Planes without pilots - NYT

Hacker15e said:
Don't shoot your argument in the foot by saying this kind of tripe. It is a massive correlation/causation logic failure to reason that the lack of midairs between CONUS mil RPA operations means that it is all perfectly safe.

There is literally a TFR stood up around Beale AFB every time the Global Hawk is flying. Most Pred/Reaper CONUS ops take place out of Creech (where the RPAs are physically in the NTTR practically from the moment they are airborne), Cannon (lots of high-density traffic out there over eastern New Mexico, right?), and out in the barrens of Grand Forks.

The fact is, most mil RPA ops don't even come close to mingling with civilian air traffic at all by nature of where they're operated.
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So what you're saying is that when proper protocols are put into place traffic deconfliction becomes a non-issue.

I think that's exactly what I said.

And just because you're not aware of the operations doesn't mean they don't happen. I've flown parallel approaches before with my large UAV next to 121 airplanes and never had an issue. We operated for a year out of a international airport in South America without a single conflict.
 
Will the technology be there? Of course.

Will the general public acceptance be there? Don't ever think so.

Also, I don't see the financial benefit. The cost of initial would be in the millions per airplane and upkeep and inspections would be probably the cost of an annual pilots salary. Not to mention you will have to have pilots on property to do the inspections and fly the plane from the ground.
 
Goonie said:
Will the technology be there? Of course.

Will the general public acceptance be there? Don't ever think so.

Also, I don't see the financial benefit. The cost of initial would be in the millions per airplane and upkeep and inspections would be probably the cost of an annual pilots salary. Not to mention you will have to have pilots on property to do the inspections and fly the plane from the ground.
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The technology already is there. How many times have you boarded an automated airport tram? An elevator? A carnival ride? The mental leap to hand over control to a machine happens on a daily basis. Once the public decides it's ok it will be seen as no different than the monorail at Disney.

The initial cost is great but it's no different than transitioning out the flight engineer or using advanced composites. As for pilot inspections, don't we call those preflights today? We already monitor RAIM status so from a pilot workload aspect there is only the removal tasks, not the addition.
 
esa17 said:
The technology already is there. How many times have you boarded an automated airport tram? An elevator? A carnival ride? The mental leap to hand over control to a machine happens on a daily basis. Once the public decides it's ok it will be seen as no different than the monorail at Disney.

The initial cost is great but it's no different than transitioning out the flight engineer or using advanced composites. As for pilot inspections, don't we call those preflights today? We already monitor RAIM status so from a pilot workload aspect there is only the removal tasks, not the addition.
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Sorry, but those are horrible examples.

The fear of flying is one of the most common fears in the world. Besides, there is a lot more dynamics to it than all of those combined.

As @Trip7 said, My VNAV even has trouble getting by without pilot interference.

Side note: Could you imagine the lead FA on a pilotless aircraft? They already think they run the ship. :)
 
RDoug said:
It took a human pilot to make the decision that an Airbus wasn't going to make Teterboro, and that the Hudson River was the only real option. A computer would never have come to that conclusion because it would have been programmed to only accept a runway as a suitable landing site.

I'll stick with a human pilot making the decision only a human would make.
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Human practitioners are STILL key to the highly automated system here.
 
TWP said:
haha yeah I think 2020 is a tad early of an estimate. Then you have the legal implications that might slow down the use of superior to human AI for a few years.

What bugs me are the people who say that passengers will never get on an unmanned aircraft. Yes. Yes they will. They already get on unmanned elevators, unmanned trains, and they are currently testing self driving cars with very positive results. As usual, all the technology that short sighted people deny will happen once the computing power arrives.

"You need to learn this stuff because you won't be walking around with a calculator in your pocket!" - every math teacher ever in the 90s.
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Let's take those self driving cars that work so well on a sunny day in the Bay Area up to Colorado in a blizzard, or FL in a tropical downpour... Have fun sitting in there, I sure as hell won't!

And for those that think we will be replaced in 20-30 years, ugh. You clearly don't understand aircraft design and life cycle development too well. For this to happen, Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, and Bombardier would be working pretty hard on this stuff right now. The 787 was in development as the 7E7 about 20 years ago, and just now coming online.

Will it happen someday? Probably. Will it be something that even remotely affects me and my career as a 30 something pilot? Nope.
 
esa17 said:
And just because you're not aware of the operations doesn't mean they don't happen. I've flown parallel approaches before with my large UAV next to 121 airplanes and never had an issue. We operated for a year out of a international airport in South America without a single conflict.
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I can make the same counter-argument about the numerous near-midairs, near ground incidents, etc, with large RPA ops (mostly Global Hawk in my experience) mixing it up with normal flying ops at both CONUS and overseas bases.
 
Goonie said:
Will the technology be there? Of course.

Will the general public acceptance be there? Don't ever think so.
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That's a marketing campaign. The general public doesn't perceive pilots as sitting with a cold stare waiting to sacrifice their own life if only to save one person under their charge the indignity of light chop. They see pilots as the article reads, a few minutes of flying, push a button, read us weekly over a cup of coffee. How many "these things land themselves" comments have you heard?

GypsyPilot said:
Let's take those self driving cars that work so well on a sunny day in the Bay Area up to Colorado in a blizzard, or FL in a tropical downpour... Have fun sitting in there, I sure as hell won't!

And for those that think we will be replaced in 20-30 years, ugh. You clearly don't understand aircraft design and life cycle development too well. For this to happen, Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, and Bombardier would be working pretty hard on this stuff right now. The 787 was in development as the 7E7 about 20 years ago, and just now coming online.

Will it happen someday? Probably. Will it be something that even remotely affects me and my career as a 30 something pilot? Nope.
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You should see how people driven cars do here during a blizzard. With the influx of Californians and other assorted flat landers, you should see what happens with just a few inches.

