Teaching Dogs to fly planes

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Teaching Dogs to fly planes

While dogs can be taught to do awesome things like locate explosives, help amputees around the house or in public, sense blood sugar changes, help a child to walk, and even sniff out electronic devices, teaching them to fly a plane seems like a bad idea. I’m no aviator, but I’m pretty sure that the entire flight process is beyond the ability of a dog. It appears England is taking the term unmanned Aircraft to a whole new level. From The Independent:

According to an aviation joke, planes only need two crew members – a pilot and a dog. The pilot’s job is to feed the dog. The dog’s job is to bite the pilot if he touches the controls. But now a ground-breaking television series will place Britain’s most intelligent canines in the cockpit in a bid to discover if a dog can be successfully taught the skills to fly a plane.

Using participants handpicked from rescue centres, the Sky 1 series, Dogs Might Fly, aims to prove that the memory and reasoning abilities possessed by the brightest pets could be directed towards mastering the controls of a light aircraft.

Amateur fliers at a London airfield last week reported the unusual sight of a dog strapped on to a flat-bed truck, grappling with aircraft-style controls until it learnt to drive the vehicle in circles. Sky confirmed that the dog – which appeared to be a Labrador or similar – was performing simulation training in preparation for a possible first flight. Caroline Hawkins, creative director of Oxford Scientific Films, the Bafta-winning documentary-makers behind the series, said: “This sequence forms part of our project to look at dogs’ extraordinary ability. The ultimate question is ‘could a dog fly a plane?’ so we have undertaken some training using an aircraft simulator.”

The experiment follows a New Zealand exercise in 2012 in which three dogs took turns to drive a Mini Countryman solo down a race track in Auckland after being trained to start the car, put it in gear and then travel 70 metres before bringing it to a stop.

See the full story and analysis from an Emeritus Professor of Dog Psychology, at The Independent.

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