who cares
This is my first post here, after several years. Its long unfortunately.
I am a GA pilot, not commercial. I work in IT as a programmer.
I think the thrust of most of the comments in this thread are misguided.
The question of dealing with unique events, while interesting, is not important.
The real question is will computer pilots increase safety and the answer is almost certainly yes.
Lets look at pros and cons of computer pilots. Read this list and think about fatal accidents over the last 20 years.
Pros:
- they dont get tired
- they dont have wives,children, husbands, pets, medical conditions, financial worries,
which leads to:
- they dont have anxieties
- they are not religious, they do not believe in an afterlife, in fact they do not believe in anything
- they never go the to bathroom, or need to eat
- they do not go to sleep
- they do net get distracted by trivia
- they never forget a checklist item
- they do not suffer from getthereitis
- they dont worry about losing their jobs
- they do not lie
- can can handle 10, 20 30 ... inputs at once without getting confused
- they do maths really well and never make a mistakes in unit conversions
- they never panic
- they never need checks, and additional development can be done offline
- upgrades can be done to entire fleets at once, or over any period deemed sensible
- they double in capacity every 2-3 years
- they are cheap and light
- incremental cost of deployment is zero so scaling is easy
- they dont have sex, or get distracted by pretty/handsome pilots or cabin crew
- they never worry about daughters getting pregnet, or sons becoming drug addicts
- they do not have heart attacks, fainting spells, hangovers ....
- they never forget to feather props, turn off/on fuel pumps....
- they dont need oxygen or heat
- they can compute optimum settings in no time.
- they do not suffer from confirmation bias
- they never get ATC instructions wrong (protocol required but trivial)
This list is endless..
Cons:
- they dont handle strange/unforeseen situations well
- they are not afraid to die
- a flaw in one is a flaw in all
Now for humans:
Pros:
- they can handle strange/unforeseen situations well, but most dont
Cons:
- see list of computer pros and negate them all
In any sensible analysis, the computer wins once it can do the job.
And that is if not today, then real soon.
As for me, I would feel much safer on a pilotless aircraft just like I feel comfortable on a driverless train.
Oh, and despite the fact I love driving my car and would hate to not be able to do that,
I am pretty sure a driverless care much safer than I am. Its annoying, but its true.
Sure, some accidents will occur they maybe could have been prevented by a human pilot.
Who cares, as long as more accidents are prevented because there are no human pilits.
Its about percentages. Get used to it.