It was an interesting idea thrown around by some of us in college right around the time that 9/11 happened.
It would be a way to have a GPS or other system disable the manual functions of the aircraft and have someone in flight control fly the airplane via remote control. If that wasn't the case the autopilot would fly to the nearest airport.
The cockpit instruments would work but the stick would be dead. The only way to override the system would be via access codes that only the pilot and co-pilot know. The codes would change every so often and they would have to have a device to tell them which code to use (much like a key card for an IT vpn). However there would be a personal passcode that would need to be implemented in addition to the override code and without the correct combination of codes the remote/auto flight system wouldn't be disabled.
This system can also work from the tower. If the tower gets no communication from the aircraft radio and it is flying erratically they can send a signal to render the cockpit useless and fly the plane remotely.
The overall goal was to use GPS to send a 2 way signal and use that signal to communicate with the computer on the aircraft. The goal was to make hijacking an airplane next to impossible.
Or you could just put locks on the doors leading to the cockpit and give the pilots .45 caliber handguns.
Seems like a lot of money and technology involved. I'm sure passengers aren't going to enjoy paying higher airline prices to cover for an expensive and fancy system that can be addressed by more simpler means.
And all the hijacker is going to do is threaten to kill passengers one-by-one until he gets control of the plane.
This is an interesting idea. But in terms of security it would be a problem. All it would take is for some terrorists to gain control of a control tower and then they would be able to fly entire fleets of planes into buildings. Might want to work out that kink in your plan.
That was like the first thing I thought of. Seems like it makes hijacking easier, especially since there's technology and software involved. A seasoned hacker could probably cause more turmoil than someone trying to sneak a gun onto a plane.
2) The FAA would never allow this. There are only a few airports that have autopilot landing and this is due to the fact that they are very narrow passages (i.e. between two mountains or in a valley of somesort). These airports are equiped with state of the art sensors and the large planes are as well. This technology would take 20 years to put on all planes.
Aren't we supposed to go to Mars in like 20 years? Have a hard time believing it would take that long to integrate something like that on an aircraft.
3) Various combinations of #2. The life cycle of a plane is roughly 20 years or so. This means that if you created this technology now it would take atleast 5-10 years (best guess) to prove to the FAA that your technology works 99.999999999% safetly. (Trust me they are not easy to appease). Then you would have to implement various sensors at litterally every airport as well as new technology on every plane. Autopilot is easy. You are flying straight at a constant thrust level. Landing is not so easy...
F/A-18 Hornets can land on a pitching deck less than 500 ft long at sea without human input. Can't see how it could be so difficult for an airliner on a flat 14,000 foot runway. I do agree that the FAA is hard to please though.
Number 1 is addressed by the access codes that are needed to send the signal. Then you use the satelites to fly the planes with the help of the crew on the ground (can be done and has been done in simulators).
The second part would be proximity sensors that use relational GPS and as soon as they get close to a stationary object (Mountain, Building) the airplane would veer around it.
There's a lot of other dangers besides the obvious ones GPS can handle, like wind shear, turbulence, icing, other aircraft, clouds, unstable air, cold fronts, turbulent/stormy weather, hail, microbursts, mountain wave turbulence, etc. You're gonna need more than just GPS. Not to mention, GPS also can't troubleshoot aircraft system failures.
