A better flight

A prototype flight computer has been designed and evaluated which its creators claim will improve the interaction between an aircraft’s autopilot and pilot.

Although autopilots and pilots individually seldom make mistakes, on rare occasions errors are made due to inefficient collaboration between the two. Usually this results in nothing more than a moment of confusion but occasionally it leads to an accident.

Professor Peter Johnson and Rachid Hourizi at the University of Bath have used funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to test their theory that these misunderstandings are due to the restricted interaction and low-level communication style of the autopilot rather than human error on the part of the pilot.

In the current generation of computerised cockpits, the autopilot tells the pilot what the immediate action being undertaken is, such as what height the plane is flying at.

The more explicit details - such as what action is going to be taken next and the objective of a particular manoeuvre - are calculated by the pilot.