Did they self report after or was there a review triggered somehow? Their excuse actually was pretty impressive honestly, almost like this has happened before.

Second, interesting to note planes don’t have deadman switches.

First off, you cannot just put an alarm on everything. The sonic experience inside a cockpit is very carefully designed to give pilots the correct information at the correct time. False alarms are not only not appreciated, they are actively dangerous. If a flight experiencing an emergency situation, a blaring alarm that is incorrectly going off can prevent pilots from getting timely information.

Airbus have side-sticks (like a game controller), not yokes and you really shouldn’t be inputting on them unless you’re hand flying for whatever reason.

In all two-pilot aircraft (all commercial jet aircraft), there are two separate roles that each one assumes: Pilot Monitoring (PM) and Pilot Flying (PF). The PM’s job is usually to run checklists, communicate/operate the radio, check various indicators, and support the PF to fly the aircraft. The captain and first officer swap between these roles en route. The PM should NOT be inputting controls unless there is a good reason to do so, but for safety/redundancy, one side’s controls are never disabled unless a lockout/override is active.

Most airlines have a policy to cruise with the autopilot on, which keeps the aircraft on its plotted course at it’s cleared altitude. The time where “flying” comes into play most often is during takeoff and using various levels of ILS from just indications of glide slope to a full autoland.

While not fantastic, a cruising airbus will keep its current course and stay airborne if the pilots snooze off.

https://discover.garmin.com/en-US/autonomi/#autoland

My guess is basically nobody cares that much about this rare condition. It's much more likely the pilots are incapacitated rather than asleep, in which case the alarm is pointless.

But I guess it's not that rare:

  - https://www.newsweek.com/pilots-boeing-737-both-doze-off-overshoot-airport-two-hour-flight-1735435
  - https://jalopnik.com/tale-of-both-pilots-sleeping-during-flight-reminds-us-t-1849014190
  - https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/pilots-sleep-cockpit-airline-safety/index.html
  - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24296544
  - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/both-pilots-fall-asleep-during-british-airbus-flight-incident-report-reveals/
  - https://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=A9AAFE58-18F4-40B5-B59A-EBE316BBE878
  - https://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1932040,00.html

Send an alert via transponders that it has been activated.

Maintain level flight but avoid terrain. (After a waiting period in which a pilot can deactivate this feature.) Or descend to a safe altitude if cabin pressure is lost.

Activate a mode in which the plane could be remotely flown or directed to land itself.

Alert flight crew that the pilots are incapacitated.

Or the most basic: make some noise to wake up the pilots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Australia_Beechcraft_King...

IMO that story shows that unless you do the remote control option (which I see as unlikely) it doesn't matter what happens...what can anyone outside the plane do except crash it earlier?

Well we can't settle it in the comments, nor should we. So which of those options can successfully survive a detailed engineering review on its merits?

Your other ideas are good. But this could kill people if it misfires and takes the plane off course and too far from an airfield.

Not as quickly. Routes are programmed into an airliner before takeoff. Those routes are planned with emergency landing in mind. Left to its own devices, a plane flying its flight path is safer than one simply holding FL (while avoiding terrain).

https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/garmin-autoland-thi...

This[1] StackExchange thread does give some pointers as to why that may be.

[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/81234/is-there-...

One of the Boeing 737 Max safety features is that the pilots are so anxious flying it that they are too scared to fall asleep

* No wheels fell off (https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/united-...)

* No doors departed the plane (https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/06/business/ntsb-boeing-alaska-d...)

* No anti-ice ignited the engines (https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/faa-proposal-targets...)

* No gear failure (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39644341)

* No unintended pitch-down (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Au...)

* Pilots well rested :)

Sounds like ATC and a nearby plane was trying to get hold of them while they were napping. Wonder how this would have been handled in another part of the world. Unresponsive aircraft for 28 mins…

Seems like they could address this by just changing procedures.

If one pilot wants to take a nap, require a third crew member to come sit in the cockpit and make sure the other pilot doesn't doze off. When two pilots are awake, they can monitor each other, but if one is (intentionally) asleep, they can't do that, so have someone take over that function.

See this: https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/controlled-rest/

Yes, planes can take off and land on auto pilot - but real world conditions throw curve balls, ditto approaches and departures from high traffic airports.

Even "boring" 10 hour point to point legs that might normally be fully autopilot can be a problem in case of mechanical failures or other unexpected events.

Planes are not fully autonomous. They will not be for a very long time due to the regulatory environment aviation is entrenched in.

They didn't make a point, they claimed ignorance by making it a question. Chillllll

Status-quo is not something you typically argue for, its what you need to argue against. At which point you need to make a positive argument with data that can convince them otherwise.

