"Pilotless airliners safer" - London Times article

[slast]

Today's Times newspaper carries a substantial opinion piece by Matt Ridley with the subtitle "Irrational fears about pilotless planes must eventually give way to the evidence that they are better and safer".

This isn?t your captain speaking. It?s a robot | The Times (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4283270.ece)
For those who can't get access to the article I'll post the text separately.

Ridley is quite a respected "right wing" journalist and former banker, author of books under his nickname of "the Rational Optimist".

I have sent a response to the Times shown below, this is written for the general readership and almost certainly won't be published......



"Matt Ridley normally makes sense, but he has a peculiar blind spot about automatic systems, especially in aviation. He says events likes Sullenberger's Hudson ditching are rare compared to "human error" catastrophes. But the action of pilots regularly prevents many completely unforeseen "human errors" becoming newsworthy catastrophes. Aircraft are astonishingly complicated physical machines exposed to extremely complicated conditions. Does he think they design, build, certify, and maintain themselves? Every aspect of their existence and operation involves humans on the ground, who are just as fallible as pilots. The 2010 Qantas A380 uncontained engine failure and 2008 BA B777 double engine failure are only two among the most spectacular of a catalogue of "impossible" events, the vast majority of which have never reached Ridley's attention precisely because pilots succeeded in preventing them becoming catastrophic.

It's relatively easy to remove humans in ground transport: in the worst case it just stops and you get out. Try that in an aircraft and see what happens. Ridley might wonder why no airliner has automatic takeoff, which is truly trivial compared to landing. Simple: there's no business case as no-one wants the product liability for the consequences of events that definitely WILL occur but in combinations that were never anticipated.

When Northern Rock so devastatingly crashed into the financial depths, like dozens of other financial institutions, Matt Ridley himself was at the controls. Banking deals only with abstract "stuff" and remains firmly bolted to the ground, and we all know just how wonderful the entire banking system, with its almost unlimited reliance on computers, has been in the last decade.

Pilots are human and they do make mistakes - just like every other group in a highly complex industry. The airline industry needs to do a lot better at balancing the combination of automation and on the spot human intervention. Unfortunately, unlike bankers and journalists, pilots rarely survive when they are unable to correct mistakes, whether their own or someone else's. It's a lot more rational to remove bankers from the financial system than consider airline pilots the biggest danger to the public, and Ridley should check his opinions for reality as he so often advises others to do.

[TowerDog]

Well spoken.
Remove the bankers.

[slast]

(Mods: is this OK? Understand if not allowed for copyright reasons.)

Irrational fears about pilotless planes must eventually give way to the evidence that they are better and safer.

The Civil Aviation Authority is concerned that pilots are becoming too reliant on automation and are increasingly out of practice in what to do when the autopilot cannot cope. We now know that a fatal Air France crash in the Atlantic in 2009 was caused by confused co-pilots reacting wrongly when the autopilot disengaged during turbulence. They put the nose of the plane up instead of down.

But there is another way to see that incident: the pilot was asleep at the time, having spent his time in Rio sightseeing with his girlfriend instead of sleeping. When roused as the plane stalled, he woke slowly and reacted too groggily to correct the co-pilots' mistakes. Human frailty crashed the plane, not mistakes of automation.

Human error, or sabotage, also seems most likely (though we cannot yet be sure) to have disabled and diverted the Malaysian Airlines jet that vanished over the Indian Ocean in March. Human action certainly caused 9/11. For every occasion on which a Chesley Sullenberger brilliantly and heroically landed a plane on the Hudson River after a flock of geese went into the engines, there have been many more where people caused catastrophe. Human error is the largest cause of crashes in the sky, as it is on the ground.

That is, I suggest, why we will embrace the inevitability of pilotless aeroplanes at some point in the not so distant future. Already, automated systems are better at landing planes than pilots, even on to aircraft earners: they react quicker. Drones are crashing less often when allowed to land themselves rather than be guided in by ground-based pilots. Even Hudson River heroism could possibly be automated. I confess I am probably an outlier here and that most people will be horrified by the prospect of boarding pilotless planes for a while yet. But I think they will come round.

