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Originally posted by Idontcareaboutyou
And yet airplanes are still dropping like flies.
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Most of this hysteria is caused by the MH incidents tbh..... people seem to forget that one was literally shot down by militants. The other is still a mystery, but deliberate sabotage is very likely given what we know (deliberate avoidance of airspace, transponder de-activation etc). Other than that it gets safer year over year, with the number of incidents constantly decreasing and plateauing while traffic volume and density increases.
Quote:
Originally posted by TaylorFantasy
I'm not really familiar with aviation and its teachnologies but talking about fly by wire what if one of the instruments malfunctioned? Like the pitot tube during Birgenair flight 301? I don't think Boeing 757 has fly by wire but what difference does it make?
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haha i'll explain it for you
with fly-by-wire on Airbus for example both alternate law and mechanical back-up are available in case of electrical failure so the aircraft can still be controlled without it! there are many redundant system for electronics so the chances of this are so slim, the APU can provide power even without engines, and in the case of fuel exhaustion most aircraft with the exception of some quad-jets have ram air turbines which act as a windmill to provide limit electronic power. outside of this, there are back-up analog guages that provide limited information that don't need electric power that are in the cockpit.
the pitot issue solution is simple, there are multiple pitot tubes and static ports to provide redundancy, also it's standard procedure to cover the pitot tube to protect against foreign objects! pilots are also trained a "pitch-power" procedure to maintain control in the event that they lose their airspeed.
the way the fly-by-wire works is that it removes the mechanical link from the control to the flight surfaces. think of it like this, when you ride a bicycle you pedal the wheels which pulls the chain which powers the wheels for example. the same thing happens with a traditional airplane! when you pull back on the stick, there are mechanical links that go all the way to the back of the aircraft which then results in the elevator going up, causes the aircraft to climb.
how fly-by-wire works, is that is removes this mechanical link. instead, when you pull back on the stick an electrical signal is sent to a computer which analyzes this input in real time, then the computer tells the elevator to go up. it works seamlessly and removes unnecessary heavy cables and such. FBW allows for manufacturers to make aircraft more responsive and predictable, as well as, add a few flight protections. this is a bad analogy, but think of it kind of like a typewriter vs the keyboard on your computer