HOW the AUTOPILOT Works - Boeing 737

hi guys welcome back to my channel and thank you so much for watching this video i hope you're all doing great today the autopilot how does it work and does the autopilot fly the plane at the end of this video you know the answers to those questions and you'll also be able to operate the autopilot yourself only if you pay attention of course so before we continue i'd like to share the sponsor of today's video blinkist i'm so happy to work with them again as i feel like their service is perfect for people like me who have little time left to actually sit down and grab a book so instead of trying to find time to read an entire book you can also just listen to all its highlights in only 15 minutes while doing laundry going to the supermarket or driving to work you name it blinkist allows you to save time and learn new things faster than ever you can use it to learn more about self-improvement leadership entrepreneurship and many more areas last year during my holidays i read so many books again and one of the books i think you should definitely read or i think everyone should definitely read is sapience by juventus noah harari it's only 26 minutes and another one is rich dad's guide to investing by robert kiyosaki it's 16 minutes as well while the actual book takes you way longer to read and if you feel like you also want to listen to these books during your commute towards work the seven-day trial is completely free and you can cancel anytime during that period click on the link in the description box if you are interested the first 100 people will get a 25 of the full membership let's start with why why is there an autopilot in the first place well the autopilot is designed to enhance operational capabilities improve safety reduce workload and improve comfortability the autopilot improves comfortability because at altitudes like fly level 380 where air density is so low the tiniest movement of the controls causes the plane to climb or descend imagine being a passenger sitting in the back of the plane bumping from left to right up and down i mean for sure you'll need a couple of sick bags the autopilot also increases safety because it reduces workload pilots can focus on monitoring the systems perform fuel checks planning ahead and focus on potential threats rather than concentrating 11 hours on keeping the plane straight and level to clarify this with to people who don't understand imagine driving a car for 11 hours straight without having a single brake everyone understands that that's not safe and in this case we're talking about a simple vehicle like a car imagine flying a plane for 11 hours with 200 people on board of which you are responsible of i guess the point is clear the autopilot is there for several important reasons let's continue with some history the first autopilot on the boeing 737 was the sperry 77 this autopilot was super basic and only consisted of a pitch and roll computer there was no such thing as a throttle or in layman's terms automatic gas sperry's autopilot became popular during the 1920s and 30s and after the war commercial flights became more popular which increased the demand for automation in the 1950s commercial planes had five crew members in the cockpit a flight engineer a radio operator a flight engineer a radio operator a navigator and two pilots in the next 20 to 30 years automation and improved technology made the first three jobs unnecessary which saved airline companies a lot of money so when do pilots use the autopilot during the entire flight no during the most critical phases of flight such as taxi takeoff and landing the autopilot is not engaged pilots are flying the plane manually so by hand after takeoff the outer pilot on the boeing 737 is never engaged below 400 feet above ground level and many times the pilots actually fly the plane manually until the seat belt signs switches are turned off of course this totally depends on the company procedures and circumstances like weather workload etc only under specific circumstances the autopilot is used for landing also called autoland and those circumstances are when the visibility is so bad that you cannot even see the runway the moment you are about to touch the landing zone with your landing gear only then an automatic landing or outer land is made and apart from this an automatic landing in bed visibility can only be made when winds do not exceed a certain limit maximum 25 knots had wind 20 knots cross wind and 50 knots till wind whenever the winds at the airport exceed this limit and visibility is about zero an automatic landing cannot be made and piles will need to hold until weather conditions improve or backward to another airport so how does the autopilot work before we continue to the part where we actually start pressing buttons i'll tell you a little bit more about the system itself the autoflight system or as many people call it the autopilot consists of the autopilot flight director system and the other total pilots can control the out-of-flight system with the mode control panel truss levers control display units and control columns outside and b are driven by two separate hydraulic systems two flight control computers control the autopilot by inputs from the mode control panel flight management computer auto total control column and autopilot actuator position the inputs that these flight control computers receive are used to create flight director commands and drive the right flight control actuator whether any input from the palette is actually working can be seen on the flight mode initiator on the primary flight display this works exactly like women guys you can press all kinds of buttons but if there's no change it means that whatever you're doing is wrong now that i have your attention again let's dive a little bit deeper into this the mode control panel is located on the glare shield panel which contains the master caution lights and initiators fire warning lights and the efis control panel you can split the mcp into four sections the speed control lateral navigation vertical navigation and the engage and disengage switches let's start with speed control the speed controls are primarily used to command the other totals when the other total system is armed the speed selected in the airspeed window is maintained when the speed switch is pressed and verified located to the left of the speed switch is the n1 switch it is used to command the out turtles to hold a specific n1 speed and one speed is the speed of the turbine engines as a percentage of the maximum normal rpm pressing the changeover switch causes the speed to toggle between indicated airspeed and mach airspeed the airspeed automatically toggles to mach above 26 000 feet the speed intervention switch controls the speed while operating in