Autopilots used in modern commercial airplanes are autonomous. You don't have to watch them, they will do their job. The airplane is either controlled by the pilots or the autopilot. There is a protocol to transfer the control between pilots and the autopilot, such that it is clear who is in charge of controlling the plane (there's even a protocol to transfer this between pilots).

The autopilot will signal when it is no longer able to control the plane (because of, e.g., technical faults in the sensors).

Yes, there are also autopilots in smaller airplanes which are more or less just a cruise control. But everything in between, where is it unclear who is doing what are where the limits of the capabilities are, have been scrapped because people died.

> doesn't mean tesla has to have the burden of people misinterpreting what it says.

Because Tesla is so pretty clear in stating what their autopilot is able to do and what not.

The fact you think this is exactly why Tesla’s naming choice is so wrong.

Even antiquated autopilots can intercept headings and change elevation. This is capability that has existed for decades. General aviation planes are getting the capability to land now. Airliners have been able to land themselves for decades.

Typical airliner autopilot flies along a list of 3D waypoints and manages airspeed to avoid falling from the sky or overstressing the airframe. It's a fairly trivial system since it does not have to find its way around a complex, constantly changing environment like a car does. It will happily fly into mountains, other airplanes or dangerous environments like thunderstorms.

All decision-making depends on pilots. Autopilot itself is nothing more than a simple cruise control that relieves pilots from things like manually maintaining constant altitude over six hours on a transatlantic flight. Any hobbist with a Raspberry PI can built a similar GPS-based waypoint following and speed scheduling for a car, but it's useless for road traffic, because roads are not straight, long empty stretches that can be navigated by driving from one waypoint directly to another waypoint 100 miles away.

Car autopilot must be able to make decisions (follow the road, react to obstacles) to be useful, and that makes it fundamentally more complex than any existing airliner autopilot.

I contend that while that's true, it's not something your typical consumer is aware of. There is a common misconception that modern airline pilots simply press a button then kick back as the plane takes off, flies and land itself.

No they're not. The pilot needs to initiate the sequences first, and good luck when something unexpected happens - a Tesla (or any truck/car with auto-distance-control) will brake when a car changes lanes right in front of it, a plane will blare sirens (okay, to be fully correct: it will tell the pilot a preferred course of action to avoid a collision) if another plane comes too close for comfort but not do any evasive action on its own.

Even in a perfectly ordinary flight there are always the ATCs to serve as master controllers for all airplanes... something you also have in railways, but not at all on the road. On the road everyone is on his own.

Autopilot doesn't mean fully autonomous. It was never that originally in aviation either, basicLly just controlling altitude and speed. I'd say Tesla's use of "autopilot" is pretty spot on.

Then he failed, as they are completely unrelated.

> Pilots are never expected to get their eyes off the controls.

This is also false. They need to be alert, but they most certainly do not need to be as attentive as keeping their hands on the controls unlike with Tesla.

Unlike the sibling comment below alluded too, many commercial airplane autopilot systems are advanced enough to land the plane completely on auto as well as some even automatically respond to TCAS alerts to avoid nearby aircraft.

That is all that most auto pilots in planes do, however. I don't get where "autopilot" somehow came to mean full autonomy in cars but not in planes (and other vehicles like boats) where the term was used previously.

Ridiculous.

I'm a bit curious what you think a real autopilot is and how it works. Do you imagine a bunch of planes flying around with pilots asleep or away from the cockpit?

I think autopilot is probably a surprisingly appropriate and accurate name, but most people don't have any real idea what it means so we see a lot of surprising assumptions being brought to bear.

Nobody other than pilots, engineers or enthusiasts knows the subtleties of how aircraft autopilot systems work.

Every other person on this planet knows it to mean "fly the plane by itself". And would expect a Tesla car to "drive by itself".

...Flies the plane safely with zero input from the pilot (hands off the yoke) indefinitely? Lands the plane on its own [1]? I'm well aware that autopilot systems need input directions for desired altitude and air speed, but the semantic distinction people try to draw between "real" autopilot and Tesla's autopilot capabilities have never made sense to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland

Not that I agree with your statement, but the "general consciousness" would be wrong in that case.

Autopilot in most aircraft will gladly fly you into the side of a mountain or other aircraft.

I'm confused by this. Generally, "autopilot" has traditionally referred to a relatively dumb computer that is capable of keeping a vehicle/craft on an arbitrary heading.[0] Whereas a "copilot" is generally a human with similar skill and training as the pilot. If a vehicle manufacturer called their system a "copilot" that would surely be far worse than Autopilot.

(Or in the colloquial sense, "autopilot" can also refer to a person who is performing a task without conscious cognitive awareness. "I started getting ready to go to work this morning like I was on autopilot, but then I remembered today is Saturday.")

Huh but a co-pilot is much more capable than an auto-pilot system. An auto-pilot mostly keeps you level, going the right speed, and pointing in the right direction, and can do some limited landing and things.

That sounds to me exactly like what Tesla's system does?

A co-pilot is a human who can take complete control from you for the rest of the whole flight and deal with any emergency or unexpected situation. The co-pilot is much more advanced than the autopilot.

As stated countless times in response, it doesn't matter what autopilot actually does when the concern is the public perception of the marketing.

If "autopilot" sounds to the general public like "it drives itself" (which is the simple etymology of the word), then it doesn't matter one flying fig what autopilot on planes actually does.

Because, as JonnieCache pointed out, the colloquial definition of Auto Pilot is more informed by entertainment than by the aerospace industry.

What's more baffling is why anyone would assume that the average person knows what "auto pilot" means in an aerospace setting. I mean, why in the world would that be common knowledge? In fact, I've seen enough bone-headed assertions about collision avoidance capabilities of modern aircraft that I'm pretty certain even people who think they know what auto pilot means, actually don't.

FWIW you can test this by finding people outside of the tech echo chamber who don't know what a Tesla is and asking them to describe the capabilities of a car with an Auto Pilot.

Do you think that the average consumer knows this much about how plane autopilots work? If not, how is it relevant?

Only if you're happy for the aircraft to continue travelling in the same set course.

I guess by the same virtue, driver intervention is also not required if you're willing to let the vehicle travel in the same direction and disregard the firetruck ahead...

Tesla's Autopilot is perfectly capable of maintaining direction/speed of travel, and it even follows the curves of the road most of the time which is presumably more than an aircraft autopilot system can do. It is the driver who is not willing to disregard the obstacles ahead, the same way presumably aircraft pilots are not willing to disregard obstacles in their course and will take over control of the aircraft if there is one.

Nothing wrong with our tendency to avoid obstacles in order to not die, of course, but it's not the autopilot's job since the definition of autopilot is to maintain a set course, as you quoted. You may be confusing it with full self-driving, which doesn't exist yet.

Even taking the lesser of these two scenarios, this would imply that Tesla autopilot should be capable of doing most of the driving, with the driver just there for whatever bits you might argue are equivalent to a takeoff and landing. Given the stories of Teslas accelerating into stationary objects or totally losing track of the road lane, I don’t think even this limited understanding of what “autopilot” means is correct.