Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
On a 12hr flight, a pilot might spend 4min flying the plane, the rest of the time it's automation at the helm. 90% of crashes are due to pilot error, with the majority of accidents being avoidable by relying on the autopilot.
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Not entirely true. If you're looking at just commercial airlines, often the pilot(s) are taking over from the autopilot because the plane's gotten into a situation which the autopilot can't handle*. So it would be more accurate to say that human pilots prevent X percent of autopilot failures from becoming crashes. For a leading example, the plane that ditched in the Hudson River a few years back.
*Kind of like having your autodriver handle interstates and city streets, but suddenly hand control back to the human when it runs into say snow-covered mountain roads.