Brad Koehn

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since September 4, 2009

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September 4, 2009, on Ground Monitoring for Part 91 Operations:
I agree that having a second set of eyes would be helpful, but it could and should be handled by the aircraft. There's no reason the aircraft cannot go through the flight planning with the pilot (this could happen via the web, with the resulting plan uploaded into the automated co-pilot) so that it understands what should happen. It could assist with the various checklists during all stages of flight, along with monitoring the aircraft, weather, traffic. The technology to do this is readily available, and following the PIC/SIC principle, the automated co-pilot could offer suggestions to the pilot, but ultimately it would be up to the pilot to assess the situation and develop a plan of action to react to it. The advantage of the auto-SIC is that it would have perfect knowledge of the procedures for dealing with the various types of situations, and can remind the pilot to (for example) turn off the fuel pump and tank switch during an emergency landing. These hints would be invalua...