Lol, it’s funny seeing that movie now. The guy is the ultimate male Karen.
Cathay working on single pilot long haul
- Thread starter Comair 100ER
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Cherokee_Cruiser
Bronteroc
TWP
Well-Known Member
You’d have to be totally nuts or in such deep denial to believe pilotless airplanes will never happen.
Bamaaviator
Well-Known Member
Is it possible? Absolutely, there is no question it CAN be done. The real question is, SHOULD it be done? Let’s start with passenger perception. People won’t do it. At least not in large numbers for the airlines to sustain any kind of profit. You’ll begin to see those TSA daily passenger numbers begin to roll back, big time, and stay there.
Passengers are already scared enough as it is with flying in general, they are not going to get on an airplane with no pilots upfront unless you give them lots and lots of alcohol, maybe a few nerve pills in addition, both before and during the flight. But then you will have the problem with a lot of drunk passengers getting into arguments/fights in the sky. I could see a lot of flight attendants in droves updating their resumes and sending out apps to places in other industries. You will lose a ton of flight attendants. Before something like that could ever be done, you would have to ask the general public how they would feel about it. It’s a safe bet to assume they won’t like the idea of it.
There needs to be a lot of changes to regulations as well, which takes 10 years for the FAA to do for just about anything. Good luck dealing with that bureaucratic beast.
And probably the biggest issue is dealing with software problems. You would have to create the best software in the world, that could never fail in any way shape or form. No computer crashes. No glitches. It would have to have the ability to think ‘outside the box’ when the crap hits the fan. Is it going to perform like it’s supposed to? What if it doesn’t perform? Then it’s immediately scrapped, done. At that point the jig is up for the ‘unmanned airplane’ fantasy. Just take one look at the recent Southwest Airlines computer ‘glitch,’ or the pipeline that was hacked, and that’s enough persuasion right there that there’s serious risk to the general public with trying to build airplanes without human pilots. And then of course there’s always the chance the signal could be jammed, or hacked. I’ve talked to many people about this and asked both pilots and non-pilots (except the tech gurus who are so enamored with unmanned airliners) “would you get on an unmanned airplane?” Just about everyone said no. Myself included, I wouldn’t do it. Lol It scares the poop out of me thinking about walking down a jet bridge and getting on an airplane with no pilots. Literally, there are any number of scenarios/emergencies that the software would need to handle, FLAWLESSLY, every time, under the worst conditions, in order for it to be safe.
I just cannot see this ever happening with passenger aircraft, EVER. Maybe, MAYBE with cargo, but not pax ops. I’m willing to bet in 40 years we aren’t going to be any closer to moving in that direction than where we are currently. People were saying that 20 years ago, and where are we?
Also, what’s going to happen when the first airplane goes down?? Then we go back to that public perception issue. The flying public will become very scared to fly on these things. How the heck will the airlines try to remedy that? while at the same trying to crawl out of an economic recession period? as this industry gets hit super hard during hard times. Talk about major damage control that would cost a lot of money to convince people that it’s safe to fly on these aircraft again.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
My car just drove me home on an hour long drive in a much more dynamic environment than the wide open airways. But yeah, pilotless planes will never be a thing. 
Bamaaviator
Well-Known Member
Awesome. There’s a pilotless B777 that will depart tomorrow morning. Will you get on it??My car just drove me home on an hour long drive in a much more dynamic environment than the wide open airways. But yeah, pilotless planes will never be a thing.
Cherokee_Cruiser
Bronteroc
Sadly the future generation will consist of people on iPads, FB, Instagram, and driving autopilot Teslas like it’s nothing. The next generation will be techies used to all that technology with self driving cars, that I don’t see them hesitating much about pilotless airplanes. They’ll actually complain why it took so long to do so.
It’ll come.
It’ll come.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
Yes.
Maximilian_Jenius
Super User
Don't forget about that vulnerability pathway UA had via their IFE maybe 3 yrs. ago, that was open to hacking the planes systems or something like that. I believe that pathway has been closed.
My car just drove me home on an hour long drive in a much more dynamic environment than the wide open airways. But yeah, pilotless planes will never be a thing.
