![]() ![]() If they’d realized they were in a stall, the fix would have been clear. This action caused the plane to go into a stall, and yet, even as the stall warning sounded, none of the pilots could figure out what was happening to them. When the autopilot disengaged, the co-pilot in the right seat put his hand on the control stick-a little joystick-like thing to his right-and pulled it back, pitching the nose of the plane up. The “fly-by-wire” system also switched into a mode in which it was no longer offering protections against an aerodynamic stall. ![]() When a pressure probe on the outside of the plane iced over, the automation could no longer tell how fast the plane was going, and the autopilot disengaged. The dotted line begins where Flight 447’s last contact with the control tower was made. However, it can turn itself off. And that’s exactly what it did on May 31, 2009, as Air France Flight 447 made its transatlantic flight. Unlike autopilot, the “fly-by-wire” system cannot be turned on and off by the pilot. Stalling in a plane can be dangerous, but fly-by-wire automation makes it impossible to do. ![]() ![]() From top: a plane in normal flight a plane in a stall. This can cause the plane to lose “lift” and start to descend. Importantly, the fly-by-wire system will also protect the plane from getting into an “aerodynamic stall.” In a plane, stalling can happen when the nose of the plane is pitched up at too steep an angle. For example, if the pilot pulls back on his or her control stick, the fly-by-wire system will understand that the pilot wants to pitch the plane up, and then will do it at the just the right angle and rate. Whereas autopilot just does what a pilot tells it to do, fly-by-wire is a computer-based control system that can interpret what the pilot wants to do and then execute the command smoothly and safely. Not only did Ziegler’s plane have auto-pilot, but it also had what’s called a “fly-by-wire” system. One of the first Airbus planes for commercial use. Bernard Ziegler, senior vice president for engineering at Airbus, famously said that he was building an airplane that even his concierge would be able to fly. These findings prompted the French company Airbus to develop safer planes that used even more advanced automation.Īirbus set out to design what they hoped would be the safest plane yet-a plane that even the worst pilots could fly with ease. In the 1950s the autopilots improved and could be programmed to follow a route.īy the 1970s, even complex electrical systems and hydraulic systems were automated, and studies were showing that most accidents were caused not by mechanical error, but by human error. It allowed the plane to fly straight and level without the pilot’s intervention. The first so-called “auto-pilot” was invented by the Sperry Corporation in 1912. Early Autopilot. Credit: Eric Long, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution The story they told was about what happened when the automated system flying the plane suddenly shut off, and the pilots were left surprised, confused, and ultimately unable to fly their own plane. The cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorders, however, were intact, and these recordings told a story about how Flight 447 ended up in the bottom of the Atlantic. But it would be two more years before most of the wreckage was recovered from the ocean’s depths. Days later, several bodies and some pieces of the plane were found floating in the Atlantic Ocean. ![]()
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