Driverless ground transport will help to assuage our fears. I took a driverless train between terminals at Heathrow last week, and Transport for London has begun tendering for driverless Tube trains, to predictable fury from the unions. Prototype driverless cars are proving better and safer than anybody expected. It cannot be long before they seem preferable to an occasionally distracted, risk-taking, radio-playing or grandee-teasing taxi driver.

Google's prototype self-driving cars have now covered more than 700,000 miles on public roads with only one accident — which happened when a human took the controls. They may be commercially available after 2017. Testing of self-driving cars will begin on British roads next month.

Getting out of a driverless ear, after a restful journey working and reading, then telling it to park and come back when you need it, would bring the luxury of the chauffeured plutocrat within reach of ordinary people. Driverless lorries on the motorways could be confined to night-time operation, leaving the roads clear for cars in the day.

In the air, small drones are now commonplace and not just in the military. The "Matternet" is a plan to use them to supply the needs of remote areas with few roads in poor countries, leapfrogging poor infrastructure as mobile phones leapfrogged the lack of landlines. Once drones can refuel each other in the air, they should quickly take over (for instance) searches of the ocean when planes or boats are lost — so as to put fewer lives at risk.

The next step would be that cargo planes would fly without human beings aboard. The sticking point will be air-traffic control's reluctance to sanction such planes landing at airports in built-up areas. At the moment, drones and piloted aircraft are kept apart in separate zones. If you live under a flight path it is comforting to know that the planes overhead are piloted by people with every incentive to land safely: with "skin in the game". The existence of a "ground pilot" who can take control of a plane from the ground, as drone operators can do now, would be of little comfort to such people, let alone to passengers on a plane.

But pilots' wages and training costs are one of highest contributors to the cost of flying, after fuel, and if pilotless planes can fly safely for years without passengers, objections to them carrying passengers will gradually fade. An ordinary aircraft is now regularly flying between Lancashire and Scotland with nobody at the controls (though there is a crew on board to take over if necessary). The offspring of a seven-company consortium called ASTRAEA, it uses radar, radio and visual sensors to detect and avoid hazards.

Are we approaching the era when it will be more reassuring to know that there is not a human being in the cockpit than to know that there is? We might find it comforting to know that the cockpit was wholly inaccessible to terrorists and that the machine within it had not spent the night drinking.

It is true, as the CAA has spotted, that we currently have an uncertain mixture of people and machines flying planes, with a danger that the former are getting out of practice and confused. But since accident rates are low and falling, there is no evidence that this partial automation has been a problem, or that going further towards full automation would not help.

Perhaps robotic surgery holds a lesson. Justin Cobb, a distinguished professor of orthopaedic surgery at Imperial College London, tells me that his engineers build into his experimental robots — which carve out, via keyholes, slots in your knee or hip bones of just the right size and shape to fit the necessary implants — what is little more than an illusion of control by the surgeon. The surgeon is allowed to move the tool about, but only within a certain boundary. Beyond that, the robot's software prevents the tool straying.

So an automated aeroplane might allow the pilot to play with the joystick and the switches, but only within limits. Thus can the pilot retain what is left of his dignity and the passenger indulge what is left of his irrational fear of submitting his life to a machine. Imagine a future hijacker or suicidal pilot finding the controls of the plane refusing to obey orders. Like Hal in the film 2001, but in a good way: "No, Dave, I can't let you crash this plane."

So in practice, despite the cost, we will keep pilots around in the cabin even if there is not much for them to do, and surgeons in the operating theatre, farmers in the cabs of tractors, teachers in the classroom, lawyers in the courts, and columnists on newspapers.

[Discorde]

Here's an excerpt from 'How Airliners Fly', first published in 1997:

<<Although subsonic cruising speed has reached its natural limit, navigational efficiency is still advancing. Computers in Air Traffic Control centres and in airliners themselves allow more productive use of airspace as the density of traffic in the sky steadily grows. One likely development is greater direct control of flights from the ground, rather than by spoken radio communication between pilots and controllers as at present, with its attendant potential for misunderstandings, especially when communications are in English between participants for whom this language is not the mother tongue.

