Pilots Really "Six Figure Professionals"?
- Thread starter Aaron_Kearney
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B767Driver
New Member
Maximillian_Jenius said:
My base lost 45 75/76 FOs recently and it pushed me to reserve on that airplane. So, I went back to fly the MD88 last month where I'm in the top 50% of the seniority list. I'm making more money, weekends and holidays off. It was ATL to CHS...I remember because I really crushed that landing in. It's actually been a lot of fun going back to all these little airports I haven't been to in awhile...but I'll get over that real soon.
I hadn't been in an -88 in two years...I got six days of training and hit the line. That's probably why I stubbed that landing in! That and when the stabilizer is aft of 10 units of trim...the thing doesn't like to flare.
B767Driver
New Member
flyover said:
We're speaking different languages, definitely. Any decision that affects the quality of experience that a passenger receives on my airplane is a critical decision in my language.
flyover, I'm following your line of thinking and actually agree with where you're going. The fewer and fewer critical decisions that the pilot has to make the better.
I just read an article on the Diamond Twin Star. That aircraft has a single power lever for each engine, rather than the three levers each (throttle, prop and mixture) on the typical twin. The black box does the job of setting prop angle, throttle position, etc., all much more accurately for the full range of conditions than a human could. Life is simpler, and safer, for the pilot as a result.
Similar idea with JEP and his bank of computers. No way could he do all the calculations and make all of the necessary decisions that those machines are making every second. It would take a small army of people working manually to try to do what those computers do, and the error rate would be much higher.
I also like your example about the icing decision-making that has been taken completely out of the hands of the pilot regarding take-offs with a contaminated airframe. In the old days it was just the PIC's judgement that determined how much was too much, and how long a delay after deicing was safe, and now those decisions are all pre-made and dictated to the crew. The decisions are conservative and safe and require very little pilot input other than following the decision tree that has been laid out based on the criteria presented. This is something that can be fully automated in the future. I used to work in manufacturing and spent 15 years or so working around automated paint facilities. I can easily see the controls and robots and equipment and automation equipment from that industry being used in deicing aircraft in a safe, fast, economical and ultra-consistent manner. The equipment is availible to consistently determine the current atmospheric conditions, amount of contaminants present on an airframe, and program and deliver the deice/anti-ice solutions in the best possible manner. That will be safer, overall, than relying on the judgement of the manual operator that is doing the job now, and in a very demanding environment. Robots and computers don't get tired, don't have their decisions vary depending upon their mood or their reaction to the pilot's demeanor, or the weather, and they apply exactly the desired amount of material every time, every where it is needed.
Weather judgements are going to become simpler and easier as the sensors used to understand (on a real-time basis) what is happening inside storms continue to improve. We will get better and better at detecting rain, lightning, updrafts, downdrafts, cyclonic air movements, the whole gamut of features within storms that are of a concern to aircraft, and with a better real-time knowledge of what is happening it will become easier to make divert/go/no-go decisions. And we will be able to teach machines to make those decisions faster and more acurately than humans can.
The age of humans being removed from the cockpit is probably a long, long way off yet, but we are on that road and air travel will continue to get safer and safer as we do a better job of eliminating or minimizing the risks, one by one by one.
I just read an article on the Diamond Twin Star. That aircraft has a single power lever for each engine, rather than the three levers each (throttle, prop and mixture) on the typical twin. The black box does the job of setting prop angle, throttle position, etc., all much more accurately for the full range of conditions than a human could. Life is simpler, and safer, for the pilot as a result.
Similar idea with JEP and his bank of computers. No way could he do all the calculations and make all of the necessary decisions that those machines are making every second. It would take a small army of people working manually to try to do what those computers do, and the error rate would be much higher.
I also like your example about the icing decision-making that has been taken completely out of the hands of the pilot regarding take-offs with a contaminated airframe. In the old days it was just the PIC's judgement that determined how much was too much, and how long a delay after deicing was safe, and now those decisions are all pre-made and dictated to the crew. The decisions are conservative and safe and require very little pilot input other than following the decision tree that has been laid out based on the criteria presented. This is something that can be fully automated in the future. I used to work in manufacturing and spent 15 years or so working around automated paint facilities. I can easily see the controls and robots and equipment and automation equipment from that industry being used in deicing aircraft in a safe, fast, economical and ultra-consistent manner. The equipment is availible to consistently determine the current atmospheric conditions, amount of contaminants present on an airframe, and program and deliver the deice/anti-ice solutions in the best possible manner. That will be safer, overall, than relying on the judgement of the manual operator that is doing the job now, and in a very demanding environment. Robots and computers don't get tired, don't have their decisions vary depending upon their mood or their reaction to the pilot's demeanor, or the weather, and they apply exactly the desired amount of material every time, every where it is needed.
Weather judgements are going to become simpler and easier as the sensors used to understand (on a real-time basis) what is happening inside storms continue to improve. We will get better and better at detecting rain, lightning, updrafts, downdrafts, cyclonic air movements, the whole gamut of features within storms that are of a concern to aircraft, and with a better real-time knowledge of what is happening it will become easier to make divert/go/no-go decisions. And we will be able to teach machines to make those decisions faster and more acurately than humans can.
