Hijack Prevention

[Мастер]

Fellow Illuminati,

I spent part of the day watching the September 11 "All Osama" coverage on the History Channel, and it occurred to me that, on a fly-by-wire airplane, it shouldn't be all that complicated to deny control to unauthorized parties, and possibly even to the land the plane safely should the flight crew lose control. For example, there could be a panic button, the pressing of which would irrevocably turn over control to some form of auto-pilot. The obvious problem in such a scheme would be how to prevent false alarms; having a manual override would completely defeat the purpose. So my questions for any aviation types out there:

a - how sophisticated are auto-pilot systems these days? In a serious emergency, could a plane be directed to a preprogrammed location, and possibly even land?

b - is such a denial-of-control system feasible? Is it a good idea?

c - is anyone building anything like this?

Just a thought that occurred to me...

[Lance]

As I understand it, the technology exists now to fly an airliner and even land it automatically. Adoption of such technology has been, and is being fought by pilot's unions out of fear it would make them obsolete at some point in the future.

My source for this is also some show on the History channel, Discovery or perhaps NGC. It was not extremely recent that I saw this.

[Мастер]

As I understand it, the technology exists now to fly an airliner and even land it automatically. Adoption of such technology has been, and is being fought by pilot's unions out of fear it would make them obsolete at some point in the future.

There is something to be said, though, for aligning the incentives of the decision maker with those of the people on the plane. The captain has the final say on whether the plane can fly or not, and might be less likely to allow a plane with some defect fly if s/he is on it, then if s/he stays behind as the plane takes off on auto- or remote-pilot :D

[Lance]

Well.... Yeah....

I didn't mean I thought making pilots obsolete was a good idea. Just that it is their fear.

IMHO, the technology should be on airliners as a backup or in case of emergency, but never to replace the pilots.

I think your original idea is a fantastic one.

[Мастер]

Well.... Yeah....

I didn't mean I thought making pilots obsolete was a good idea. Just that it is their fear.

No, I did not interpret your comments as offering judgment on the wisdom of such a thing...

IMHO, the technology should be on airliners as a backup or in case of emergency, but never to replace the pilots.

Now we have the judgment :D Don't really know too much about these things, but I get the impression that's pretty much the direction we're headed in, that more and more of the flight is automatic, and the pilot is mostly there to override should something go wrong...

I think your original idea is a fantastic one.

Well, glad you like it :D Apart from the question of whether it is technically feasible, it seems like the big issue would be how to deal with mistaken activations, especially since any mechanism to override it would have to be usable by the authorized crew, but not by the unauthorized crew...

[Bill EE]

Would it not be a really good idea to put a radio control in ICBM - if one is lauched by accident or by a rouge launch team it could be order to drop into the ocean or detonate above the atmosphere?

The answer is NO! The reason is that someone will figure out how it works and turn it against you. The same reasoning goes for this proposal. The only way to make it effective would be to make it take over command from the ground whether or not the pilot want it to. You could never be sure that the crew would be able to activate the unit for the handover and there are cases you want to use the system if the plane strays and you lost communications (loss of pressure for example). Once you do that, then a terrorist could take over and cause all sorts of havoc.

Just my two cents - it not a technoloy issue, it is a security issue.

[Animal]

Would it not be a really good idea to put a radio control in ICBM - if one is lauched by accident or by a rouge launch team it could be order to drop into the ocean or detonate above the atmosphere?

The answer is NO! The reason is that someone will figure out how it works and turn it against you. The same reasoning goes for this proposal. The only way to make it effective would be to make it take over command from the ground whether or not the pilot want it to. You could never be sure that the crew would be able to activate the unit for the handover and there are cases you want to use the system if the plane strays and you lost communications (loss of pressure for example). Once you do that, then a terrorist could take over and cause all sorts of havoc.

Just my two cents - it not a technoloy issue, it is a security issue.

Warning: I've only skimmed the thread.

Aren't you forgetting that Cruise Missiles already have remote control? Granted that an ICBM makes a slightly larger boom, the concept is the same; bad guys break your encryption and cause the missile to hang a big u-turn which ruins your entire day.

I've been thinking about this even before 9/11. I read some stuff back in school in the '80s that the then-current autopilots were smart enough to take off from LAX, fly to JFK, and land auto-magically. This wasn't being done 'cause the FAA was scared of the 'opps' factory, and the Pilots (like Lance said) were freaking out. (Note: imagine what would have happened if all the world's coopers got up in arms about the new-fangled Bottling Industry...)

Be that as it may, and it probably wasn't, why couldn't we couple this autopilot with military-grade remote control systems? If a pilot hit a silent alarm, or if he/she/it didn't respond properly, traffic control would flip a switch and the autopilot would take over and land at the nearest strip.

