(Boeing 747-8s are fly-by-wire.) The analog gauges to the left duplicate information displayed on screens. In brief, on the Dreamliner and others planes, computing power sits between the pilot and the actual motion of the aircraft. On a fly-by-wire plane, those instructions are passed electronically-that’s the “wire”-along to the rest of the plane. Pushing forward on the yoke directs the nose of the airplane towards the ground pulling back on it commands the nose to pull up. In simplest terms, it allows the pilot to move the airplane up, down, over left, and over right.Twistingthe yoke side to side controls roll and pitch. In the 747-400, when the pilot moves the controls, actual physical cables convey that motion to the rest of the plane, so the surfaces on the wings, like ailerons, can move appropriately. The yoke controls the airplane’s ailerons. A bellcrank short of the aileron converts the movement from the cable to the metal rod that articulates the. That sets off a series of movements down the length of a steel or stainless-steel cable. Turn the control wheel, which is attached to a Y column behind the panel, and a sprocket rotates. In other words, the aviation landscape has changed since Barry Lopez, in his classic 1995 essay titled “Flight” for Harper’s magazine, wrote: “The Boeing 747 is the one airplane every national airline strives to include in its fleet, to confirm its place in modern commerce, and it’s tempting to see it as the ultimate embodiment of what our age stands for.” Fly-by-wireĪnother major difference between a 747-400 and the Dreamliner is that the latter is what’s known a fly-by-wire aircraft. In a Cessna 172, it’s all cables and pulleys. Moses An aircraft for “thin” routesĬommercial 747 flights over time, according to data from OAG. Vanhoenacker opens the cockpit’s emergency escape hatch by turning a yellow handle. In essence, it allows the crew to focus on the “overall management of the flight,” Vanhoenacker says-the mundane yet essential stuff like making radio calls or picking a new route. That type of assistance frees up cognitive bandwidth for pilots, who need to consider other factors, like what to do if a passenger gets sick or if they need to land elsewhere. The autopilot does, however, allow pilots to program the route into the aircraft in advance, so that the plane automatically makes the turns it needs during the cruise phase of the flight. One of three control and display units in the cockpit it’s an input device. And airliners don’t ever take off automatically, either the pilot always flies it off the runway. It’s rare to do that-he estimates it happens just once a year for him. “When we get a weather forecast that reports that kind of fog, there are groans in the fight deck, because it’s a lot more work to land it automatically,” Vanhoenacker says. The main reasons an airliner will land itself is if the runway is enveloped in fog or flying snow so thick that a pilot can’t see the tarmac.
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