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You can read the first article in this series by clicking here.
Most of us dream of going for a fly once a week and the majority of flights are only for a couple of hours. A clever film of solar cells attached to the top of the wing (technology courtesy of the International Space Station) could end up charging the batteries in flight and while your aircraft is parked. In the event that your lunch at the destination flying club didn't allow enough time to fully recharge, grab an extension cord and in a minute your ready to go.
An important side benefit of this technology is that an electric motor is a fraction of the weight of an old Lycoming fossil fuel engine which then means you will be able to actually carry four passengers in a Warrior and the dreaded diet becomes optional. In addition, the electric engine makes a lot less noise compared to its present day counterpart and this means that local residents will have less to complain about in major aviation training centres.
A large part of what a pilot does is swap information with other pilots or air traffic controllers and this creates an increased workload in the cockpit that could be overcome with a few smarts courtesy of the computer industry.
Since becoming a pilot I've always been amazed that each aircraft is not assigned its own "IP address" or unique number that is automatically created as soon as you power up. Each plane could then be identifiable via the Internet and a bit of software could be used to determine course, heading etc. to all those planes in the vicinity.
For that matter there is no reason why an aircraft couldn't act like a moving mobile phone tower and thereby expanding the 3G network to every square inch of Australia. This network of aircraft could then be used to swap data between themselves and the ground. Maybe this is what could be done with the governments new 42 billion dollar broadband Internet network!
So let's put our dream cap on and think of what it will be like in the future with your brand new electric smart plane. You wake up on a beautiful Saturday morning login to your aircraft from home and ask it to pick up the latest ATIS information and prep itself for a flight you plan on taking in a few hours time. After picking your destination you upload the flight plan to your smart plane and it then notifies ATC of your intentions.
You arrive at the airport, pick up a coffee and head out to your aircraft. In the future, ASICs aren't necessary as it's been widely recognised that when you have half the population up in the air at any one time they are a little redundant. As you walk towards your plane the automated keyless entry senses the transponder in your pocket and helpfully opens the door so that you can drop your coffee into the gimballed cup holder (I have no idea why these aren't standard).
After the walk around you hop in the left hand seat and call clear prop and push a button to start up. Setting the QNH is a thing of the past as all of the ATIS data has automatically been picked up by your flight management system.
The latest upgrade also paints a zoomable map with the weather radar image data for your entire flight path. The smart plane advises you of some possible congestion at 3,000 feet due to a sports event and that it has automatically resubmitted your flight plan at 4,000 feet. You acknowledge the change and ask the flight management system to request a taxi clearance.
The smart plane receives its taxi clearance and hands control over to the ATC as they guide the aircraft to the run-up bay where you do your checks and onto the holding point. Micro-transponders embedded in the apron allow ATC to track all aircraft on the ground. Secure packets of data are sent from ATC to the flight management control of your plane to throttle up and control the direction for its heading along the tarmac. Obviously for safety reasons and because there are some old warbirds preserving aviation history all this automation could be over-ridden by the pilot or the forward scanning anti-collision systems of your plane.
At the holding point you elect to take control and turn off all the automation and wait for your take-off clearance. It flashes up on your display and out of habit you check to make sure that a software bug in the ATC does have you lining up while a plane is landing. After getting airborne you click in the auto-pilot and enjoy the scenery.
This is not a normal auto-pilot as it's linked to every aircraft in the area and also ATC. It not only keeps you on track but avoids all other aircraft and potential hazards such as wake turbulence from the large passenger planes. There is no controlled airspace as all airspace is effectively being controlled. Plotting a flight plan to fly at 1500 feet over an international airport isn't a problem as the whole system slots you in and caters for your new instructions. Back home your wife checks your progress on the Internet and suddenly remembers that there is a great winery on
route. She makes a quick VOIP (Voice Over IP) phone call over the network and asks you to drop in and pick up a couple of bottles of red. While she talks you have the nice warm fuzzy feeling of your own personal SAR making sure that everything is OK while you're up in the air. With a few clicks you amend your flight plan and the smart plane sends the amended details to ATC. In about a millisecond it automatically receives amended clearance to the winery and your away.
Unknown to you while you while were chatting with your wife your maintenance engineer has logged into the plane and conducted part of a hundred hourly while you're flying along. Regularly scheduled parts are automatically ordered and the plane books itself in for the scheduled maintenance and a taxi clearance next Wednesday to the maintenance hanger.
At the winery you roll the plane over a recharge point and then pick up the dinner drinks. The recharge point automatically transmits power to your aircraft while your checking out the wine selection. Upon climbing aboard and powering up you note the full charge light is on and you head back to your home airfield. Inbound radio calls are no longer necessary as ATC already knows the aircraft and its intentions and the correct ATIS information has already been sent to you prior to reaching the approach point. You acknowledge receipt of the information by pushing a button and the smart plane co-ordinates with ATC to automatically insert you into the traffic stream for landing.
Are all of these ideas that farfetched? Not really. There is nothing in the scenarios outlined above that isn't impossible with existing technology. Pilots spend a huge amount of their time managing information about their aircraft, their flight or with other pilots and ATC. If all the information was digitally encoded and verified then the risk of a miscommunication could be greatly reduced.
So why do we need all this automation? When there are as many planes in the sky as there are cars on the road then we will have no choice. The current ATC systems would collapse under those sort of loads and manually swapping information via voice would become untenable.
At the moment pilots patiently wait when other people are speaking but if there was 100 times the traffic then this wouldn't be possible and a digital system like the "dream" outlined above would become necessary.
As innovations give rise to the aspiration of flying at $60 per hour more people will be able to afford it. This would then in turn drive down the price of aircraft and further fuel the innovations necessary to manage the increased air traffic levels. This would mean safer skies as each plane is assigned a digital signature and this increased level of safety would further encourage more aviators to join the ranks.
The challenge for existing pilots is whether we want more people flying. Do we really want the Jetsons? Are we going to embrace the Playstation generation or are we going to keep them at arm's length from entering our royal pilot priesthood? After all, we spent years learning to fly "properly" and some kid comes along that thinks they can do the same thing by pushing a few buttons!
This brings me to the point that the future of aviation is actually in our hands. The innovations required to take the next step forward are tantalizingly close but they will require individuals like the Wright brothers who displayed a level of determination, creativity and technical insight that ended up changing the world. |