Originally Posted by
lucille
Garmin have an emergency autonomous autoland function for certain GA aircraft. It requires no pre-programming of destination and runway choice. Press the button and next thing you know you’re sitting at the end of a runway at an airport the system has chosen, with park brake on and engine shut down.
There is probably no technical reason today why any aircraft can’t be retrofitted with equipment which would allow unmanned operation from gate to gate. Engine start, to shutdown.
I think you’re conflating two separate problems: the first is how to get a light aircraft onto the ground in an emergency situation where the alternative is a certain crash involving injury or death, and the second is commercial routine everyday operation at the highest level of safety achievable, which encompasses that required by regulation. It’s not surprising that a solution is available for the first problem as anything is better than nothing, but I’m sure the legal disclaimer has more than one paragraph. There is no technical reason why I couldn’t build my own car, but it is unlikely to comply with many of the safety standards required to actually operate it on the public highway.
As for emergencies? For the most part we are robots… Fly the aircraft, identify the problem, call for the checklist..etc.
I would agree that for much of routine flying that is the case, but we are there for the times where it’s not immediately obvious, there are external factors and it’s necessary to draw on multiple career experiences to bring the situation to a successful conclusion. “Identify the problem” is often a convoluted and easily misjudged stage which can have adverse ramifications if not done quite right.
Agreed there has been the occasional outlier which required inspirational problem solving by the crew outside the remit of the checklist. You can be sure researchers, designers and engineers are working feverishly to eliminate the likelihood of such unimagined combinations of failures.
Eliminate the “known unknowns” or even the “unknown unknowns”? That is a heady proposition, and almost by definition unachievable.
I’m sure that we will have autonomous passenger aircraft in the future and I think there are several different ways of achieving that. One, by strictly bounding and curating the environment in which they operate, and another by using robust AGI to deliver something that has at least the safety performance of the equivalent human-piloted craft in a real environment full of edge cases.
I think that once 100% reliable, redundant and robust two way data comms can be guaranteed, the era of manned airliners will come to an end. I wonder how close they are to achieving this.
Starlink? They are already demonstrating terminals that work while in motion, so very soon. I don’t see that changing the way the aviation world works in terms of piloting, except HF comms will become redundant. Yay! And I can FaceTweet while over the middle of the Pacific. Double yay!