I have also heard that military training jets' computers will take control of the aircraft if it starts to exceed "parameters". This supposedly helps prevents n00bs from flying their fast movers into a mountain at warp 9.

[Frogmarch]

I don't think that pilotless planes are coming anytime soon.

Everyone who has dealings with computers know that they go wrong or crash or get viruses consistantly.

People wouldn't have faith in a computer system until they could actualy talk to it, like for instance HAL.............

[Bill EE]

Animal - I worked on the Tomahawk cruise missile and it has a redirection feature but no remote control. It can be ordered to redirect to another pre-programmed target. As I understand it, the Harpoon can but nudged - i.e. the target present position can be updated to a limited degree. In neither case can the missile be sent back to the firing unit and in the case of the Tomahawk, due to geo-fencing, can not be used to attack the US.

[Bill EE]

On autopilots - you can build a system that would allow the plane to take-off, cruise, and land autonomously. This requires the airport to have the MLS (Microwave Landing System) installed as GPS is not precise enough to keep the plane on the runway during takeoff and landings (although DGPS may make that possible). The problem occurs when, ironically enough, a problem occurs. Autopilots have a difficult time handling fault conditions (engine out, thermal, violent downdrafts, etc) so you will always have the man-in-the-loop type control. The pilot becomes the backup and the fault condition manager (in other words, the pilot becomes the flight manager).

[Frogmarch]

in the event of a hyjack it cold be set up so that control of the plane is transfered to the ground where a human pilot could land the plane. ALthough they would have to be careful that this system wasn't hyjacked itself to take contol of planes remotely.

[Мастер]

Animal - I worked on the Tomahawk cruise missile and it has a redirection feature but no remote control. It can be ordered to redirect to another pre-programmed target. As I understand it, the Harpoon can but nudged - i.e. the target present position can be updated to a limited degree. In neither case can the missile be sent back to the firing unit and in the case of the Tomahawk, due to geo-fencing, can not be used to attack the US.

I don't know why there was an assumption of remote-control on this anyway. Certainly ground control would be one option, with the disadvantages cited already in this thread, but the original post was about the possibility of any kind of denial-of-control system. Remote ground control would be but one option.

[Bill EE]

KOS wrote:

I don't know why there was an assumption of remote-control on this anyway. Certainly ground control would be one option, with the disadvantages cited already in this thread, but the original post was about the possibility of any kind of denial-of-control system. Remote ground control would be but one option.

<WARNING - ENGINEER DRIBBLE>
I think the point of the thread was the prevent airplane hijackers from taking navigational control of the aircraft. To do that you could armor the cockpit door and prevent hijackers from entering (assuming you can train the flight crew not to open the door even if the hijackers are killing cabin crew/passengers). The other method would be allowing the flight crew to hand off irrevocably to an outside agency. It has to be irrevocable or the hijacker would simply turn it off. A third, more sure method, would be to allow a "trusted" agent to be able to take control whenever an event occurred (plane strayed into controlled airspace, loss of contact, etc). There is no technologic issue with either an autopilot or remote control solution. The problem is a security issue. If you design a system that can take control at anytime then someone can, and probably will, break the system and take over an airplane. Most likely this person will be a hacker trying the "prove" a security flaw in the system and may crash the plane. It could also be a terrorist wanting to repeat 9/11 with the having to drive the plane part. Making it an autopilot is an interesting possiblity - you would have upgrade airports to the MLS to support automatic landing (the 747-400 supports this system right now I believe). You could program the AP with a series of special airports that have security forces on standby. The pilot hands off control or a "deadman switch" happens and the AP alerts the nearest airport on the list and proceeds to execute an automatic landing. The one major flaw I see here is if the flight crew isn't willing to keep the door closed because the hijacker(s) are killing people, the probably won't activate this system if the same threat is made.

[Мастер]

What I had in mind originally (although of course everyone is free to take it in other directions) was the more auto-pilot type of feature, in which neither a party on the plane nor on the ground has freedom to maneuver the plane. The issue being, of course, whether false activations will cause more problems than correct activations solve...

I suppose loss-of-pressurization could also be dealt with in this way, e.g., once a loss of pressure is detected, the plane automatically descends to an altitude where the air is breathable (hopefully without flying into mountains or anything like that ). But I guess Airbus is already into this sort of thing, if not this specific feature which I describe...

[Bill EE]

Airliners are suppose to have TAS (Terrain Avoidance System) installed so integrating that into the AP shouldn't be a problem. There are two basic system that I know about - the RADAR system that uses a forward looking RADAR altimeter to determine if the terrain is rising. The second uses GPS with a terrain map database.

