When there's smoke..........

The excellent report on the UPS 747-400F crash at Dubai makes interesting, if harrowing, reading. The aircraft was so near safety yet so far.

In this it joins earlier events on South African Airways 747 "Heidelberg" crash near Mauritius in November 1987 and the Swissair MD 11 near Boston in September 1998.  All three aircraft had smoke in the cabin and cockpit, all three were within 20 minutes of a major airport and a possible landing and yet all three went down with total loss of life.

Could the most recent outcome in particular have been different with a few extensions to exisiting software technology?

There are two possible options at hand.

The first,- which we raised briefly in an item on 18th July,- is the ability in an emergency to revert to ground control, UAV style. The obstacles and objections to this capability are the dangers of an unwanted party being to take over the aircraft at any time. For the moment that risk looks too great.

The second is to add to existing on board automation by adding a couple of functions. On the face of it this looks feasible.  It is currently possible for the crew to set the Flight Management System to take the aircraft to a centre point for an airport's Instrument Landing System so that it would pick up this ILS when it intercepts the localiser. The FMS can be programmed to intercept say a 10 mile final at 2,500 ft and 180kts (wide bodied twin) and, apart from putting the flaps and undercarriage down ,the aircraft could land without further crew intervention ,albeit with wheels and flaps up. If adjustments to power settings  and the lowering of undercarriage and  flaps were added to the programme as one unified package requiring a minimum of inputs (eg Emergency fully automatic full stop landing at airport xxx) all done at the outset with no need for further actions, it would not matter if the instruments became unreadable or even if the pilots had to leave the flight deck or were incapacitated.