[jrjeksjd8d]

The average person does not know how to fly a plane or what a plane autopilot does. It's a ridiculous superficial comparison. Planes have professional pilots who understand the capabilities and limits of aviation autopilot technology.

Tesla has had it both ways for ages - their stock price was based on "self-driving cars" and their liability was based on "asterisk asterisk the car cannot drive itself".

[nitinreddy88]

According to your analogy. Certified pilot = Certified driving license holder. Its not like Tesla is advertising non driving license or in eligible person can drive using Autopilot. I wonder how can you even justify your statement

[tapoxi]

Autopilot is part of a private pilots license and systems are approved by the FAA. Tesla autopilot isn't part of a driving license, nor did it undergo review by the NHTSA prior to launch because Elon considered it "legal by default".

[Onavo]

No. You don't need to know the autopilot to get your PPL. You do however need to know how to follow the POH (pilot operating handbook, which may include manufacturer guidelines for the autopilot) and perform basic instrument flying in an emergency. I don't recall any significant expectations of autopilot usage at the PPL level though.

[digitalPhonix]

The trend is to include as much as the aircraft’s capabilities in the checkride now.

For an IFR checkride, if you do it in an aircraft equipped with autopilot, at least one approach will have to be flown with the autopilot.

Not sure if that’s made it’s way to the PPL checkride (or been codified) but it’s inevitable.

[rogerrogerr]

> if you do it in an aircraft equipped with autopilot

There's also a (stupid, imo) tendency for APs to conveniently become inop right before a checkride. It's not accurate to say that all pilots, or even all pilots that have taken an IR ride, are "pilots who understand the capabilities and limits of aviation autopilot technology."

[Onavo]

For the PPL specifically, the focus is on basic airmanship in VFR conditions, and that means eyeballing the six pack (or digital equivalent) and looking out of the window. The instrument flying expectations is primarily for emergencies and preparation for future instrument rating.

But yes, I understand what you mean.

[tass]

I'm not sure it's been codified, but I was told I would need to understand how to use the VOR and autopilot if the plane I was in had one.

In the fleet at the school I was learning in (Cessna 162) only one plane had an autopilot, which meant nobody practiced with it, so they never scheduled this plane for a check ride.

[tim-tday]

“Full Self Driving”

[seanmcdirmid]

Autopilots in airplanes are kind of dumb (keep heading, speed, and altitude, they won’t do much anything else), which is why Tesla doesn’t use the name as branding for its full self driving software. People at least know that much.

But then again even on HN people like parent think that autopilot is the same as full self driving, when it is and always has been just smarter cruise control. The payout was for autopilot (a feature that most new cars have these days under various names), not full self driving.

[digitalPhonix]

> Autopilots in airplanes are kind of dumb (keep heading, speed, and altitude, they won’t do much anything else)

That is absolutely false.

A 20 year old avionics suite in General Aviation (GTN 450) does much more than maintain altitude, speed & heading - you input a flight plan including an approach, it will fly the flight plan, capture the approach signals (VOR/localiser/whatever - which is far more complex than “keeping course”) all the way down to approach minimums.

It can go down to 200ft for an LPV approach.

[philistine]

> keep heading, speed, and altitude, they won’t do much anything else

That is absolutely not true. A plane on autopilot can land itself except for applying the brakes.

[seanmcdirmid]

Autolanders are separate systems from autopilots, and there are definitely planes in production today with autopilots (pretty universal) and no autolanders (like almost all Cessnas, you need the garmin auto land system, and it’s only for emergencies). Autopilots have been a thing since the 1920s, when they were just a rope tied to a stick, they definitely didn’t do auto landing back then.

If you are trying to claim that all autopilots come with auto landers, thats absolutely not true. Even most, and again, they are always separate systems even if the auto lander can access the same servos used by the autopilot. Additionally, autolanders, unlike the autopilot, require the runways to support it (well, the ones used on commercial airplanes where it’s used sometimes in low visibility situations).

I really think only a few people on HN don’t get that autopilots are actually very much simple systems that have been around forever and do one thing well (keep the plane going in one direction at a specific altitude and speed).

[nickff]

If the average person does not know what an autopilot does, why would they expect Tesla's 'autopilot' to take such good care of them? I am reminded of a case many years ago when a man turned on the cruise control in his RV and went to the back to make himself lunch, after which the RV went off some sort of hill or cliff.

Rudimentary 'autopilots' on aircraft have existed for about a century now, and the earlier versions (before transistorization) only controlled heading and attitude (if conditions and other settings allowed it), with little indication of failure.

[D-Coder]

> If the average person does not know what an autopilot does

The average person does know what an autopilot does, they're just wrong.

I think the example you provided supports that.

[tass]

This would be more like they enabled cruise control, hit the brakes, and sued the manufacturer because they were rear-ended.