The age of humans being removed from the cockpit is probably a long, long way off yet, but we are on that road and air travel will continue to get safer and safer as we do a better job of eliminating or minimizing the risks, one by one by one.
Maximilian_Jenius
Super User
B767Driver said:
Damn... Delta must be smarting form the loss. But I heard that DL is looking to hire and will be leasing lots of 75/76 and MD-88's as part of its recovery plans and exit strategy.
flyover
New Member
SteveC said:
SteveC,
There was one thing that really shocked me when I started studying windshear accidents and how to train pilots to avoid them. It was very hard to get captains to make no-go decisions. They would latch onto almost any excuse to make a go decision but ignore serious stop signals. You could often see the process take place on the CVR. For example in the American LIT accident the captain is constantly querying about visibility, crosswind limits, etc. He's trying to find a hard number to make the decision for him. "Oh, we're out of crosswind limits, we can't land." You can hear the wheels grinding. The co-pilot is remarking on how bad the storm looks but the captain can't bring himself to call it off unless either the tower or his published limititations tell him to.
I interviewed a lot of captains to try to figure that one out. I finally concluded that the decision making "muscles" of line pilots pretty much atrophy in day to day line operations. Over the years almost every aspect of operations has been distilled to hard limits and procedures. There are very few critical decisions that a line captain has to make today. So when you get a situation like whether to land or takeoff in a thunderstorm it is very likely that a captain will press on unless some other factor stops him.
It's definitely a two-edged sword. On the one hand an operation that requires many critcal decisions to be made is inherently risky. So it has benefited safety greatly to remove as many of those as possible. On the other hand the only reason to have a captain is to say no. If you can't say no you're just a driver, not a captain. It's an area that needs more work in the future if we are to get that safety aspect of having captains with the ability to make critical no-go decisions. In the meantime I think we need to figure out a way to take terminal area convective weather decisions out of the hands of pilots as we've done with virtually every other type of weather.
flyover
New Member
John Herreshoff said:
It's funny that I'm probably the oldest guy on the forum and seem to be one of the few that thinks the incredible advances of the last 50 years will be nothing compared to what's coming in the next 50. It's obvious that technology advances are speeding up, not slowing down. I wonder if it's because I spent most of my life without personal computers?
Anyway, I'm being largely misunderstood here. I think there will always be a human interface, or at least for a long long time. But integration is the wave of the future and ATC functions and aircraft automation functions will inevitably integrate so that the pilot becomes almost strictly a monitor of the system. Both safety and efficiency will drive this and it is going to happen.
And I don't want to take the human element out. Trust me, I would have loved to have done this job about 25 years earlier in the cycle, when it was even more hands on and captain oriented than today. But I also can't ignore the obvious.
Fun discussion though.
flyover
New Member
mattyt98 said:
The V1 go/no-go is one that begs for an automated solution. Pilots consistently make the wrong decision. There is simply not enough time or information to make a right decision. The only reason this isn't a bigger issue is it doesn't happen that often or hasn't killed enough passengers yet. And keep in mind, I'm not criticising the pilots, I'm saying it's the "wrong" decision based on the facts after the incident. At the time of the "decision" pilots have to make a reflexive move, there's no time for a true decision. Computerized systems, on the other hand, can instantly analyze critical data and initiate the correct response. Integrated with systems like FADEC this would definitely enhance safety IMHO.
B767Driver said:
Correcto.
During my "fun with the IAE V-2532" in Chicago in May, there was nothing really in the checklist for that particular situation and we pretty much had to create our own procedure in a lot of different ways. If you follow the checklist to the T in the situation we had, we would have had much larger problems, trust me.
What if the captain was new and didn't trust a "Hey Skipper, let's think about this, we've got X and Y and Z, but if we do this part of the procedure, this might not be safe" from the FO? What if there was a fresh minimum qual'ed captain in the left seat and an FO fresh out of Gulfstream in the right seat?
Every emergency that I've had in the past 10 or so years a checklist was guidance but you really had to think on your feet to bring the aircraft back safely.
Like pressurization problems. I had an outflow valve that froze on a 727 about 17,000 feet and climbing. I could slowly close it, but I couldn't open it. So the more I tinkered with it, it kept increasing the differential. Can't just descend because you're over mountanous terrain. Do you close it and continue to your base? What do you do to depressurize as you're arriving? What about articulating the outflow valves as the pilots are advancing and retarding the throttle on arrival? How much of a pressurization surge is too much for your passengers? Whatdooyado? What happens when you brief the flight attendants about the possibilitiy of the masks dropping and they panic (true story!)?
There's no checklist or procedure for that at all.
So whenever the check airmen says, "Using your systems knowledge, work out this problem" he's actually doing you a favor helping you think outside of the box.
If the next generation of pilots thinks that highly automated planes don't require systems skill, experience and the ability to use systems knowledge to stabilize an abnormal, they're in for a big BIG surprise.
