Avionics - Flygere må være mer årvåkne etterhvert som automatiseringen øker - AIN

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October 15, 2020

Keeping the Pilot in the Loop on Flight to Autonomy

Recently issued FAA Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin AIR-20-15 perfectly captures the conundrum that faces pilots flying modern aircraft: automation can easily dupe a pilot into letting the airplane decide which way to go instead of the pilot ensuring that the airplane is doing what the pilot believed was specified. The SAIB summarizes a problem with the avionics in the Boeing 787 where the autopilot flight director system (AFDS) fails to capture the localizer when the airplane intercepts the beam at angles greater than 40 degrees.

The SAIB points out that the flight mode annunciator showed exactly what the pilot expected—LOC—but the AFDS elected not to capture the localizer but continued beyond the beam at a 20- to 30-degree angle while also capturing and initiating a descent on the glideslope. Obviously, this is a safety risk, with the airplane descending on a heading different than the localizer.

Automation is helpful when it works properly and does exactly what the pilot expects, but subtle breakdowns like the one mentioned in the SAIB can be hard to detect. And the more automation is added to aircraft, the more pilots need to be vigilant to spot such problems.

Thus, AIN posed questions to the big three avionics OEMs—Garmin, Honeywell, and Collins Aerospace—about their automation design and philosophy to get more insight into this rapidly expanding technology.