Originally Posted by
1201alarm
Do you need reference for the ballpark figure 1 out of 10 million? Google "airbus commercial flight accident statistics" and see 4th generation fatal accident rate which is 0.11 on the million.
Thank you, no, I am well aware of the safety statistics, but thank you for bringing them up.
The safety statistics have got a lot better over the last 50 years.
Lets think about that for a minute.
What has changed over the last 50 years?
Have piloting skills got better?
I don't think you would find anybody who would argue that is the case.
Perhaps better CRM, I will give you that, but overall?
Nope. A huge drop in training levels over the decades. MPL etc.
Do we have more humans in the cockpit?
No, we have lost the Flight engineer.
What has led to the great safety stats then?
Firstly, and by a wide margin, engineering.
Modern commercial aircraft failure rates and backup systems are incredible.
Almost nothing serious ever goes wrong with the airframe. (your laughable example of dual ADR failure just makes my point. When did something so banal become worthy of mention? Of course there were no recommendations! You would have to title them "pilots followed ECAM instructions, flew aircraft with own hands. well done")
TCAS and EGPWS have saved countless lives by stopping humans f@cking up. In most cases humans are still in the loop, but it could be described as automation with human interference. An autopilot link without human interface would be more effective, and is now being fitted to modern aircraft. This is a tacit admission that humans are a negative influence on the effective operation of the systems.
ECAM has had an enormous effect.
I don't think people like yourself have really thought through what ECAM is.
ECAM is a clever way engineers have fooled pilots into thinking that they are solving the problem rather than the aircraft.
Think about it.
The ECAM tells you what to do.
You do it.
The ECAM knows you have done it.
The ECAM tells you to do the next thing.
That
is automated failure management.
It is blatantly obvious that a system that can do that could also do the next stage, which is to do it itself. This would remove the human who is merely an error vector.
This will obviously be the next stage.
Before anybody jumps in and points out that there as instances where you have to do something outside the ECAM, yes, there are and the cards tell you when they are. This is just paper automation. The human is not doing anything other than remembering the instructions. Hardly a case for the human in the system.
ECAM is another way of removing error prone humans from the system as much as possible
because we make so many mistakes.
Originally Posted by
1201alarm
Tourist, although you don't really merit a response, there we go.
I understand that it is difficult for you to be unbiased what with you being a pilot, but there is no need for personal attacks.
On the plus side, there will be manned aircraft still flying for a long time after the first autonomous airliners, so I don't think either of us will be out of a job soon.
I don't like what I'm saying, I just happen to believe it is true. Know your enemy.
Originally Posted by
1201alarm
It is up to the techno geeks to convince some entrepreneurs or investors that they can develop a fully autonomous system that matches 1 in 10 million at acceptable cost, not the other way round.
There we agree.
It doesn't have to be perfect, just equal or better and cheaper.
As usual (always?) in aviation the military will lead the way.
Ever more capable autonomous cargo aircraft have been flying in sandy parts for some years now, following the hoards of baby uavs with a variety of levels of autonomy from limited get home capability to fully autonomous.
Fully autonomous Combat UAVs are the future, with nobody expecting any major manned combat aircraft after the current generation.
Links to these programs are in the previous thread.
BAe have been testing a baby airliner with autonomous systems for just such a market.
That is real money.
The only challenges unique to the civil aviation sphere are certification, legal and public opinion.
The certification/legal challenge is already being spearheaded by driverless cars. They are on the roads right now and the kinks are being worked out now. This will have direct read across and also help persuade the public that autonomous is ok.
I'm quite sure that if you had asked someone 50yrs ago if they would get on a driverless train they would say "hell no!" but here we are.
I think you need to research the difference between correlation and causation
You think that:-
Pilots fly aircraft.
Aircraft have had less accidents.
Pilots must have got better.
I believe that.
Pilots
fly aircraft a lot less than they used to.
Aircraft design and engineering has improved beyond measure.
Systems have been fitted to catch pilot errors, and despite the drop in skill levels, they are doing an excellent job.