Ah you were saying serve ads on the flightdeck displays! Ok that's innovative- I'd recommend featuring big watches, mirrored sunglasses and divorce lawyers.
Where's the commercial benefit though? The cost of certification is huge so upgrades after initial certification don't happen unless the tech has big cost benefit (or safety, which is also cost at second order).
Hence A320 still running on Motorola 68000 of Sega Genesis etc fame.
Happens fairly regularly but for passenger issues rather than technical- medical emergencies and disruptive passengers usually.
Airlines have contracts with companies who provide a sat phone link to doctors who have the flight information and medical facilities at possible diversion airfields. Eg MedAire.
I'm an ex-military now furloughed airline pilot working on a flight planning tool to save trying to spot the needle in the haystack that is the current NOtice To AirMen system.
It's not the engines that would prove limiting to cruise speed at those altitudes, it's the aerodynamic design of the wing. Airliners are flying at between 78 to 86% of the speed of sound, you can't improve on that in a way that would be dramatically noticeable without a huge redesign.
Compact turbojet engines rather than high-bypass turbofans like modern airliners. Blended into the wing for less drag compared to underslung wing pods like the contemporary rival 707.
Autoland would definitely be preferable, a CAT III ILS would be ideal although you can still autoland off a CAT I beam. CAT IIIs tend to be limited to big airports due to cost and restrictions on the surrounding terrain and obstacles.
With autoland though, it's not just a simple button push. The aircraft needs to be descended around any terrain, navigated through any weather, and put into the landing configuration. If it'll be landing somewhere other than the planned destination, there's also a fair amount of reprogramming of the FMS.
The utility of autopilot to a pilot is comparable to that of cruise control to a driver, it takes away some of the drudgery. It is not robust enough to be unmonitored by a human. It can not make the many decisions that arise every day in aviation, such as if and how to avoid a thunderstorm.
Autoland needs ground equipment that is expensive to install and has stringent requirements on the surrounding topography that means many airports can not install it. It also takes 2 people's full attention to make the autoland happen in a consistently safe manner, it's not a case of pressing the LAND button and sitting back sipping tea. This video shows a bit of that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMydKAcqKCg
I thought this was making the point that WW2 is often reduced to a simple coherent narrative for the purpose of documentaries concerned more with their viewing figures than historical rigour/the truth.
These simplifications are distorting the mainstream collective memory of these events. This is particularly prevalent in the UK with regard to the First World War; a popular satirical comedy series has shaped a widely held view of mindless muddy bloodbath which does not do justice to the complexity of reality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder_Goes_Forth).
It'd be nice to see the History Channel et al delve a little deeper.
Edit: I'm not totally sure if he's making this point or not frankly.
Flight deck doors are secure also, and the first action on attempted hijack is divert to the nearest suitable. It looks increasingly likely that one or both pilots remained in control.
Diego Garcia is a total red herring. Having space comms/surveillance doesn't equate to a super long range terristial radar capability. The Indian Ocean is a big place and curvature of the earth puts a hard limit on radar range (hence AWACS).
What does interest me is that the Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT) cannot be disabled by pulling circuit breakers and would be picked up by satellite (SARSAT).
The aircraft had fuel to fly to destination, divert to an alternate airfield and hold there for 30 minutes as mandated by regulations. If the crew were incapacitated, it would have flown at least to destination on autopilot and maybe to alternate if that had been programmed.
GPS merely updates the inertial (laser ring gyro) solution. Losing GPS would not prevent the autopilot navigating its route and eventually showing up on land based radar.
But TCAS and GPS-aware Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) are 90s, and automation vs maintaining flying skill is definitely a major challenge.
[email protected]