And thus the debate of Boeing vs. Airbus is finally sealed. The airbus philosophy of putting the pilots out of the loop will not, and should not be accepted by the flying public. No matter how many senarios are imagined by the engineers, they will never, ever, be able to predict every outcome of possible events. Furthermore, a computer is a component that can, and does, fail and I can't see how it can even be fathomed to have them in full control. To the above poster, most of the time the autopilot is engaged when the plane is about 400 feet above the ground or so, though a computer does control the throttles at take-off. It is then left on until around 50' or so when the pilots disengage the auto-pilot and hand fly it down to the runway. There are certain aircraft that can land with autopilot on certain runways and they do use it all the way to touchdown where the auto brakes deploy and stop the plane. The only real pilot involvement is to deploy the reverse thrusters and steer the airplane down the runway.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Adam @ May 28th 2006 1:47AM
And thus the debate of Boeing vs. Airbus is finally sealed. The airbus philosophy of putting the pilots out of the loop will not, and should not be accepted by the flying public. No matter how many senarios are imagined by the engineers, they will never, ever, be able to predict every outcome of possible events. Furthermore, a computer is a component that can, and does, fail and I can't see how it can even be fathomed to have them in full control. To the above poster, most of the time the autopilot is engaged when the plane is about 400 feet above the ground or so, though a computer does control the throttles at take-off. It is then left on until around 50' or so when the pilots disengage the auto-pilot and hand fly it down to the runway. There are certain aircraft that can land with autopilot on certain runways and they do use it all the way to touchdown where the auto brakes deploy and stop the plane. The only real pilot involvement is to deploy the reverse thrusters and steer the airplane down the runway.