Graphic from AOPA website
Would You Trust a Self-Landing Plane? (aopa.org) 59
"Lots of hay has been made over self-driving, self-parking, and summon features of new cars," writes Shotgun (Slashdot reader #30,919). "Now Garmin has a system that will land your plane for you."
He shares this new report from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association: During this first-ever autoland for me, nothing felt terribly out of the ordinary until the final 100 feet or so when it finally sunk in that in a few seconds we would be hitting the pavement and no one had their hands on the yoke.
But just as briefed, the airplane "decrabbed" from the 10-knot left crosswind and soon plunked us down just left of center on Runway 18 at New Century AirCenter in Olathe, Kansas, and then quickly tracked us back to the centerline. A few seconds later we rolled to a stop... Such was my introduction to Garmin's new autoland system, a first in general aviation...
While the notion of an autoland system seems futuristic, Garmin has been quietly working on it since 2011 and conducted its first autoland in a Columbia piston-powered airplane in 2014 and first briefed the FAA on it in 2015. Since then it has conducted some 800 autolands... Someday, with more experience and the FAA more comfortable with the notion, perhaps Autoland will be available on any given flight where the pilot doesn't feel up to the landing. Meanwhile, it's a great safety feature. "This will save lives," said Ron Gunnarson, Piper's vice president of sales, marketing, and customer support. Once certified, the system will be standard on the 2020 M600 SLS models... Cirrus plans to offer Autoland as a standard feature on the 2020 models.
The article describes it as "a digital parachute" for the pilot and passengers in emergency situations. And the original submission argues that it brings to general aviation a safety feature that the big airliners have already had for years.
He shares this new report from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association: During this first-ever autoland for me, nothing felt terribly out of the ordinary until the final 100 feet or so when it finally sunk in that in a few seconds we would be hitting the pavement and no one had their hands on the yoke.
But just as briefed, the airplane "decrabbed" from the 10-knot left crosswind and soon plunked us down just left of center on Runway 18 at New Century AirCenter in Olathe, Kansas, and then quickly tracked us back to the centerline. A few seconds later we rolled to a stop... Such was my introduction to Garmin's new autoland system, a first in general aviation...
While the notion of an autoland system seems futuristic, Garmin has been quietly working on it since 2011 and conducted its first autoland in a Columbia piston-powered airplane in 2014 and first briefed the FAA on it in 2015. Since then it has conducted some 800 autolands... Someday, with more experience and the FAA more comfortable with the notion, perhaps Autoland will be available on any given flight where the pilot doesn't feel up to the landing. Meanwhile, it's a great safety feature. "This will save lives," said Ron Gunnarson, Piper's vice president of sales, marketing, and customer support. Once certified, the system will be standard on the 2020 M600 SLS models... Cirrus plans to offer Autoland as a standard feature on the 2020 models.
The article describes it as "a digital parachute" for the pilot and passengers in emergency situations. And the original submission argues that it brings to general aviation a safety feature that the big airliners have already had for years.
Very cool as long as it doesn’t accidentally get turned off or turned off and forgotten that it is off. The Asiana Airlines plane that crashed at SFO a few years ago was blamed on a landing system being inoperative.
Posted by: Ingineer66 | November 07, 2019 at 10:01 PM
Tragic, Ingineer.
Posted by: Cop Car | November 09, 2019 at 09:01 AM