Is Aviation Automation Going To Take Off Or Remain In The Hangar?

Do you dream of flying a plane high among the clouds? #SweetDreamsAreMadeOfThis

Well, that may soon be possible with what Airbus and its Toulouse campus are doing. Home to a workforce of 28,000 employees, hundreds of visitors, the massively famous Beluga cargo plane and an R&D center that led the development of the supersonic Concorde, the talk of the town is the Project Dragonfly!

The project is aimed at extending autopilot capabilities, particularly descent and landing systems, taxi assistance and automated emergency diversion.

Test conducted on an Airbus A350-1000, the automated system is being designed to assist pilots in various emergency scenarios. Essentially, the system aids in automated landing, recognizing other aircraft, weather conditions and terrains as well as communicating with air traffic control using an AI-generated synthetic voice.

Reportedly, the aircraft completed two successful emergency descents, with the French air traffic controllers understanding the plane via the AI-generated voice. Teaching the AI system to understand, process and analyze all the information was a challenge initially.

"The aircraft needs to, on its own, recover all the information. So it needs to listen for the airport messages from air traffic control … Then it needs to choose the most suitable airport for diversion," said Miguel Mendes Dias, Automated Emergency Operations Designer.


However, not all are confident about the autopilot features. Even some pilots believe Airbus is pushing the technology too far.

Tony Lucas, President of the Australian and International Pilots Association, summarized it well by saying, "I don't know if any pilot is particularly comfortable with the computer being the sole arbiter of whether or not a flight successfully lands."

Malcolm Ridley, Chief Test Pilot of Airbus's commercial aircraft, instead argues that the risk of an air accident is "vanishingly small".

Either way, history speaks volumes. Especially considering the 2018 crash of an airplane that led to the unfortunate demise of 189 passengers and crew members because of a sensor failure in the automated stall-prevention system.

This raised a question: what happens if pilots aren’t able to respond in time or appropriately because the assisting technology fails or functions incorrectly and pilots don’t realize it’s an emergency until too late?

Another concern brought up by officials across the industry is that current pilot training focuses more on automated systems rather than manually flying planes, which could lead to the erosion of basic cognitive skills and emergency responsiveness, according to Harvard Business Review.


According to Dennis Tajer, a pilot for 35 years and the spokesman for Allied Pilots Association, “It’s all about money ... Manufacturers are looking for the next innovative technology to deploy so that they can sell it and make money, and airlines are looking at how they can do this more cheaply.”

Do you think automation technology should be incorporated or simply act as a back-up? Let us know in the comments below!