Will we ever see pilotless commercial aircraft?

[anat0l]

Re: Ask The Pilot

As the cabin crew are primarily there for our safety, how can they do their job properly if they are injured in the process of serving meals during turbulence? Crazy in my opinion.

As I alluded to, ask many people (outside AFF, obviously, but some here will say the same) what FAs are primarily there for. I would be surprised if 5% say they are there for safety first. In fact, get them to list 5 reasons why they are there and I'd be surprised to see how many will list 'safety' in that list.

I agree with your statement, but the fact is that the wider passenger contingent takes a frivolous view of safety which is depressing, especially as it undermines and makes a mockery of the crew.

To pull this all back on topic a bit, the tangent does remind me of the infamous Michael O'Leary's comment once (obviously an attention grabber, but idiotic nonetheless) of planes of the future having only one pilot, relying a lot on autopilot. I probably wouldn't be surprised if he advocated that planes of the future will be remote controlled, or "piloted" by robots / pilotless (e.g. similar to "driverless" train systems).

In fact, I think jb747 has alluded quite frequently through this topic of how airline management broadly around the world (including on our home turf) is continually trying to dumb down the role of the pilot towards an "end goal" of redundancy. That's a real shame for the next generation of pilots which we will sorely need.

 

[juddles]

Re: Ask The Pilot

anat01, be assured that one day planes will be pilotless. I completely agree that right now human pilots are irreplaceable, but I feel that inevitably in the years ahead (not in 5 or 10) we will reach a point with automated systems where the removal of pilot (human) error will actually improve safety. That will require a hell of an advance, but it WILL happen. Eventually.......

 

[harvyk]

Re: Ask The Pilot

anat01, be assured that one day planes will be pilotless. I completely agree that right now human pilots are irreplaceable, but I feel that inevitably in the years ahead (not in 5 or 10) we will reach a point with automated systems where the removal of pilot (human) error will actually improve safety. That will require a hell of an advance, but it WILL happen. Eventually.......

Whilst yes, planes will become more automated, I highly doubt we will totally eliminate having someone up the front, if nothing else to take over when that automation fails.
Look at it this way, all it will take is for one pilotless plane to crash (regardless of if a pilot could have saved the plane or not), and it will set the idea back for many years to come.



The other thing, and I was talking to a customer about this no more than 15 minutes ago, software is really good at dealing with things which are nice and definable, but as soon as software needs to determine intention or variables which are not what are expected, software has a hard time. The expression "sink or swim" defines us humans nicely, when a human is thrown into a situation which they have never encountered before, we can start analysing things, extrapolate from missing data, fall back on previous experience. Software on the other hand has a much harder time. If it’s thrown into a situation where the programmer had never expected, or more dangeriously, where the programmer had thought a different course of action would be required software is likely to revert to an error state, which may or may not be what is required to resolve the situation. Look at QF72, there the software reverted to an error state, and gave a highly inappropraite response. Now imagine what could have happened if there was not two pilots sitting up the front ready to take over from the computer at a moments notice.

I’m not going to say that we won’t get better at developing “intelligent software”, but I highly doubt we will be at a place where planes can be fully automated and carry pax anytime in the near future.

 

[juddles]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Whatever they do, it works. Perhaps advances in radar, whatever. What is considered (by pax) bad turbulence these days seems to be trifling compared to 20 years ago. It is a long time since I have had to catch items floating in mid-air. Used to be fairly frequent. If pilots (for personal or corporate reasons) misuse the sign, they will just teach pax to effectively ignore it. For anyone who has been in a truly turbulent situation, it is a scary thing. I still have the habit of making my seatbelt tight, not just putting it on for show.

 

[juddles]

Re: Ask The Pilot

I’m not going to say that we won’t get better at developing “intelligent software”, but I highly doubt we will be at a place where planes can be fully automated and carry pax anytime in the near future.

I understand the concept that a human can save the day when auto systems fail, but you must also consider the flipside, where human error can cause a needless problem. As auto systems get developed, there will come a point in the future where a human´s ability to save the day will be outweighed by their capacity to stuff things up. Will take many decades yet, but it is a certain evolutionary path.

 

[jb747]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Well, I can safely say that even the best airline technology of today is generations away from this situation.

An example. An A380 flight loses two air data computers (there are three) so the odds of a triple or double loss are huge. The result is that the aircraft reverts to alternate law II, autopilot, flight directors, and autothrust disengage, and cannot be reengaged. The aircraft is also strongly out of lateral trim. Without someone/thing flying it, it would depart a reasonable flight envelope (i.e. enter a spiral dive) within a few seconds.