v-net which is a path defined by the fmc by pressing the speed intervention switch it opens the speed window and the pilot can adjust the speed via this window let's continue with lateral navigation a heading can be set in the heading window by using the heading selector the heading mode is engaged by pressing the heading select switch and the four lock and approach switches direct the autopilot to capture and follow signals from the vhf navigation radios these are the buttons you will need when you fly a precision or non-precision approach and nowadays they actually call it a 2 or 3d approach the courses for vhf navigation are set on the mcp panel by rotating the core selectors the lnf switch is used to intercept and track an active route defined by the fmc this means that you could press the heading select switch whenever you need to circumnavigate around a cloud or requested by atc if you want to follow the routing you've programmed in the fmc after that you select the next waypoint press lnf execute and that also means that if you do not program anything or the routing you programmed is wrong lmf is not an option the vertical navigation modes command the autoflight system to control the airplane's pitch a desired altitude is set by rotating the altitude selector until the altitude is displayed in the altitude display window on the pfd the primary flight display there are many ways to climb or descend but one of the easiest ways is by pressing the button little change if a specific vertical speed is desired or atc asks for it because they want to maintain a certain separation you can also use the vertical speed wheel rotating the vertical speed wheel sets the desired rate the v-f switch commands the autopilot flight director system to follow a vertical path defined by the fmc this can be venuff path or avena speed but pay attention a slight deviation from this path due to a shortcut different winds or different routing can cause you to be high or lower than you should be also when vnf is not able to maintain its path with a specific speed it will refer to venous speed and in venus speed the pitch controls the airspeed and rate of climb or descent and is controlled by trust and in the worst case this means that the plane will never be able to catch its path because of a high speed and will always be higher on its profile one of the last things you want is coming in hot and high a simple solution for that can be adjusting the speed in the descent page of the fmc or by using the speed brake otherwise if you're still high one of the fastest ways to descend is by selecting level change a speed of 3 10 knots in combination with speed brakes another v-neck mode is v-net alt which is when the aircraft reaches the altitude on the mcp panel but not in the fmc the alt intervention switch is used when operating in vnf the autopilot flight director switches are used to engage or disengage the autoflight functions two flight director switches are located on the mode control panel and each controls their flight vectors when the switch is on the flight vector command bars are shown on the primary flight display command a engages autopilot a command b engages autopilot b when the captain is flying he or she engages on command a and when the first officer is flying he will command he will engage command b the autopilot system can also be operated in the control wheel steering mode the control wheel steering mode is activated automatically when there is force on the control column with the autopilot engaged or when there is no other mode selected one of the ways to disengage the autopilot is by pulling down the disengage bar pulling down this bar exposes a yellow background and disengages the autopilot the master flight vector is determined by which fly director is turned on first m a illuminating above the captain's flight director switch indicates that flight control computer a is controlling the fly directors and that the captain will be flying that leg the opposite is also true now that you know more about the mode control panel and the different buttons we can talk a little bit more about the flight management computer the fmc the flight management computer provides n1 limits target and one for our total and commands airspeed for the other total and autopilot flight director system normally the autopilot flight vector system and other total are controlled automatically by the fmc to fly a optimized lateral and vertical path through climb cruise and descent do you remember what we said about the flight mode enunciator it's one of the key elements of flying with autopilot as those fmas will tell the pilots exactly what's going on and in which mode it's currently flying we press lnf on the mcp and call out the lnf we see on the fma which is a green box with letters lnf green letters means it has been engaged while white letters means it has been armed in the first mma column displays the other total mode the second one the roll mode and the third one the pitch mode so knowing all of this does the outer palace fly the plane well the output is a tool used to fly a plane but the autopilot is not a consciousness or neural brain learning from its mistakes and handling accordingly when the pilot does not direct the autopilot specifically through all the possible ways that we just described or this we just discussed nothing happens simply because we're not touching the control column doesn't mean that we pilots are not flying the plane i hope that makes sense so a question for you is the autopilot on the boeing 747 what you thought it was and do you know any differences between the autopilot on the boeing versus outback on the airbus let me know in the comment section below anyway i hope you learned something new today thank you so much for watching and check out my instagram for posts and stories about my life as an airline pilot give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and consider subscribing to this dutch pineapple channel if you want to see more of these kind of videos clicking the notification bell will ensure you never miss out any of my other videos and i hope to see you in the next video guys bye [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: DutchPilotGirl

Views: 173,873

Keywords: Dutchpilotgirl, Airplane, 36LEFT, aviation, plane, planes, female pilot, airline pilot, female airline pilot, cockpit view, landing a plane, pilot life, Boeing 737, Boeing 747, Boeing 787, Airbus A380, KLM, Transavia, Emirates, Lufthansa, Day in the life of an airline pilot, Airline Pilot Life, Cockpit Views, Landing a plane, Flying a plane, Autopilot, Autoland, Just Planes, Become a pilot, Pilots eyes, life of a pilot, avgeek, Flight deck views, Amsterdam airport, pilot salary, Cat3

Id: UG1HD8uo5zQ

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021