An airplane has, for the first time, automatically landed itself after an in-flight emergency, according to the system’s manufacturer.

Two people emerged unscathed from the Beechcraft Super King Air 200 after it stopped on the runway at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Denver, according to video posted by emergency responders.

The twin-engine turboprop landed under the control of Garmin’s Autoland system, which the company says is now installed on about 1,700 airplanes. “This was the first use of Autoland from start-to-finish in an actual emergency,” Garmin said in a statement.

  • ThisGuyThat@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 days ago

    Yea not every airport has a tower. The Garmin system cannot detect obstructions. It announces an intent to land and lands.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      22 hours ago

      If it finds an airport with an ILS runway, and it has even remotely up to date aviation charts with minimum altitudes what obstructions does it need to avoid?

      Uncontrolled airports probably aren’t where this system is programmed to fly into in an emergency. Not only would that be more difficult to program, but I suspect there wouldn’t be emergency crews to assist with whatever the emergency was either.

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
      1·
      2 days ago

      Does it only choose suitable airports? Like ones where they have a system to support automatic landings? I would think those should have ATC

    • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 days ago

      So… my $1400 DJI Avaya2 has a more sophisticated automatic landing system? Yeah… lots of stuff just started making sense 🤣

        • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
          23·
          2 days ago

          And presumably lots of other expensive acronyms that I don’t care about, because I’ll never own a plane 🤣

          • Riskable@programming.devEnglish
            6·
            2 days ago

            Think the acronyms are bad now? Wait until your plane is in the cloud!

            “Plane pod bay doors open unexpectedly! Engaging emergency AWS FaaS! AWS unavailable! Engaging GCP FaaS! GCP unavailable! Local CDN AZ cannot be found! No MSP available! Engaging SRE! Blaming DNS!”

            Pilot: “We haven’t even taken off yet! Also, I told you to open the doors, you dumb AI!”

            “Good catch! Would you like me to continue blaming DNS?”

            • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 day ago

              I mean that’s essential when your HAL malfunctions right? ;-)

              I have the upmost respect for pilots… I don’t know that many personally… although one flying lesson comes acutely to mind:

              I was in the back of a small plane, not even sure there was a seat… though I believe there was a lap belt. My old boss was in the passenger seat, his friend was giving the lesson, the GPS was blaring “Altitude, altitude, altitude!” every 30 seconds…

              Took all my self control to concentrate on not crapping my pants :-) But still an amazing experience. Glad I went!

              You make a wonderfully narrative point about the necessity of all those acronyms. I’m curious what was in your pods?

            • sramder@lemmy.worldEnglish
              12·
              1 day ago

              I would have called it a sarcastic discussion… I make an ass of myself for the amusement of the “class”. People laugh, people cry, a good time is had by all.

              I do appreciate the achievement here, sounds very cool and I’m looking forward to learning more. Seems like I need to learn a lot more acronyms first though ;-)