[Lance]

Airliners are suppose to have TAS (Terrain Avoidance System) installed so...

I think one of the funniest things I've ever heard, if there can be a funny side to accident investigation, was the term "controlled flight into terrain". I just had visions of two morons in a cockpit playing chicken with a mountain top.

[MM_Dandy]

Airliners are suppose to have TAS (Terrain Avoidance System) installed so...

I think one of the funniest things I've ever heard, if there can be a funny side to accident investigation, was the term "controlled flight into terrain". I just had visions of two morons in a cockpit playing chicken with a mountain top.

I think that there is at least one "Far Side" panel that explores this subject.

[Мастер]

Airliners are suppose to have TAS (Terrain Avoidance System) installed so integrating that into the AP shouldn't be a problem. There are two basic system that I know about - the RADAR system that uses a forward looking RADAR altimeter to determine if the terrain is rising. The second uses GPS with a terrain map database.

Do things like the American Airlines crash in Colombia (flight into a mountain on a plane with no mechanical failure) happen because they don't have these systems, because these systems were turned off or improperly programmed or overridden, or because these systems are not totally effective (I mean, no system is totally effective, but maybe some are close)?

Don't know too much about aviation, so my speculative musings should be interpreted as just that :D

[I Am He]

One the things that they were discussing was making sure that the transponder could not be turned off. There by making it easier to track the plane and ergo to shoot it down if necessary. The Airbuses has had that auto-pilot for years now. And if knowing Bowing, they should have it also. Allot of cockpit crews have gone through training with weapons to use only as a last resort if the cockpit is breached. Their training also covers not opening the cockpit door under any circumstances. Giving anyone control of an aircraft on the ground would be a very risky thing to do in my opinion. The safe guards that they have in place right now are the best in my opinion. First you have the Passengers, who are not going to sit down and take it anymore. Then you have a sealed cockpit with an armed crew on the other side. So I doubt very much that the highjacker's are going to succeed in their mission. But this is only my opinion.

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

I doubt very much that the hijacker's are going to succeed in their mission.

So far they haven't even tried.
And I doubt they will, short of using an as yet undetected security hole.
Nowadays trying to hijack an aeroplane is just a complicated form of suicide.

[Frogmarch]

I don't see what would be so difficult about using a small single engined propeller plane packed full of explosives, they could fly in low and reach any target.

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

Yikes.

Don't give them any ideas.

[Bill EE]

KOS wrote:

Do things like the American Airlines crash in Colombia (flight into a mountain on a plane with no mechanical failure) happen because they don't have these systems, because these systems were turned off or improperly programmed or overridden, or because these systems are not totally effective (I mean, no system is totally effective, but maybe some are close)?

I know it is a requirement for airliners in the US and Europe. My wife used to work at a company that made them (Sandel Avionics if you are interested) and we still keep in touch with some of the people there. It could be the plane in Columbia only flew in South America and it is not required or the crew ignored it (that happens a lot - called, I believe, warning overload when someone gets use to the warning alarms and do not take them seriously). Most accidents are human related.

[Мастер]

It could be the plane in Columbia only flew in South America and it is not required or the crew ignored it (that happens a lot - called, I believe, warning overload when someone gets use to the warning alarms and do not take them seriously).

Long time ago, sitting in the front row of a twin engine prop plane, with only a curtain between myself and the cockpit, I was amazed at the number of buzzers and various other unpleasant sounds that emanated from the cockpit during the course of the flight. I didn't know if something was wrong, or if this was just normal. After getting off the plane, finding my car, and turning on the radio, I learned another plane went down, approximately same spot we flew past, at about the same time, with everyone dead, later determined to be due to icing...

[ktesibios]

I presume that everyone here is aware that exactly the scenario laid out by Bill EE of an unauthorized person taking control of a remote-control system which locks the pilot controls out is already part of the woo-woo 9-11 conspiracy theory catechism?

I kid you not. Look here for the late unlamented Joe Vialls' fantasy about this.

Then have a look at this. It seems that Joe also believed that such systems were used to cause small-plane crashes into buildings.

Then there's this little gem from Carol Valentine. Valentine's article makes no bones about whom she wants to blame- why, it's the Jews, of course. Vialls didn't directly assign blame, but if you spend a bit of time looking around his Web site it quickly becomes clear that he was a frothing anti-Semite as well.

If I'm not mistaken, A.K. Dewdney has also signed on to the "the planes were remote-controlled" meme as well.

Even to an iggerant, uneddicated electronics tech like me, Vialls' claims appear absurd technically, organizationally and dramaturgically. Since we have at least one member who is knowledgable about avionics, I'd love to see a professional's take on it.