A Positive Sign for Flying in the Future...

... and a cautionary one about aviation right now.

From the website of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, AOPA, a visualization of the descent and landing path of an airplane last weekend near Denver. What makes this image of a safe and smooth landing unique is that no pilot touched the controls through the final minutes of the flight. (Screenshot image from AOPA, based on ADS-B data captured by Global ADS-B Exchange and visualized in Google Earth.)

One of the busiest travel weekends of the year is upon us, with bad weather and flight delays forecast across much of the country. Here are two significant aviation developments to be aware of, while coping with crowds, cancellations, and overall aviation hassle.

One represents a milestone toward expanded travel options in the future. The other is cautionary, about avoidable risks in the here-and-now.

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1) A technological step forward: A plane lands all by itself, after reporting ‘pilot incapacitation.’

One week ago, something happened for the first time in the century-plus history of civilian air travel. An airplane whose systems detected a problem with its human pilot found its own way toward a suitable airport not in its original flight plan.

In these circumstances, the plane’s automated controls managed a gradual circling descent to the appropriate altitude for an approach, as shown in the image above. These systems landed the plane smoothly and safely on the runway, with no harm to anyone aboard or to the aircraft itself. In fact, the same plane was able to fly again, under human pilot control, the next day.

Through this unplanned episode last weekend, software and avionics from the Garmin corporation’s “Autoland” system gave a real-world answer to a question that gives some travelers nightmares. Namely, what happens if the pilot passes out… or worse?

Here’s the background: After departure from the mountain airport in Aspen, Colorado, and a seemingly normal climb to 23,000 feet, a private plane began broadcasting unusual messages to Air Traffic Control (ATC). The plane was a Beechcraft King Air B200, a popular corporate turboprop that can carry six to eight passengers. The ATC messages were not in a standard calm-sounding pilot’s voice, as they had been from this airplane at the start of the flight. Instead they had an automated, robotic sound.

Over and over, this robo-voice repeated that because of “pilot incapacitation,” the plane was directing itself for an unexpected landing at Rocky Mountain Metro airport. That was not the closest airport, but the system’s software had chosen it as most suitable because of its runway length, alignment with prevailing winds, distance from Denver International’s crowded commercial airspace, and other factors. (You can see a Garmin promo video on how the system makes such choices here.) The voice kept giving countdown estimates of how many minutes until the plane’s expected touchdown on the airport’s 9,000-foot-long Runway 30Right. And all of this starting while the plane was eastbound over the front range of the Rockies, above terrain whose peaks, winds, and weather make it about the most challenging aviation landscape in the continental US.

During this period, the Autoland software had complete control of the aircraft’s essential systems: Its power settings, its airspeed and attitude, its descent rate, its heading and course changes. Autoland lowered the plane’s flaps as it headed toward the runway, and managed the final “flare” just before touchdown on the center line. It then brought the plane to a stop on the runway.

You can read initial reports on the episode from Matt Ryan of AVweb here, see the flight track on FlightRadar24 here, read more at AvBrief here, and see an annotated version of its flight track at the always-informative VASAviation here. Starting at about time 1:15 of the VASA video, you’ll hear some of those AI-sounding announcements from the plane announcing the “pilot incapacitation” emergency and declaring its plans to an unflappable-sounding human controller at Rocky Mountain Metro.

Garmin had tested Autoland countless times, and it has been certified for various small-plane models over the past few years. But this appeared to be the first “real emergency” demonstration of how it would work.

A few days later, it emerged that the situation was more complicated than it originally seemed. As Matt Ryan pointed out in an AVweb update, there had been two pilots in the plane’s cockpit, and no passengers aboard. During their climb to the thin air at 23,000 feet, for some reason the plane suffered an sudden decompression. The loss of cabin pressure, and of breathable oxygen for the pilots, triggered an “emergency descent” safety system, which automatically brought the plane down to a lower altitude. For reasons spelled out in the articles, that descent soon triggered the Autoland system, which kicked in after a flashing signal in the cockpit informed anyone aboard that Autoland was about to take control.

When the plane first lost cabin air pressure, the pilots immediately responded as trained, by quickly snapping on their emergency-oxygen masks. But with other unknowns about the airplane’s condition, they decided that the safest course was to let Autoland retain control of every system in the plane and guide it all the way down.¹

Because the pilots were only momentarily “incapacitated,” you could consider this just another “test” deployment for Garmin. But it was one nobody had planned, and it has been seen in the aviation world as Autoland’s first “for-real” successful use. And thus it is seen as representing a genuine technological milestone, toward genuinely different air travel possibilities in the future.

In the short run, this won’t make a difference in US airline safety. All passenger airlines and nearly all corporate or charter-plane flights are required to have two pilots in the cockpit, each capable of flying and landing the plane solo. As far as I can tell, through the whole annals of US aviation there’s never been a case of a two-pilot airline crew having medical or other disabling emergencies at the same time. Also: It’s taken long enough for passengers to feel comfortable getting into a driverless Waymo car, despite Waymo’s safer-than-human-drivers accident record. It will be a very long time before passengers willingly board a pilotless plane.

But as a safety option for the thousands of “general aviation” planes that fly in the US each day with only one pilot, and as a step toward self-directing or “self-flying” point-to-point transport of products and even people in the future, this was a significant moment. Congratulations to Garmin and all involved.

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2) Unsettling news: US military planes needlessly ‘go dark,’ amid civilian traffic.

You’ve probably seen coverage in the past two weeks of “close-calls” between civilian airplanes and US military aircraft, in the skies over America’s latest undeclared war zone, the Caribbean.

-One, on December 12, involved a JetBlue plane, which had to suddenly halt its ascent, and instead briefly descend, when it appeared to be flying directly into the path of a large USAF refueling tanker. You can follow the planes’ paths, and hear the JetBlue pilot’s vehement complaint about “outrageous” danger from the Air Force plane, on YouCanSeeATC here. Over the decades, I’ve heard thousands of transmissions to and from airline pilots on ATC frequencies. I have never heard the likes of this before.

-The other, two days later, was a similar episode involving a corporate jet whose ATC-assigned climb appeared to be taking it right into a military tanker’s path. This jet’s pilot was also alarmed and concerned.

The essence of the situation is this: