I think if you get must of the major airports covered that's still good enough. But, if I understood this article correctly, what Airbus is trying now is to make it happen without those ground requirements. And I'm sure they do not expect to cover every airport and runway to begin with.
Will it do the same on a grass strip, which some pilot did without engines in the Houston area?
Can it do a perfect belly landing like a Polish pilot did some years ago?
Can it land in the Hudson?
All of those pilots had massive experience beyond button pushing auto-piloted aircraft.
I think (hope) this is just a typical marketing program which is not actually going to happen.
Moreover, it is easy to find at least 30 successful landings under the above conditions, while the situation you are referring to has about 4 cases, 2 of them contested.
Also, locking the cockpit doors on airliners is stupid in my opinion.
Aviation industry follows safety in redundancy principles. So on top of all the redundancy they are going to add in a system like this, I assume pilot will be part of the redundancy too.
Perhaps they can remove co-pilot soon. But, it will take a few years to go without any pilot. Even then perhaps they start with cargo airlines. I assume they can use a ground station as an emergency pilot like how military drones work.
https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2020/01/ai...
However, since you ask, I would say two things : (a) The very Press Release you link to does take care to manage expectations (e.g. "Airbus’ mission is not to move ahead with autonomy as a target in itself").
(b) Your automatic take-off in 100% of situations is never going to happen. Sure, on a perfect dry day with nil-winds you can conjure up a great sounding Press Release. But throw in some "real world" and you can forget it. Cross winds, monsoon flooded runways, engine failures, bird strikes, failures of electronic systems (yes, it happens, even with triplicate redundancy) ... the highly trained humans at the front are not going anywhere, nor is their training regime going to be cut back.
But this won't last (hopefully), thanks to our brilliant co-humans doing cutting-edge research on that subject. And when a neural network is able to differentiate and anticipate possibles actions of winds, engines, birds and onboard electronics, then you have an autonomous take-off on par with humans pilots, enhanced with an instant feedback loop with built-in checklists and avionics.
It's a big stretch of course. But never say never, they say.
Of course we are talking only about situations when its is available and some airline then still insists that you don't use it.
You didn't understand what he said. What you wrote is not an insight. The actual insight is, in air travel, you use automated stuff only when the automated stuff is available everywhere around you. Because your plane might have to divert due to an emergency and land at another airport/field that doesn't have any automation in place.
First, auto-takeoff is not possible. Its not possible due to technical constraints (e.g. concerns regarding LOC capture on the ground). It is also not possible due to safety constraints (e.g. the requirement to be able to deal with an aborted takeoff in a timely manner).
Second, automated landing IS used, but it is only used in limited situations. Why ?
- Because not all runways are equipped for CAT III autoland (i.e. the aircraft is not capable of landing itself without a shit-ton of calibrated equipment on the ground being there first, also good luck finding a CATIII autoland somewhere mountainous or with an otherwise tricky approach).
- Because not all aircraft are equipped for CATIII autoland (see above, more kit, more money).
- Because the autoland system itself has DH (Decision Height) and RVR (Runway Visual Range) requirements. The exception to this is CAT IIIC autoland, but AFAIK the vast majority of CATIII certified runways are only to CAT IIIB because that's expensive enough to certify, even for major airports.
- Because of general weather requirements. For example, I don't know about you, but I'd rather NEVER see an aircraft attempting autoland in a Captain's crosswind (i.e. crosswind so strong that the airline prohibits the First Officer from flying it).
- Becuase autoland operations at airports involve ATC increasing traffic separation. Increase separation leads to what ? Yes, that's right... decreased flow rate and increased possibility of delays and cancellations.