What would probably make more sense is to just add a single-button auto-land feature, that sends an emergency destress call and configures and invokes existing automatic navigation, approach, and landing features to find the nearest appropriate airport and land. Given how rarely this would be used, there wouldn't be a need for the system to navigate complex traffic patterns, as ATC could just clear other aircraft out of the way. Something like this has recently become available for general aviation aircraft, but I haven't heard about anyone working on it for airliners yet.

What do you hope for with removing humans in the loop?

I know it's an Airbus but I can see this happening in the not so distant future.

Definitely slept a bit while doing night passage (alcohol). Would be impossible in a car given how much driver monitoring is out there.

I wouldn't feel safe if I wasn't listening to something that kept me engaged though. I would totally nod off.

I was excited to get adaptive cruise control, but I’ve found I don’t like using it very much. It’s too aggressive with hitting the breaks to maintain the following distance instead of being able to ease off the gas to fall back like a human driver would. Assume some brands are better at this than others, but anyway I didn’t buy a Mazda to not drive it. So I use that only intermittently for long drives as a bit of a break for my right foot.

> Coast Guard helicopter with a mounted machine gun pointed at me and a Coast Guard response (defender class) boat with a .50-caliber machine gun also fixed on me while they sat off our bow.

Why'd they do that?

> they said I should hold my position and not move.

Why?

> The sub came out with two large ships on each side with blast shields on the each ship.

...why?

Safety and security. A small boat can be a threat and cause damage to a larger boat if you let it get close enough. Small boats can easily capsize if they get too close to a larger boat.

When a $2,000,000,000 Ohio class submarine carrying ballistic missiles is most vulnerable leaving port moving towards water deep enough to dive in. The Coast Guard is tasked with keeping all potential threats away. The ships on the side would protect the submarine from RPG and similar attacks while the submarine is surfaced.

From context I guess you meant either "I wouldn’t be surprised if this happens more often" or "I would be surprised if this doesn’t happen more often." (https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=273 has many fun examples of this sort of thing)

My wife’s car has adaptive cruise. It just needs to watch constantly and adjust your speed to ensure the distance between you and the car in front remains relatively constant.

It has lane keeping assist and lane departure alerting. It constantly tracks where the lines on the road are and either gently nudges you back in the lane, or beeps at you if you cross a line.

It has emergency braking, it’s constantly watching and if it sees you approaching something at a rate or distance that suggests you are likely to hit it, it will alert you. If you continue, it will apply the brakes for you.

If you’re stopped for a period of time (like at a light) and the car in front of you pulls away and you don’t after a brief moment, it will ding to get your attention and let you know traffic is moving.

Pretty much all of this is making use of the strengths of the computer (uninterrupted attention, quick reaction times) to make up for the weaknesses of the human (distractable, slower reaction times) instead of trying to do the reverse.

But in those moments where I'm trying to find the UI for adjusting some climate setting, and I don't have my eyes on the road, that's when the self-driving is useful.

Maybe technology creates its own problems. To be fair, the radar cruise control is nice for long drives.

Starting absolutes is poor.

This just an oxymoron. Highways are designed to take attention off.

On a chill highway drive I’d guess most drivers are no more than 50% attentive, driver assist or not.

This seems like a useful solution, but I guess it's hard to do as a policy as there is a fuzzy line between the game taking too much attention and not being interesting enough.

Both asleep, though, is a big problem. About ten years ago there was a (Delta?) flight to Vegas (?) with both pilots asleep. They flew past their destination and went on their merry way until a flight attendant check up on them.

That... doesn't seem like a great illustration of why both pilots asleep is a big problem :)

That's not a huge deal in Vegas, but if you miss Honolulu that's a big problem.

There are statistically an enormous number of ground movements carried out safely but boy does the potential body count get big with runway incursion scenarios. Two 757s colliding is a lot of people, and in high-energy scenarios at least one of the aircraft isn’t walking away. You can be doing nothing wrong and someone just landings on your taxiway etc. The close calls are terrifying.

anyway, everyone woke up (reason for sleep never identified, afaik - i suspect hangovers)

this would be mid-60s.

It dinged when you went over it and heading went to/from. And now you know why I’m here.

> One of the pilots had not rested adequately on the night before the flight, according to the report.

> “The second-in-command had one-month-old twin babies. His wife took care of the babies and he assisted while at home,” the report said.

More evidence of the importance of mandatory paternal leave.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/09/indonesia-open...

With negative population growth being such a concern I’m really surprised that there’s not far reaching, comprehensive, pro-family policies being enacted. Society seems stuck in the “productivity” graveyard spiral.

If you are still hearing about population explosions with the same urgency that we heard about 20 years ago, then you’re being fed information meant to vilify the “others”.