Ameriflight Drone

What's the bottom altitude? The jet I'm on now does the 90 degree turn emergency descent as well but levels you at 15k.
15,000 is where it would level off. Dassault’s EASy uses Honeywell Epic, similar to the Planeview in the G450/550/650.

At my old company it was one of the few options we didn’t get, not because we didn’t want it but there was a limitation on airspeed and airbrake use that made it incompatible with the API winglets.
 
Maybe when people get automated out of jobs and can't pay rent we can find a landlord forum to go taunt him on when he whines that nobody's paying him.
BUT HEY, my Tesla drives great on the highway!!!!!!!!*

*three threads in a week about Todd talking about his Tesla autopilot
 
Yeah, of course you did.



Some photos of me on autopilot in the mountains.

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Pictures of a mountain road have exactly what I’m common with Level 5 driving capability?

Listen, I’m not against tech. I think autonomous driving and flight will certainly be here someday, and our next car is going to be either a plug-in hybrid or EV. But I’m not just going along with the blatant lies that Musk is pushing, and has been pushing, for years now regarding the capabilities and timeline for autonomous driving.
 
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I feel like a teenage girl about to jump in to a double dutch jumprope so here goes.

FSD works well. It's pretty much like autoland - it does a pretty good job but makes decisions based on different things it's looking at so it feels weird. Think of it like predictive windshear in an airplane, it's looking at LIDAR, radar, sonar and the cameras to make decisions whereas in between glances at our stereo, we're using eyeballs, assumption and ego in control of the car.

The latest update is really good but I primarily only autopilot on the freeway and super rarely on city streets because people drive like idiots and I'm not sure it understands the "A Hole" factor in human driving characteristics. For a while, it wouldn't pass on the right because you're not supposed to, or if the lane was clear ahead of you but stopped in the adjacent lane, it would happily continue at 70 instead of modulating speed in anticipation of some bonehead pulling into your lane at the last minute from a standstill.

I think it's close to being ready, but the problem is going to lie with the meatsack in the left seat. 172's and Archers don't have autoland, but if they did, would we have more or less accidents as the technology becomes democratized without fully understanding the system?
 
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1. Why would you consider that horrific when you don't consider it horrific when someone is dying from an ape-driven car crash every 13 minutes? Perhaps you're biased against safer automated cars?

2. That isn't how statistics work. Autopiloted Teslas are 6 times safer, but there are far fewer Teslas driving than ape-driven cars, so it's nowhere near every 78 minutes. There have only been a handful of crashes total so far. And frankly, those crashes have all been the result of human drivers in the other cars. Not the autopilot.

chill bruv
i think it's safer than a lot of drivers and won't argue that, especially with the advent of watching tiktoks and onlyfans in traffic, but that x people die every y minutes is a dailymail level clickbaity headline stuff when there's definitely a more clear way to express the fatal crash stats with more context
 
I am not convinced single pilot ops will occur. I am convinced zero pilots ops will eventually become standard across the industry. If the automation is good enough for single pilot, it will be good enough for zero.

The good news is that airlines are currently refreshing their fleets for the most part. Aircraft tend to stick around for 20+ years in the airlines. Unless some company is able to create a retrofit for these aircraft that isn't cost prohibitive I don't see pilot jobs all of a sudden fizzling out over night.

As far as AMF is concerned, I fully expect a drone to crash pretty quickly or dump boxes on some house because a cargo door opens in flight. I wouldn't trust couriers, ups drivers, etc with that stuff.
 
I am not convinced single pilot ops will occur. I am convinced zero pilots ops will eventually become standard across the industry. If the automation is good enough for single pilot, it will be good enough for zero.

The good news is that airlines are currently refreshing their fleets for the most part. Aircraft tend to stick around for 20+ years in the airlines. Unless
Kinda agree with you, we're still 50+ years away. Why?

Look at when these planes took their first flights - 777 (29 years ago), 737 (56 years), A320 (36 years), 787 (14 years), C-Series (10 years ago).

Part 121 tech moves at a glacial pace - this isnt gonna sneak up on us.
 