Didn't read about it? Of course not. The pilots simply flew it the remaining 5 hours to destination and landed. Mind you, they were very tired pilots, as flying an 'out of trim' aircraft is very tiring indeed. But, it went where it was supposed to without any drama. This sort of thing happens quite regularly. You get to read about the times the pilots get it wrong, but you don't read about the times they save you from the aircraft, simply because a save isn't newsworthy. And for the O'Learys of the world, when something does go wrong, you don't need one pilot....

Perhaps also worth noting (though I'll admit this is todays tech, and not tomorrows), that in QF30 and QF72 both events started with the loss of the autopilot. You're probably right that it will happen one day, but I expect that I'll be long pushing up daisies when it does.

 

[harvyk]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Assuming we can build technology which works for pilotless planes on a commercial level, they'd also need to convince people, who may not like flying as is, that flying on one of these planes, despite the fact that there is no one in control, is a safe thing to do. If nothing else, you can bet your bottom dollar that pilots unions will not be overly eager to push the pilotless plane, and probably won't be putting ad's on TV over how great these new planes are.

 

[moa999]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Technology may be there, but then the tech has been around for driverless trains for a while, yet name one Australian city that has them.

 

[samh004]

Technology may be there, but then the tech has been around for driverless trains for a while, yet name one Australian city that has them.

Driverless trains usually run on separate track, but you couldn't do the same in the air, at least not yet.




 

[harvyk]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Technology may be there, but then the tech has been around for driverless trains for a while, yet name one Australian city that has them.

Furthermore driver less trains are a completely different kettle of fish. They run in highly controlled environments (literally on rails), whereby if something goes wrong, the default error handler of "stop the train" won't mean falling out of the sky. They are also less likely to have bad weather or turbulence sneek up on them, and unlikely to deviate from the course they are on.

So if they can’t get a foot hold, what chance does the pilotless aircraft have?

 

[futaris]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Once Autonomous cars are commonplace, I don't think we will be that far off from having pilotless airplanes.

 

[harvyk]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Once Autonomous cars are commonplace, I don't think we will be that far off from having pilotless airplanes.

Again, unlike cars and trains, planes can't just pull off to the side of the road if something goes wrong, and unlike military drones, where by blowing the thing up, or crashing it into mountains (or into an enemy target) is an option if something goes wrong and they can't fix it or land it at a friendly runway, I can't see too many people thrilled with the safety briefing (done by robots of course) going something like this.

"In the event of an emergency, we will be increasing the throttle, finding the nearest mountain, and aiming for it".

 

[BAM1748]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Technology may be there, but then the tech has been around for driverless trains for a while, yet name one Australian city that has them.

Sydney Monorail is driverless.

 

[Happy Trails]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Alternative thread title: Axe the pilot?

 

[Peabody]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Sydney Monorail is driverless.

And it is so popular and has never broken down trapping the passengers inside...

 

[Mal Ware]

Re: Ask The Pilot

What is the crash rate or number of crashes for UAV's? Not including ones that are shot down...

 

[harvyk]

Re: Ask The Pilot

What is the crash rate or number of crashes for UAV's? Not including ones that are shot down...

Just did a google search and quite a few sites agree that it's around 9.3 'mishaps' per 100k hours. They are considered the USAF most accident prone A/C, but the don't really care as no one is on board to be killed.

 

[Katie]

Re: Ask The Pilot

Anat0l - have you read the Wired article on drones? From a couple of moths ago, but I just read it today. Need a trip away to catch up on my magazines ...

 

[equus]

Re: Ask The Pilot

What about Medical emergencies etc? Even if an autopilot ends up doing all the flying, someone is still going to have to be the Captain and make the decisions. After a decision is made, then instructions may need to be given to the autopilot to change the plan. At the very least, the planes would be "remote piloted", with ground control. Some human on board will still be the final decision maker, and may have to communicate with whoever is running the aircraft - that person may be sitting on the other side of the world, and running mulitple aircraft simultaneously, but IMHO we will always have:
1. Some human in charge actually on board (if there is anyone on board)
2. Some human in charge of directing / controlling the autopilot, and able to change the plan.

 

[harvyk]

Re: Ask The Pilot

What about Medical emergencies etc? Even if an autopilot ends up doing all the flying, someone is still going to have to be the Captain and make the decisions. After a decision is made, then instructions may need to be given to the autopilot to change the plan. At the very least, the planes would be "remote piloted", with ground control. Some human on board will still be the final decision maker, and may have to communicate with whoever is running the aircraft - that person may be sitting on the other side of the world, and running mulitple aircraft simultaneously, but IMHO we will always have:
1. Some human in charge actually on board (if there is anyone on board)
2. Some human in charge of directing / controlling the autopilot, and able to change the plan.

Agreed, I expect that even in the world of "pilot-less aircraft" there will still be someone on board who would be called the pilot who could make decisions.

Even if the piloting of the aircraft was as simple as typing into a computer where you want the plane to go, I expect there will always be someone on board who will know how to do that.