I've been thinking a lot about automation lately, largely because of the holiday shopping season, which is more and more about automation, as are the rest of our lives. I'm a bit of a gadget geek to begin with. I've got two laptops (including one of those cute little netbooks you can't type on), a smart phone, a few MP3 players (including the little bombproof one with which I've run my last two marathons), a car navigator, a Garmin Forerunner running GPS watch, flat screens out the ying yang and a Netflix settop box I can access when I decide I really need to see Letters from Iwo Jima and see it right now.
Sometimes I wonder what's running the show. And every time I get my Verizon bill and swoon a little, I wonder all the more. Are all these gadgets, wires strung hither, thither and yon around the house, subscriptions piling up in my in-box, upgrades waiting to be installed, helping me live a simpler, more fulfilled more convenient life, or are they using me as a tool to enrich the people who foist them on us? This, I wonder, as out of the corner of my eye, I scan the features of a new Android phone I pretty much have to get.
Automation in aviation is a completely different subject, right? The big difference is, of course, that if I don't get to watch Letters from Iwo Jima to satisfy my insomniac need, I'm still going to be fine. With airplanes, automation can make the difference between your being dead and alive. Literally. I see accident reports all the time for small to not-so-small airplanes where I think that it's likely that if that guy had just known how to use the stinkin' autopilot, he and his passengers would be walking and talking among us today. That is nothing short of tragic.
Back in the day--meaning, "back before I wore long pants and knew how to fly an ILS," the folks at Mooney installed a new device in their airplanes called "Positive Control," which was basically a full time wing leveler. I've heard some people say good things about it, but I've always heard that they were frequently disabled or simply removed by pilots who got tired of holding down the little override button on the yoke every time they wanted to turn base.
Today, of course, there's a big gap between those who install and use autopilots and those who don't, though the ratio between the two continues to grow in favor of the flight control proponents. "Luddite," one who distrusts and eschews technology on principle, is a tough word to sling around, but I think it fits here. Autopilots are critical tools in flying safely for transportation, and not having one in a transportation airplane, or not knowing how to use it well, is asking for trouble. (Guess which side of the debate I come down on here?)
There's the old aviation joke about airplanes of the future having a dog in every cockpit, the pilot's job being to feed the dog and the dog's job to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything. We're still a ways away from that scenario, but if you listen closely, you might be able to hear barking.
Make no mistake, automation on a scale unprecedented in light aviation is around the corner. We now have synthetic vision (a computerized view of the world on our primary display), enhanced vision (superman vision seeing through the clouds and showing us on a display in the cockpit), WAAS for ultra accurate navigation, including for precision approach, and more coming soon.
The "more" part is where it gets interesting, and here I'm talking "envelope protection" and "autonomous flight." Envelope protection uses the autopilot (or "autoflight" system) to keep us from doing anything stupid. Like wrapping up the airplane base to final, not that that would ever happen to a good pilot. It could, in theory, be programmed to provide any kind of protection, like keeping us from taxiing, but the initial functions will be things like keeping the pilot from overbanking the airplane or from overspeeding it.
Autonomous flight, on the other hand, will remove us from the job of pilot and turn us into systems managers instead, presumably without much ability to take control of things should something go wrong, a scary thought. This kind of technological disenfranchisement is the stuff of science fiction, that is, if you don't count the thousands of drones flying around the world today being controlled from a trailer halfway around the world. Fighter jocks and would be fighter jocks are scared for their jobs, and rightfully so. Airline pilots haven't started to get worried . . . yet.
The total control scenario is sad and a bit frightening, though I'm very much in favor of smart envelope protection.
I wish I didn't have to take sides, because at heart, I'm a old fashioned airplane guy. Give me a tube-and-rag taildragger and a grass strip, maybe in the mountains, on a clear and calm day, throw in a sighting of elk in a high meadow and pancakes at the other end, and that's what I call heaven.
Then again, nearly all of my flying is for business, and my big goal at the end of the day is to wind up safe and sound in bed somewhere with my heart still pumping away. If automation, be it XM Weather or envelope protection, helps make that goal a reality, then I'm all for it.
Do we run the risk of the word "pilot" meaning less than it once did? I don't know. Maybe. I think it's more likely that there will evolve two distinctly different kinds of pilot, ones that fly like pros--God bless 'em--and ones that fly like poets.
There's a place in the world for each kind of aviator, and I aim to be both for as long as I can, though at some point it might be hard to reconcile the two worlds. For now maybe I'll just stick the dog in the back seat. He can sleep while I fly.
by Robert Goyer
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