Kinda agree with you, we're still 50+ years away. Why?

Look at when these planes took their first flights - 777 (29 years ago), 737 (56 years), A320 (36 years), 787 (14 years), C-Series (10 years ago).

Part 121 tech moves at a glacial pace - this isnt gonna sneak up on us.
Yep, that very glacial pace is what makes me rest easy at night. It is likely a case of when, not if we are relegated to the past but for the next few decades I just don't see it happening in a significant way.
 
Kinda agree with you, we're still 50+ years away. Why?

Look at when these planes took their first flights - 777 (29 years ago), 737 (56 years), A320 (36 years), 787 (14 years), C-Series (10 years ago).

Part 121 tech moves at a glacial pace - this isnt gonna sneak up on us.

This is why I think automation of other jobs causing widespread structural unemployment, and thereby decimating demand for air travel, is a much bigger threat to pilots than automated aircraft for now.

I am not convinced single pilot ops will occur. I am convinced zero pilots ops will eventually become standard across the industry. If the automation is good enough for single pilot, it will be good enough for zero.

The good news is that airlines are currently refreshing their fleets for the most part. Aircraft tend to stick around for 20+ years in the airlines. Unless some company is able to create a retrofit for these aircraft that isn't cost prohibitive I don't see pilot jobs all of a sudden fizzling out over night.

Historically it seems like very few aircraft have been retrofitted or converted to reduce the number of flight crew. The only instance I can think of is the DC-10 to MD-10 conversion, and I believe FedEx was the only customer.
 
I think the 2 big elephants in the room are the Feds and Insurance.

The regulations are going to be so slow to catch up to the technology the conversation is almost moot for anyone flying professionally today. The funding for evaluations after testing after evaluation after testing is going to be tied up in congress for years to come. To think this is going to be approved quickly for 121/135 ops is laughable.

Why are LPV approaches considered precision approaches for training and checkrides but not for actual flight planning? Yeah, no ape airplane regulations are going to be fun to watch come out.

Having just watched my current shop go through an insurance adjustment for the next few years their requirements are tightening and tightening causing more cost to the company to be in compliance so that there is coverage. Good luck getting any one of those companies to sign up to cover the first 50 of these airplanes to come out. And even if you do, say the worst happens and one plows into a playground during recess, who's covering it? The company that operates the airplane? The manufacture that said the airplane was safe and sound? The company that built the individual component that failed and caused the crash? Which insurance company is going to cover the liability? Once you take the apes out of the loop the blame is going to have to shift somewhere.

This is a good post. You’re all focusing on Tesla autopilot but the tech side of autonomous UAVs already exists (look at the eVTOL world flight testing their vehicles unmanned for example), and you’re seeing the autonomy creep more and more into manned aircraft with the Garmin autoland and these emergency descent products, etc.

The sticking point will be getting the FAA to commit to integrating them into the NAS, certifying them to fly over people (assume SMO NIMBYs here or some other ridiculously restrictive airport lol) and then insuring them.

This will eventually happen but I’m not convinced AMF of all places is going to have deep enough pockets or strong enough lobbying power to do it.
 
This is why I think automation of other jobs causing widespread structural unemployment, and thereby decimating demand for air travel, is a much bigger threat to pilots than automated aircraft for now.
Yeah I feel the exact opposite of this. I’m in a young generation and everyone I know is working so they can travel. And now I have numerous friends who do remote work and treat themselves to a new destination every month. The older generations travel wasn’t accessible easily, nor used frequently. Each generation that’s changed to where we are now.

Say what you will on millennials and it’s probably true, but most see life in a different way. Less motivated? Sure. Less likely to work at a job and do extra hard work for no pay? Yeah. More likely to use their money on experiences, travel, vacations than saving to go buy a home persay? Yup.

I think Covid has changed travel forever, in a good way. Maybe not for the pencil pushers that want high yield business and less leisure, but by all means putting asses in seats. I know your outlook is mass unemployment and people eating each other with some other weird •, but if anyone paid attention to these younger generations spending habits I don’t see travel as a risky industry literally at all.
 
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