Re: Soft Walls. or Who\'s flying the airplane?
Eh, I'm not ready to render judgment on this just yet; I saw an application of this on TV in the last week or so where it seemed useful for avoiding CFIT sorts of accidents. In a King Air, it operated as a function of the autopilot--which, as we all know, can be overridden by the pilot--but Soft Walls is designed to function as a limitation within the fly-by-wire flight control paradigm of all future large aircraft (and possibly small ones too).
Be sure to read the
Soft Walls FAQ, it addresses pretty much every question that occurred to me, save one. A key premise of the Soft Walls justification is that "no on-board emergency is severe enough to justify endangering large numbers of people on ground." To my thinking, this begs the question: are key things on the ground really to be protected at all--and I mean ALL--costs? I just can't see a jet with a serious emergency being steered into a densely-populated area simply to protect the White House or Camp David, for example. Succession of authority is already established in this country, and we can always elect another president. It'd still have been tragic, but I don't think the psychological effect would have been as great on the country (or for that matter, the world) if the White House had been leveled instead of the World Trade Center. Certainly, fewer people would have been killed.
I think we do have to concede that something has to change; the status quo simply isn't acceptable to the public. To this end, the FAQ makes a good argument here:
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Why is Soft Walls the best option available for pilots?
Clearly, restricted control is better than being shot down. If Soft Walls does no more than reduce the likelihood of an accidental shooting, then we have accomplished a lot. But there are several other competing approaches that have gotten a lot of traction and are far worse from the pilot's perspective. Forced automatic landing systems, control from the ground, and fully automated flight clearly require the pilot to cede more authority than Soft Walls does. The principle in Soft Walls is maximally generous to the concept of pilot authority. The pilot has as much control over the aircraft as is possible, subject to the constraint that the aircraft does not enter the no-fly zones.
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I for one am interested in an actual discussion on this subject, rather than a bunch of "grr, that sucks!" posts.