Hopefully not at a critical phase where someone gets hurt.
On another thread: Putting the go/no-go decision into the hands of automation is not someting I'm interested in. Don't misinterpret automation as this magic box which has the big picture which knows how to fly an airplane and the percentages of risk involved with aborting or continuing the takeoff roll.
Automation is a box programmed by engineers which may or may not understand the dynamics of flight and will execute responses programed by engineers which may or may not understand.
Remember the Airbus crash? Why would a plane fly so low and no want to land? Adding power or increasing back pressure isn't consistent with an airplane in the landing phase so lets go ahead and override the pilot's response consistent with a safe landing.
WHAP!
Or you're accelerating through about 70 knots and there's a flock of Canadian geese not paying attention and an antelope traversing the runway during takeoff roll in a DC-9. Do you continue? Do you abort? What would the automation do with what it can't see? What if the automation *could* see it, what would it do? If you hit the animals, had an engine fire and aborted, would it command evacuation? Or does the captain determine if it requires evacuation?
boeing 777-300
New Member
artificial intelligence?
There are to many critical decisions to be made.
not sure if any one mentioned this: What if you lose both engines in a 757 and have to bring it down in a field or farm? will the computer be able to pick a safe place away from houses and people? i dont think so.
I think in the future it will be entirely possible. Think about a combination of a huge, accurate database of ground features (seen Google Earth lately?) combined with highly accurate GPS/inertial positioning, refined radar watching for small mobile obstructions, accurate real-time wind information, and I could see a computer doing a much better job of finding the best possible landing site within calculated glide distance when compared to a human doing the eyeball/mental math thing from 20,000 feet up. The computer could more accurately set course, best-glide speed based on aircraft weight and winds, have the proper choice of landing site chosen, and placed a distress call before a human pilot could say "oh crap!".boeing 777-300 said:
Will it happen in the near future? My initial reaction is that I don't think so, but considering that most of the technology necessary to allow it to happen are already in existence.....
boeing 777-300
New Member
i guess. but would the onboard computer be able to see that they have to go over a certain set of power lines and around a huge oak tree before landing in the field? what it a cow strolls along into the field. or better yet a herd. i guess like you said a radar could do it. i dont know.
Minnesota_Flyer
New Member
http://www.ntsb.gov/Events/2005/Pinnacle/default.htmS40_flyer said:
Notwithstanding the URL, it happened in Oct. '04.
My premise is that the development of future automation, based on current technology, would do a better job of putting the aircraft into a survivable situation than just the pilot(s) alone. By more survivable I mean, among other things, a more suitable landing site and more precise aircraft control based on the multitude of factors that a computer can better figure than an individual can.Doug Taylor said:
Let's look at a related question: if you have to do an on-airport landing with zero-zero vis/ceiling (assume no HUD for the moment), would you rather do it with or without Cat III automation? Now consider the improvements that have been made in auto-land capability over the last twenty years and extrapolate fifty years into the future.
Don't confuse the current "glass" with the hypothetical systems that I have described.
Callous
New Member
What really excites me about AI is having a "third opinion" in a commercial airliner. Instead of just blaring some warning, or flashing a light, how about an intelligent partner (onboard computer) that can tell you what is wrong and make a suggestion. Hopefully this partner will be capable of learning, but I dont for a minute imagine that it will replace either of the bio-pilots.
I'm afraid that this is still a long way off. But thanks to Nasa, we do have pyrex. See NASA thread for more info!!
I'm afraid that this is still a long way off. But thanks to Nasa, we do have pyrex. See NASA thread for more info!!
flyover
New Member
boeing 777-300 said:
I understand pilots getting defensive about being "replaced" by computers. But when you serve up these scenarios, to be fair, you have to acknowledge that pilots often blow these types of scenarios.
One such accident was a DC-9 (engines out) where the captain was trying to manuver for an open field. The FO insisted the only safe place was on a highway, took the airplane away and headed for a winding, hilly 2 lane road with disastorous results. What advantage does the computer have? No emotion. You can't argue about computer errors without acknowledging human error. There will never be a perfect system, but one approach will be safer than another.
It would be pretty easy with current technology to have a computer select the safest landing area, engines out, and the computer would likely do a better job of managing energy to get there.
These systems will be well proven before we get to the point where there is no human monitoring and overriding where necessary.
flyover
New Member
SteveC said:
Exactly right. We're still flying old technology, even in our latest airplanes. We ain't seen nothing yet. And the real "cutting edge" is integration.
I'm currently flying an airplane that has all the same autopilot components as B767driver's airplane. But they aren't integrated. It makes it a completely different beast. Much less user friendly. The car in the link above that can drive itself does so by integrating several technologies. So it will be with airplanes. Some day an airplane will depart NYC for ATL and at top of cruise it's speed will be set based on being sequenced behind an airplane that just left DCA for ATL, all without any input from a pilot or controller, and so it will go. And every "yeah but" question you can come up with will have been answered and accounted for.
It'll be a brave new world and I won't likely see it. But my grandkids will.