fly_antonov;
Any critical systems are usually duplicated and certification is there to prove that the systems are built to cope.
In worst cases, all you need to do is to send the program sequence before the datalink goes down and the autonomous airplane could land itself according to that program.
Or easier even, build the systems to be fireproof.
You place
far too much trust in official documents and processes and don't examine the industry "as-is". There are many counter-examples which illustrate that while such systems are very good they are far from infallible.
Cost and a 'because-we-can' attitude, and not primarily risk-management or the safety of passengers has already driven this industry towards:
- untoward modifications to crew complement,
- unacceptable levels of experience,
- the mistaken notion, almost universally issuing from those who don't fly but manage aviation nevertheless, that substitution by automation for a thinking pilot actually has a place in this industry and in the cockpit,
- the misapprehension of the nature of the job of "flying an airplane".
In short, because of serious misunderstandings of what pilots do, the industry is just beginning to see what happens when, purely to keep the payroll down and profits up, "expensive" humans are designed out of the process. We know it works better when the vehicle in question is running on tracks but even then, serious failings have occurred.
Your scenarios, arguments and your proposals of and trust in solutions are all substantiated and based upon official, tidily-documented bookshelf versions of reality. They are "
smart like street-car" solutions. Such clinically correct but completely impractical solutions to problems on board airliners which have already been pointed out by others here, are regularly debunked by aviation's daily realities in which
crews,
not computers, bring airplanes home safely. "
Automation-in-service-of-pilots" is an appropriate level of intervention; "
automation-in-service-of-programmers'-notions-of-self-diagnosis", so that "expensive" pilots can be removed from the cabin [sic] is not.
respectfully,
PJ2