Gadgetory

whenever you get on a plane you probably picture the captain as a seasoned pro with years of experience who will have your aircraft solidly under control at all times and in most cases you wouldn't be wrong except that the captain might not actually be flying the plane wait a minute what well there's a tremendous level of automation that goes into modern jet liners from redundant safety systems that kick in automatically to fly-by-wire controls that don't directly connect to the planes control surfaces these turn the yoke into something less like a steering wheel and more like an Xbox controller and prevent the plane for making maneuvers the system deems too dangerous but even aside from all this you may have heard that modern planes can basically fly themselves and to a large extent this is kind of true you see after the plane takes off a computerized autopilot will usually take over it works by linking two sensors attached to the aircraft that track everything altitude wind speed direction how much the aircraft is banking or if there's turbulence it's kind of like an airborne version of Lane Assist features on newer semi-autonomous cars additionally most modern airliners have a computer called a flight management system which allows the pilot to enter a flight plan before taking off which includes the destination Airport as well as which waypoints the plane should reach on the way so after takeoff the autopilot will take all this information and control the planes speed pitch and direction by quickly calculating how to safely move the plane's control surfaces with no input from the human pilot required and if air traffic control needs the captain to make changes in flight the autopilot can help with that too for example to change the aircraft's heading or direction all the captain has to do in many cases is to turn a knob to the desired heading and the plane will turn itself newer planes can even land themselves using the same information and while the thought of rapidly approaching the ground under the control of a machine is a little scary the idea is that this kind of automation actually makes planes safer decisions about how the plane should maneuver can be made more quickly and with more precision than if a human pilot had to manually fly the entire time in fact some people have said that they can feel that a plane ride gets bumpier when a pilot is flying manually and of course fatigue is a real factor think about how easy it is to zone out on a half hour drive now imagine doing that on a twelve hour flight six miles off the ground hi Caramba however auto pilots aren't perfect obviously they can't react to most emergency situations or make unexpected adjustments that responsibility still falls on the captain who is required to monitor what the auto pilot is doing and make sure it's carrying out the correct instructions many pilots don't think of an auto pilot as an entity that flies the plane rather the human pilots still fly the plane through an automated system and despite the high levels of automation part of the reason jet pilots still have to go through thousands of hours of training and flight time is that they need to understand of a miscommunication between the autopilot and the captain's intention is happening for example the recent crashes of a pair of new Boeing 737s appear to be related to an issue where an automated system pushed the plane nose down because it misread sensor data about the planes angle of attack leading the system to possibly think the plane was about to stall and in 2013 the well-publicized crashed landing of an Asiana flight in San Francisco was determined to be the result of the pilot misunderstanding what mode the planes autopilot was in leading the plane to touchdown short of the runway so it may not be surprising that on something as complicated as an airplane computers are capable of becoming confused just like their fallible human pilots but the hope is that as we learn from mishaps and pilots become more accustomed to using automation flying can continue to get progressively safer speaking of safety check out BitDefender total security 2019 their best-in-class security solutions for Windows Mac Android and iOS have received the outstanding product award from av-comparatives and are trusted by over 500 million users worldwide network threat prevention detects attacks including botnets and stops them before they even begin it also prevents your sensitive information from being sent in an unencrypted format you also get ransomware protection a VPN service parental controls and autopilot your personal automated security adviser that helps you tailor your BitDefender experience to your needs and this is all backed up by comprehensive 24/7 support so check out the link below for more details as well as a special giveaway and that's it for this video guys thanks for watching like dislike whatever your heart desires check out our other videos and comment below 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