True, but it's not fully autonomous. You still need to be up front monitoring. Lots of Tesla crashes lately because people have been in the back seat while their Tesla is auto piloting. Also if its so perfect, why is it illegal and why are police arresting or ticketing people for lounging/sleeping in the backseats while their cars are on autopilot?
Most notably the incident where the autopilot didn't handle a curve in the road too well/fast enough and the car drove off the cliff. While others have been caused due to debris on the street and the autopilot's inability to reason fast enough and simply go around the object causing crashes. Most survivable, but some not. It's still not a perfect science.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
Define “need.” Do you mean regulators require it? Or that the car actually needs it? Because the latter isn’t true.
Define “lots.” The reality is that a Tesla on autopilot is statistically proven to be 6x safer than other cars. You want to highlight the small number of Tesla crashes, while ignoring the fact that we have 50,000 people die every year in traditional auto crashed because apes are bad at doing just about everything.
Maximilian_Jenius
Super User
No One Was Driving The Tesla Model S In Fiery Crash Where Two People Were Killed | Carscoops
Authorities state that none of the two occupants was sitting in the Tesla Model S' driver's seat
www.carscoops.com
Automated steering 'not available' on Texas road where Tesla crashed -NTSB
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. safety officials investigating the cause of a Tesla Model S crash that killed two men in Texas last month said on Monday that testing suggested the vehicle's automated steering system was "not available" on the road where the accident occurred. But the car's...
news.yahoo.com
I think both of these examples are the same cases and the one I originally mentioned.
What I was saying is that its not a foolproof system. You can't turn it on and go to sleep, or turn it on and be in the passenger seat or the backseat. Just like a pilot in cruise you have to sit and monitor it. Be steps ahead in case something happens and be ready to take over control. The Tesla AP is a good system, but its not perfect. In the cases mentioned it was only two people that died. But again not perfect system, would be a lot worse if its a loaded 777 with 350 people that went down.
jynxyjoe
Queso King
well, keep in mind your accident rate in a vehicle is comically high. It doesn't take much effort to be better than most apes at driving back and forth doing mundane driving. Let's face it, if you're going back and forth to the same 4 destinations the drive is boring and people zone out or gamify it. Not great decision making.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
No One Was Driving The Tesla Model S In Fiery Crash Where Two People Were Killed | Carscoops
Authorities state that none of the two occupants was sitting in the Tesla Model S' driver's seat
Automated steering 'not available' on Texas road where Tesla crashed -NTSB
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. safety officials investigating the cause of a Tesla Model S crash that killed two men in Texas last month said on Monday that testing suggested the vehicle's automated steering system was "not available" on the road where the accident occurred. But the car's...
Cool story, bro. So, when you gonna start posting examples of all of the apes crashing traditional cars? You'll be pretty busy. There are 16,438 per day. Yet you worry about a small handful of Tesla crashes. And to be clear, it seems almost certain that autosteer was not even engaged in the referenced crash. Pointing to this crash and blaming the autopilot is basically the same as pointing to the crash of a Boeing that had the autothrottles engaged but not the autopilot, and then blaming the autopilot when the crew takes a nap.
How much experience do you actually have using a Tesla autopilot? It seems like not much (any). I can turn the autopilot on when I get on the expressway and touch literally nothing for the next three hours. Small city streets and country roads are currently different, but that's being beta tested as we speak with very promising results. But what we're talking about with aircraft is basically even less complicated than expressway driving. The airways are not a very dynamic environment. Elon has basically solved a problem 100x more complicated than what we're talking about here. The only reason we don't have self-flying planes is regulators and scared passengers. Both will change over the coming decades. Count on it.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
Our predictions on the industry were based on normal market forces. No one could have predicted that the government would literally pay your salary for 18 months with magically created money.
Pretty sure none of my salary was paid with magically created money. But like i've said, doomers gonna doom.
At the end of the day, pilotless airplanes are near the bottom of the list of things i worry about in this career and I fly for one of the companies that everyone just assumes will be first to adopt. You should see how long it takes to print something at flight ops....I think we'll be ok for awhile.
SlumTodd_Millionaire
Most Hated Member
I agree. You’ll be fine. But people in this thread literally said it will never happen. Even you have to admit that that’s nonsense.