Originally Posted by
Claybird
I will mention my favorite example one *more* time:
Tell me how a fully automated airplane would deal with the QF32 incident. Then, I MIGHT consider automation without humans.
There are three aspects to this.
1. I don't know enough about the details of this incident to tell you how an automated aircraft would have coped.
Why don't you tell me exactly what an autonomous aircraft
could not have done under the QF32 circumstances?
2. QF32 had an utterly non standard crew. Remind me how many were in the cockpit and their background?
The fact that they coped does not mean that the designed number of average crew, which is how 99% of these flights will be carried out, would have coped so why is it a good example?
3. As I have stated many times, autonomous aircraft will not be perfect.
They will still have "pilot" error caused accidents.
These accidents are likely to be different than human pilot caused accidents.
Black swan events are likely to be a higher proportion of those accidents, since that is the real area where humans still hold an advantage.
It may be that QF32 is an example of where a human pilot would be better. I don't know enough about it.
The vast majority of air accidents are not black swan, they are all too familiar repetitive scenarios.
An autonomous aircraft does not have to be perfect, it only has to kill less people than humans, or kill the same number more cheaply to be worth the effort.
For every QF32 there are 10 serviceable aircraft flown into the ground by humans.