U.S. Safety System: Kidnapped Machines Land Independently

US Safety System: Kidnapped Machines Land Independently

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/m...164845,00.html

Der Spiegel [German newspaper]
October 28, 2001

A forced landing system developed in the USA will make plane hijackings more difficult: in case of emergency the crew operates a switch - and the machine steers automatically to the next airport.

The times for an airplane kidnapper are becoming harder: in America engineers are working to land kidnapped machines in the future by an improved autopilot without assistance of the cockpit on the nearest airport - an emergency switch, that a ground control operates crew; the levers in the airplane are then blocked and the kidnappers can no longer control the plane from the hand controls.

According to a recent news release, technicians of US aviation and arms company Raytheon already in August landed a passenger aircraft six times successfully on the military airport at Holloman, New Mexico. The plane was equipped with a special forced landing system without any pilots.

The Boeing 727 oriented itself not, as usual, with the radar signals at the end of the runway, but by a combination of GPS satellite and ground signals, which help, to exactly compute the alititude and thus the necessary angle of approach with deviation no greater than one meter.