Originally Posted by Chronus
"Human factors" has , is , and will always be a factor in all the future accidents. The interface between man and machine will always be a problem".
Absolutely incorrect. Fully automated robot aircraft, without expensive holes cut out all over the airframe, are just around the corner. The airborne pilot is now basically a computer monitor, not long before taking a seat alongside his ATC counterpart.
Contentious, yes, but highly likely.
Hmmm … it must be nice to have such an infallible “crystal ball” at your elbow. Personally, I have no idea about what the next 20 – 50 years of aviation is going to see. Could it include “fully automated airplanes” ?? … sure … it
could but if that does happen I would suspect that the cost of an airline ticket might preclude all but the wealthiest of persons from traveling by air. All that will be necessary to ensure proper and accurate “telemetry” transmissions to and from each airborne airplane and its assigned ground-based “pilot” can only be described as horrendously complicated and commensurately expensive. We just discussed the logic (or the absence thereof) for having telemetric “black box” flight data transmitted to the ground for each airline flight – result – not likely to happen … waaay too expensive. And that is just for one-way transmission of “record-and-send” – who knows what complications would be involved and I’m not going to even guess at what it might take to retain signal priority and exclusivity … after all it just wouldn’t do to have a ground-based pilot command a shallow left bank to maintain course after deviating around a T-storm, and realize that 15 other airplanes also make the same “course correction” because of signal over-ride or some other kind of interference.
To prevent this kind of potential I imagine the brighter minds today could come up with all sorts of potentials – each and every one of which would have to have a “fool-proof” (AND “idiot-proof”) methodology that would ensure such signal failures (over-rides, multiple receipts, fading, etc., etc.) would not – and could not – occur. Yeah, I know … 65 years ago RADAR was a “wet dream,” so maybe there will be a way to ensure the kind of signal sender/receiver individuality that such a system would require … but that, in and of itself, may make the whole idea impractical. Again, even if it may be possible to develop and deploy such a system, it’s not likely that such a system would require only some small addition to the price of an airline ticket! I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for something like this to appear in your local airline operating plan.