Originally Posted by
Its Maui
a) You mean radar vectors? Or are you single-handedly flying your airliner through this busy terminal airspace?
Weather: ATC has the capability to pick up weather using primary radar and guide aircraft safely around it.
Traffic: That's what ATC and TCAS are for.
Malfunctions: Either benign as discussed previously having zero impact on the flight or not benign requiring a non-normal situation and non-normal handling by ATC etc.
Fuel Reserves: That's a binary decision making model that is not complex. Pilots regularly make low fuel situations worse by humming and hawing for too long or being too vague when communicating with ATC.
b) Judgement to continue or discontinue an approach: If only we could come up with some criteria based on aircraft configuration, speed, altitude, bank angle, rate of descent, thrust and deviation from instrument approaches that would help there... Like stable approach criteria in any modern airline. You think a computer can't monitor these things and make a decision here? And you'll come back with what if you're in fire/bomb on board/low on fuel. Again, quite easily programmed sensibly using the same decision making models human pilots currently use.
c) Experience and seasoned human aviators are that way because they have been exposed to numerous decisions and scenarios in their career. If these decisions and scenarios can be codified then what is to stop a decision making model being created based on that experience in computer form? Lower cost will come from not having to let inexperience human pilots make all the same mistakes to get to the position of the wise old aviator.
Triple and quadruple redundancy already exists as a requirement of the regulatory authority.
Why would a pilotless airliner need to significantly add value and safety? As good as a human wouldn't be good enough? Why not?
You are obviously not a professional aviator or an engineer , but merely a spectator without a clue. Armchair professionals like yourself are not even aware of the ( shall I quote D. Rumsfeld ) known unknowns , let alone the unknown unknowns related to pilotless commercial operations globally. Keep dreaming , but if you want to add constructively to the topic , may I suggest that you educate yourself on the various talking points that you failed to convince any of us on. Next you`ll be espousing flying cars for everyone and cities on Mars. That stuff is 50-100 years away.