It is unlikely that complete control from the ground will ever be achieved, however, because there will always be occasions when problems can only be resolved with the judgement of a human mind in the flight deck, such as the necessity to deviate from the planned flight path in order to avoid hazardous weather or for technical reasons or to reconfigure aircraft technical systems after faults occur. Perhaps a system will evolve where a ground controller sends instructions directly to an aircraft's autopilot but the instruction will not be executed until the human pilots permit it.

Would one pilot alone on the flight deck be enough if Air Traffic Control were 'flying' the aircraft? It is likely that one person could handle the workload during normal operations. But suppose the human pilot considers it necessary to intervene. Who will be there to assist him or her, and more importantly, to confirm or query his or her judgement and to monitor his or her actions? Perhaps as long as there are airliners in the sky there will always be a case for at least two humans in the flight deck.

Again, will our future pilots be able to fly their aircraft without the assistance of autopilots and computers when necessary if they never get the chance to practise these skills during normal operation? A related factor is that a pilot whose job is merely to watch the aircraft fly itself is unlikely to be as well motivated as one who can get his or her hands on the controls now and then. Designers of future aircraft and airline managers must address the issue of how much and under what conditions pilots should be allowed, or indeed encouraged, to fly manually and without guidance systems. It is likely that compared to a mere aircraft monitor, a skilled, motivated pilot will always make a greater overall contribution to flight safety.>>

[Superpilot]

A truly pilotless commercial jet aircraft is pure fantasy. As has been stated before the complexity required to ensure a safe flight from A to B is immense. It's not a limitation of computers (they can do anything you tell them and very fast). Rather, it's man's inability to be able to program a computer which takes into consideration all known and unknown variables. We can't predict the weather accurately and we can't accurately program unforseen events despite the pseudo science field of "artificial intelligence". Thus no safety expert worth his salt would ever sign of such a design.

It's a human trait as we advance with technology to achieve more and more with less effort. All industries employ automation and some go to greater lengths then what we see in aviation. However, even with this being the case, every automated system that is responsible for the lives of people or which could cause large scale damage if it fails (dam control, nuclear power plants, train signalling etc etc) usually has a minimum of 2 people monitoring it. Again, the computer is not the limitation, it's man and his capacity to program the computer to get it right in all cases! All the time!

This idiot journo is simply singing to the tune of what are a bunch of globalist bandits who want to destroy the middle class. Anybody any where earning a respectable salary needs to be destroyed because it doesn't fit their world vision of a two class system. Whatever nonsense they can espouse which has people accepting that high earning professionals are unnecessary expenses for industry, they will.

[main_dog]

But pilots' wages and training costs are one of highest contributors to the cost of flying, after fuel, and if pilotless planes can fly safely for years without passengers, objections to them carrying passengers will gradually fade.

This is often quoted as a rationale for pilotless aircraft, while in fact -as far as I'm aware- flight deck crew costs only account for something like 3% of an airline's expenditure?

[ETOPS]

can only be resolved with the judgement of a human mind in the flight deck, such as the necessity to deviate from the planned flight path in order to avoid hazardous weather

Having spent much of the last 26 years "handling the big jets" on worldwide operations, I feel the quote I've highlighted points to the sort of problems automated flights will struggle with.

On more than a few occasions I've had to dig deep into my skills and experience over, say, central Africa in order to safely pass through the ITCZ. The passengers would have been unaware of the efforts we were making - apart from the seatbelt sign - and a safe landing was always the outcome.

It will be many years before I feel able to trust such a "pilotless" machine with my safety.

[Superpilot]

I suppose the acid test for this level of automation will be when it is possible for a commercial airliner to be autolanded VISUALLY. :) We are required because we are the ultimate safeguard when circuitory wisdom fails. A billion years of evolution will always be better than the machine it is capable of producing. By definition.

[glendalegoon]

pilotless airliners are safer...40 years of flying here...they are safer only for pilots and the passengers who elect not to fly on them and stay on the ground.

