Originally Posted by
Mesabah
All a hacker could do is change the aircraft's destination airport. That's the future of flying, your flight plan is LGA direct ATL for example. The computer knows where all other aircraft are, so it plots a trajectory to avoid conflict. There is no altitude selector, heading selector, no ILS's, no VOR's, no airways, and no ATC to talk to. The first pilot is there to simply take manual control if all automation fails. What does the second pilot do in that situation?
You're overly-simplistic view on this reflects on your lack of experience as a pilot.
First off, if the automation fails, what makes you assume this will always be a single failure? Now you've got a guy hand flying and trying to troubleshoot. Good luck with that one.
Let's talk about the airspace in the Northeast. One guy gets deviated. With as close spacing as you are talking, this could have a ripple effect, affecting the "plotted trajectory" of thousands of aircraft.
How do you handle thunderstorms? How about moderate chop FL300 and above? All these aircraft have "plotted trajectories" and the system has just been kinked by environmental factors. Can you fathom the logistical nightmare that will be created? Throw in a failure and it is a nightmare scenario.
Oh, and what if there's a datalink failure? You've got 500 airplanes in a single sector with automation failure now. That's got disaster written all over it.
Last, you cannot do this without either completely eliminating or incorporating GA. Do you propose we ground every single 172 and Learjet to implement this system?