Originally Posted by
jcbmack
There is no evidence any computer system would make the same decision or do it as well as Sully did. I have found this thread very interesting, but I will go back to reading it--as I have said what I can on this subject--and will leave it to you, professional pilots.
You are totally missing the point. Sully is a reasonably easy scenario to program for:
Scenario - you just lost thrust on both engines and are unlikely to get it back - so you're looking at a forced landing. So you need to determine - given your weight, altitude, and airspeed - how far you can glide and what potential landing spots are available within that range (as well as any configuration changes needed to achieve that range). Furthermore, with appropriate programing an autonomous system would instantly know where every available landing spot was (no need to ask ATC). The only 'hard' part would be determining the best option of where to put it down (obviously a runway would be best, but if available range doesn't allow that picking the best alternative).
Now, Sully did all this, but it took him ~20 seconds - exceptionally good for a human under those circumstances - but an autonomous system could have done all that in a fraction of a second - and by making that determination ~20 seconds earlier, there would still have been enough altitude/airspeed to make an actual runway (in which case John Q Public probably wouldn't even remember it happened).
Basically, if the scenario has ever happened, or if the designers can dream it up, an autonomous system can be developed to account for it - with the designers having the advantage of being able to sort through various different actions to determine which is most likely to provide a happy outcome (unlike a human pilot who basically only gets one chance to get it right). The weakness of any autonomous system is dealing with a totally new, unanticipated scenario - humans are creative, and can think up new, inventive ways to deal with unknown - computers not so much.