Autopilot
For Yaroslav Kudrinsky the A310 he was guiding over the remote regions of Southwest Russia, was a new plane. The year was 1994, and until recently, he had spent almost of his many flight hours, at the cockpit of various Soviet made aircraft. The airbus was sleek. It came equipped with the new age fly by computer controls, which allowed the aircraft to respond with smooth computer regulated motion. It featured state of the art instrumentation, the latest safety upgrades, and the most modern autopilot system in the world.
Kudrinsky had engaged this autopilot system shortly after reaching their cruising altitude after takeoff from Moscow, just as he had on hundreds of flights before. He moved his seat a little further back from the controls to be more comfortable. Again, just as he had done on many flights prior. Then he did something he had never done before.
Understand first, that this was a special flight for Kudrinsky. His children were onboard for their first ever international trip. With the autopilot safely engaged he did something no pilot should ever do. He invited his kids into the cockpit. First up was his daughter. She sat down at the controls, and unbeknownst to her Kudrinsky adjusted the autopilot ever so slightly, banking the plan to the right, giving her the sensation she was flying. The thrilled and delighted girl soon relinquished the pilots seat to her brother Kudrinsky repeated the same motions he had done for his daughter, slight turning the plane to give the feel of flying to his son. While his daughter had been content to simply let the plane glide, Eldar wanted to correct the course. He moved the controls to the right to counter the turn his father had initiated. As he did this, a small light illuminated. No one noticed.
On a Soviet aircraft, a light would not have illuminated. There would have been an audible sound would have alerted the pilots to the fact that Eldar had applied enough counter force to the controls to initiate a manual override of the autopilots control of the ailerons. This is in fact a safety feature. Autopilot can be disengaged by either turning it off on the computer system, or by a sudden forceful motion to the controls. It works very similarly to the cruise control feature of your car. If the car in front of you hits the brakes, you ought to as well. Your cruise control at that point gets overridden by your sudden forceful stomp on the brakes and shuts off, allowing you to manually slow the car. In an emergency, you don’t have time to push the disengage buttons on the steering wheel, just as a pilot doesn’t have time to find the button to disengage autopilot. You just stomp the brake, and the system turns off. On Aeroflight flight 593 Eldar had just done the equivalent of stomping on the brakes, but nobody in the cockpit realized it.
In less than a minute, flight 593 went from cruising altitude, to slamming into rural Russian mountains. As Eldar kept force on the controls, the plane kept banking steeper and steeper into the turn. At 90 degrees, the plane lost the ability to create lift, and began to stall. As the plane began falling, the G forces of the dive pinned Kadrinsky into his seat, unable to reach the controls in front of Eldar. The autopilot, which no longer controlled the ailerons, used its other controls to compensate, pitching the nose up and increasing thrust. As a result, the plane began to stall; the autopilot, unable to cope, disengaged completely. A second, larger indicator light came on to alert the pilots of the complete disengagement, and this time they did notice it. At the same time, the autopilot's display screen went blank. To recover from the stall, an automatic system lowered the nose and put the plane into a nosedive.[5] The reduced g-forces enabled Kudrinsky to retake his seat. Piskaryov then managed to pull out of the dive, but over-corrected, putting the plane in an almost vertical ascent, again stalling the plane, causing the plane to enter a spin, from which the pilots were unable to recover. The resulting tragedy took the life of all 75 passengers and crew.
The resulting investigation came to one harrowing conclusion. Had the pilots realized, and reengaged full autopilot, rather than trying to correct the problem themselves, the computer would have handled the situation and righted the aircraft. Autopilot could have saved 75 lives that day.
Maybe a few of you reading this are pilots. Most of you aren’t. But either way, autopilot, is a powerful concept that can have an impact on your life. In fact, autopilot is probably the single most common piece of advice I give out. When it comes to your financial well-being, the more you can automate, the better. Automatic 401k contributions, Automatic credit card payments. Automatic Roth IRA deposits. Automatic HSA savings. Putting your financial life on autopilot reduces the chances of us mucking up our planes, by introducing human error. It also makes regular savings part of your normal life. You never have to decide how much to put into your Roth IRA because is already happening. You never have to decide when to do it, because it’s already done. When it comes to your finances. Simple is good. And nothing is as simple as autopilot. If you haven’t already, consider opening a Roth IRA today, and setting up an automatic monthly, or weekly deposit. Your future self will thank you.