I think I'll make it to retirement, with just over 20 years to go, but there is no way my four year old would make it to 65.
 
gne in prog said:
That's a marketing campaign. The general public doesn't perceive pilots as sitting with a cold stare waiting to sacrifice their own life if only to save one person under their charge the indignity of light chop. They see pilots as the article reads, a few minutes of flying, push a button, read us weekly over a cup of coffee. How many "these things land themselves" comments have you heard?



You should see how people driven cars do here during a blizzard. With the influx of Californians and other assorted flat landers, you should see what happens with just a few inches.

I think I'll make it to retirement, with just over 20 years to go, but there is no way my four year old would make it to 65.
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Yeah, I'm from Colorado originally. It's baffling to watch the idiocy of transplants driving here on even a mild snow day. Oddly, I saw the same thing in FL when I lived there for a few years... The natives handled crazy downpours just fine. The idiots that just moved there (easily identifiable as the ones with their hazard lights on during inclement weather) crashed even in straight lines.

As far as your four year old, who knows what those kids will see. Could be an amazing future with limitless, pollution free energy and opportunities. Or maybe an apocalyptic earth, destroyed by pollution and the squandering of resources. Either way, a career as a pilot may be the last thing on anybody's mind in that generation.

Also, I really don't get the "these things fly themselves" comments very often. But a lot of the flying I do is in this kind of terrain, so they get it...

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Goonie said:
Sorry, but those are horrible examples.
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No, they aren't because it's the same mental leap. You are willingly handing over control to a autonomous vehicle.

Hacker15e said:
I can make the same counter-argument about the numerous near-midairs, near ground incidents, etc, with large RPA ops (mostly Global Hawk in my experience) mixing it up with normal flying ops at both CONUS and overseas bases.
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And how many of those were caused because the operator or controller messed up as compared to the aircraft doing something it wasn't programmed to do?
 
To be frank I guarantee a computer would do a better job operating the airplane than we could in almost all circumstances. I have seen CA's abort for cautions well above 80 knots (in real life). I've seen CA's in the sim not abort for engine fire warnings well below V1.

A computer needs almost zero reaction time and can make the programmed decision almost instantly, and without error.

That being said how much programming and logic is needed? A couple years after the Hudson incident we were rolling down runway 04 in LGA and along comes this large flock of geese right over time the runway, flying low. We were right around V1 at that time and I elected to continue, but not rotate. We stayed on the ground until we had to rotate as the birds past right above us.

Could a computer make that decision? Of course it could. But it would A) need to be able to see these things, and understand what they are, and B) have that flowchart in its database.

How many times have things like the above happened on a day to day basis? Quite a few across the system.
 
wheelsup said:
To be frank I guarantee a computer would do a better job operating the airplane than we could in almost all circumstances. I have seen CA's abort for cautions well above 80 knots (in real life). I've seen CA's in the sim not abort for engine fire warnings well below V1.

A computer needs almost zero reaction time and can make the programmed decision almost instantly, and without error.

That being said how much programming and logic is needed? A couple years after the Hudson incident we were rolling down runway 04 in LGA and along comes this large flock of geese right over time the runway, flying low. We were right around V1 at that time and I elected to continue, but not rotate. We stayed on the ground until we had to rotate as the birds past right above us.

Could a computer make that decision? Of course it could. But it would A) need to be able to see these things, and understand what they are, and B) have that flowchart in its database.

How many times have things like the above happened on a day to day basis? Quite a few across the system.
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Yep, but people have a really hard time accepting that computers do a better job. We are REALLY early in the technology era. Imagine what computers will be able to do in 100 years. Of course, after the Artificial Intelligence Singularity, they may exterminate us... So there's that.
 
esa17 said:
And how many of those were caused because the operator or controller messed up as compared to the aircraft doing something it wasn't programmed to do?
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It did exactly as it was told to do, but that's not the story. The story IS the limited situational awareness that the pilot had while operating in the terminal environment (limited by the capabilities of the control shelter and sensors on the aircraft), as well as the limitations of the system in terms of what things the pilot can make the aircraft do and when those commands get executed.

Blind, stupid, and unable to appropriately control your bodily functions is no way to be a successful professional.
 
Hacker15e said:
It did exactly as it was told to do, but that's not the story. The story IS the limited situational awareness that the pilot had while operating in the terminal environment (limited by the capabilities of the control shelter and sensors on the aircraft), as well as the limitations of the system in terms of what things the pilot can make the aircraft do and when those commands get executed.

Blind, stupid, and unable to appropriately control your bodily functions is no way to be a successful professional.
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Inherent system limitations are why the unmanned cockpit is not likely to happen in our lifetimes but the single pilot & GCS based system will be a reality a lot sooner than people in the industry expect.
 
esa17 said:
Inherent system limitations are why the unmanned cockpit is not likely to happen in our lifetimes but the single pilot & GCS based system will be a reality a lot sooner than people in the industry expect.
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One thing people fail to realize is that technological progress has tended to be exponential - human beings tend to think linearly.

I fully expect to have pilotless cockpits a lot sooner than most people realize. Frankly, I give it 15 years, but I'd bet decent money we will see this sort of thing by the early 2030s.
 
Freighters will be first to go pilotless. UPS and FedEx would love to have the technology right now and get rid of us. The saving grace and stumbling block for passenger carriers will be flight attendants. I don't think they want to be spending their career in a speeding metal tube with no one in the pointy end and who will take care of the pax? Just my opinion.

The pax will need someone to cater to them on long haul flights and help them in case of an emergency so they won't be replaced any time soon. So, hug your flt attendant!

Fortunately, my career will be in my rear view mirror when Global Hawks start flying packages!
 
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