autonomously to what could be compared to commercial flying (military) since the 90s.
A lot of time, things will go wrong.
Automation in commercial aviation still requires human supervision. The machine can do things it was trained to do, but if something goes wrong it will goes very wrong.
For example. Most aircraft now has AOA sensors. But if something happens to it, the autopilot may read the wrong data, in such of two out of three are inop. (Such as XL Airways 888), or something goes wrong in the ADRIU like Qantas 72.
Do you think that the computer, or AI will be so advanced that, it would be able to execute US Airways 1549 without pilot inputs? That's why pilots are still required.
You think those "autonomous" rocket ships are true autonomous? Nope. They were programmed by engineers, and monitored (and can be manually taken over) from ground.
"Few technical challenges " will be an understatement.
Dream on. What about the incident where a galley water drain problem took out 3 of the 4 electrical busses on a 747. The pilots were there to fly the aircraft manually. We've already reached a point where there is too much automation and pilots are losing their flying skills (for emergency situations).
Let me know when aircraft are protected against random things like Neutron Single Event Upsets.
So you don’t inflate it?
So if captains only manually operate the flight a few minutes, and the route is downloaded prior to the taking off, I have to say the 9-11 hijackers put a lot of effort into making that precise crash happen
Not exactly, if you pull the yoke hard enough, the autopilot is gonna disconncet instantly, letting the pilots take control again.
They knew how to fly the planes - it is not rocket science.
Press the button on the yoke twice and auto pilot disconnects now your in manual control you also would disconnect the auto throttles by double pressing a button on the throttles and your good.
Bulldust. Anyone who has used a PC-level flight simulator will know the techniques available to turn off autopilot.
1. They had flight training and Level D sim experience
2. What they did wasn’t hard. They turned 180 degrees flew straight, descended and crashed.
A LOT more effort and knowledge is needed to program the FMC and use the automation to do anything in an airliner than what the hijackers accomplished.
Tesla fanboys: that's not autopilot! That's FSD !!
Autopilots are pretty dumb to be honest. This is a result of people constantly over estimating humanity’s technological advancements. It’s never as advance as we think it is.
People. clap the pilot if they land in bad weather. 😆 Clapping for the wrong thing!
Very rarely do pilots use “auto land”. Most of the time pilots will manually land the aircraft even in bad weather. Auto land would be used if there is close to zero visibility.
No thanks...
What the article portrays: Pilots are important.
What i see: Pilots for commercial airplanes are about to go extinct.
I don’t think how you got that out of this. Airliners have been flying like this since the 1960s to 1970s and both Airbus and Boeing both said they don’t plan on removing airline pilots from their planes.
Now, there will be some forms of autonomous flying eventually. Air taxis, some freighters, and probably even some smaller fixed wing passenger airplanes but airliners, no.
Please. Would you let AI make a life or death choice?
A captain with three stripes? 😂 Yeah right Wall Street Journal... This is utterly unprofessional journalism
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Sounds like she’s trying to defend her job as more than it actually is
No, it’s a common misconception that the pilots press a button and just sit back and wait to land when it’s so much more complicated than that.
She literally just said our job is to fly the plane and that’s what we do. And yeah the pilot’s job is to fly the plane which is what they do.
She’s says “we are not here just reading newspaper, we don’t have time for that”. Why would you even be reading newspaper in the first place? 😂
Kid, few years ago there aren't such smart phone or wifi thing on board so you read newspaper
@@AllenLu Thanks 👴
@@AllenLu Newspaper or smartphone, you wouldn't want your pilot to be distracted by either of these, do you?
They usually have newspapers on board and we're allowed to read em so it's kinda convenient
She is a senior first officer NOT a captain yet. You need to have four strips on your shoulder to be a Captain on any airline, regional or non regional airlines. She only had three strips on each shoulder. WSJ you suck.....lol.
She was on the captains seat. The captains seat always determines the captain of the flight.
She is on the captain seat because of the interview not because she is a real airline captain.rkan2
Why does she have 3 bars ?
Great job making flying sound very boring
Before you engage in fact based informative videos, make certain your presenter and data is correct. WSJ, you started the video stating Capt. She is a First Officer with FO epaulets and wings. You lose credibility when your research starts out incorrect. Also the FO doesn’t need to sit in the Capt seat to explain the AP, another small error.