RE: [Flightgear-devel] Hijacking

[BERNDT, J. S. (J. (JSC-E. (LM) <jon...@js...>]

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-----Original Message-----
From: John Wojnaroski [mailto:ca...@mm...]

Oh, and one more point.....
 
Given that we are able to design the "foolproof" auto-recover scheme. Where
do you locate the control points? On an average, there are between 35-40,000
flights in this country everyday. Do we locate them at only the major hubs?
How do you handle the shorter hops to non-hub airports.

Jon replies:

My original post mentioned that I would locate them at Air Traffic Control
centers. I am not familiar enough with ATC to state the corret terminology,
but I would place a pilot in the tower and at major ATC centers. Perhaps
these would be staffed by regular commercial pilots under contract or
something.

===

What do you do if a hijacked plane has insufficent fuel to be diverted? 

Jon replies:

"Insufficient fuel" to be diverted to where? If it has been commandeered to
slam into a building it cannot merely continue on to its destination because
it has insufficient fuel to go elsewhere. Of course it will be diverted to
somewhere else, i.e. the safest place practical.

This is where a pilot in the loop/simulator arrangement would be valuable
and where an autoland feature would be useless. In some cases it might be
necessary to set down on a road or racetrack or wherever (perhaps even ditch
at sea). A ground override/pilot could then take the plane down.

===

Enroute is easy, terminal control is tougher. How do you configure the
cockpit and flight surfaces for landing? You can use CAT III capabilities,
but you need to tune the navigation gear to the correct ILS/VOR frequencies.
A major redesign and retrofit of all commercial aircraft to add servos and
remote control actuators (Remember Murphy's law - increased levels of
complexity and component interactions) and what of general and corporate
aviation. 

Jon replies:

You are overdesigning, here. Let me also state that I am referring only to
modern airliners that use fly-by-wire flight control systems. The capability
I envision would simply be a way to get an aircraft on the ground safely
regardless of what the onboard crew was doing. The simplest way I can think
of doing this requires a subset of aircraft sensor values and control of
normal aerosurfaces and throttle. This would be an emergency only feature to
be used as a last resort when an approved pilot was not available. I
envision a receiver onboard an aircraft that would operate along the same
paths to aerosurfaces as the primary control system. There would simply be a
lockout from the primary and the ground pilot would have authority.

===
 
Of course, none of this provides any security or safety for the passengers
or crews. When the plane lands, chances are you'll most likely find a plane
full of dead bodies along with the hijackers.

Jon replies:

This is true. The original thought experiment was not really intended to go
this far, merely to provide one alternative. It might be appealing if it had
additional utility, but I can't think of any other situation that this would
be useful for. A reply made by someone (was it you?) said that one option
would be to give the pilots a separate entry to/from the cockpit, or to
place a lock on the door. This would certainly be a cheaper option, and
probably quite effective.

===
 
One news commentator made a very interesting observation - the hijacking was
a low tech approach to use high tech to achieve the terrorists' objectives.
Who would have thought that a box opener could be used to kill so many
people!!!  
 
Jon replies:

Yep. If, as mentioned above, the cockpit was made essentailly impenetrable
then hijackers would probably resort to persuasive measures including
killing passengers. The alternative is to let them into the cokcpit and face
a greater evil. The only use of an aircraft for hijackers is either for a
missile or for transportation. If those can be denied, then they might as
well just kill people on the ground if that's what they want to do.