this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025

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236

Airplane lands itself after in-flight emergency, in a first for aviation automation (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 day ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

An airplane has, for the first time, automatically landed itself after an in-flight emergency, according to the system’s manufacturer.

Two people emerged unscathed from the Beechcraft Super King Air 200 after it stopped on the runway at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Denver, according to video posted by emergency responders.

The twin-engine turboprop landed under the control of Garmin’s Autoland system, which the company says is now installed on about 1,700 airplanes. “This was the first use of Autoland from start-to-finish in an actual emergency,” Garmin said in a statement.

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[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's disappointing to see so many posts from outraged users railing about the dangers of automation, who clearly haven't read the article and don't seem to understand what actually happened.

This story is actually what it purports to be, it's an example of a safety system working correctly in an emergency. That's all it is, not all that exciting to be honest. There was no bug or accidental activation, or AI uprising.

The only weird part is that the pilots could have landed themselves if they had wanted to, but chose not to. If there were any passengers on board that would have certainly been called a criminally reckless choice. As it was just the pilots though, I suppose it was just bold/dangerous/dumb. (Though on the other hand, they learned more about their aircraft in the process and they tested a critical safety feature, which are both good things.)

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 6 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

any mention of AI/automation triggers people now into thinking it's evil/wrong. And any rational support of it gets you downvoted.

People just need something to irrationally hate i guess? It's funny how every lemmy poster things they are so smart but their responses are overwhelmingy knee-jerk and emotional and often totally disproportionate to the context.

[–] Demdaru@lemmy.world 13 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Poor, poor flight sim folks. Their fantasy of stewardess calling someone able to land in case of problems just got demolished xD

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I know this has happend before, but it was usually on small aircraft with a single pilot lol.

There's a high chance that many domestic flights will have another pilot in a jump seat or just traveling off duty.

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

Also, if something has incapacitated the pilot and copilot, the odds that any of the passengers are even conscious seem pretty low.

[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

ATC recording including robot voice

https://youtu.be/K3Nl3LOZNjc

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 8 points 1 day ago

https://i.imgur.com/wXWAnW3.png

[–] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Honestly surprised this is the first time, this isn't that new of a feature when it comes to airplanes, even in commercial jets it predates chatgpt by years. Thanks to Instrument Landing Systems, which have been around an even longer time, pilots can land using solely the instruments in the cockpit without ever looking out the window. It's not easy to automate landing and many pilots wouldn't trust it except as a very last resort but their automation problem does avoid some challenges an pitfalls autonomous cars run into.

[–] ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Some challenges? It avoids almost all, as the airspace is much less congested and better regulated than the roadspace.

[–] UnrepentantAlgebra@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago

Non-emergency autoland like you describe had been around for a long time. But you have to manually pick your flight plan and approach, and at least point the aircraft in the general direction of the flight plan so that the AP will engage and handle the rest.

This is a totally different beast because the emergency autoland picked the route and approach, managed the AFCS and comms, and then did the normal autoland stuff after all that. Garmin's emergency autoland only came out a few years ago.

[–] MuhammadFree@programming.dev 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Energia Buran, the Soviet "copy" of the Space Shuttle, also landed automatically

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

So did the space shuttle most of the time. For the first few years the shuttle was piloted manually, but that changed at some point and I believe the majority of flights were landed automatically.

The buran on the other hand only actually flew at all once.