San Francisco created a world class subway system called BART (bay area rapid transit). IT was to be automated with NO drivers. But it didn't work and they had to put human drivers in the trains.

Someone will develop a crewless airliner. But will find out the hardway that it won't work just right.

Oh well. Remember that on the first lunar landing, the automatics were taking the L(E) M to a landing on a crater, Neil took over and landed on a safe spot.

[BBK]

I see from his biography that he was the Chairman of Northern Rock when it had to be bailed out. Perhaps his knowledge of banking is equal to that of aviation. :E

However, he missed two important points. Firstly, autolands are not applicable in lots of situations for all sorts of reasons eg crosswinds, RNAV/visual approaches, defects occurring in flight or allowable items. Which brings me to the second point that if you require someone that needs the skill to land the aircraft manually then you have to train them and keep them current so they may as well be in the aeroplane. Never mind the whole host of day to day stuff that we deal with eg traversing the ITCZ being a good example as mentioned above.

The lesson surely of AF447 is that when the aircraft is degraded in some respect then it is quite likely that old fashioned piloting skills are required to ensure a safe outcome.

[poorjohn]

Out of curiosity (as opposed to making an offensive point) how is it that the USAF Global Hawk fleet operates without making "headlines"?

[DaveReidUK]

This is often quoted as a rationale for pilotless aircraft, while in fact -as far as I'm aware- flight deck crew costs only account for something like 3% of an airline's expenditure? I'd say that 3% sounds rather low, but supposing it's correct, most airlines would bite your hand off at the prospect of saving 3% of DOCs.

Though it's not that simple, of course.

[slast]

"the USAF Global Hawk fleet operates without making "headlines"?"

A very interesting question! I would much like to see exactly what the accident/incident rates are for UAVs on a like-for-like basis, but I doubt the miltary are going to provide them......

[perantau]

Aircraft manufacturers will build if airlines pay for them. Airlines will order if it brings them benefit & they can sell tickets on them. But will Joe Public get on board?

I reckon skipper-less boats before planes.

[PENKO]

Does the global hawk not have a pilot on the ground? It is not 'pilotless'.

And wasn't one hacked by the Iranians, making a soft landing in 'enemy' territory?

[MATELO]

Would a pilotless aircraft have the "situational awareness" to decree the best call for an evacuation.

There will be cameras everywhere surrounding the aircraft back to home base, but during an incident the uplink might be corrupt or lost, so who would make the evacuation call ie. front, back, left or right emergency chutes ??

[kcockayne]

Superpilot

Like your last paragraph. Completely in accordance with my own thoughts.

Good article.

[Wyler]

Speaking as SLF....no way, not in a million years would I get on a pilotless airliner.

Game over cos no customers, no deal.:=

[waco]

..............ahhhh the nashing of teeth by the aeronautical luddites......

Its going to happen.........get over it. Maybe there might still be someone sat at the front but they are only going to get paid £ 3 10 shillings and sixpence a fortnight........

You know it...I know it !

[Ancient Observer]

I trust that Mr Ridley will be an early volunteer to land at, say, Cuzco, in a pilotless plane in the late afternoon.

[Heathrow Harry]

"A billion years of evolution will always be better than the machine it is capable of producing. By definition"

nonsense - any 2 bit calculator can run rings round your mathematical capabilities, any car can travel faster than you can run, any light bulb is better than you rubbing sticks together

[B Fraser]

Given the choice, I would rather have two chaps or chapesses up front who fly real stick and rudder aircraft at the weekend.

[Superpilot]

nonsense - any 2 bit calculator can run rings round your mathematical capabilities, any car can travel faster than you can run, any light bulb is better than you rubbing sticks together

Not nonsense. "Capability" does not only equal speed and performance. A computer is dumb yet impressively fast and efficient. It can do what we can do only much faster. Thus, it can solve the same problems we are trying to solve, only much faster. By definition, it cannot be superior to the human mind, because the entire concept of computing is enveloped within the limitations of the human mind (who built them?). I speak as someone who has had a career in developing automated solutions for industry. Anyone with even a semi-pro background with programming will appreciate my comments.

[RAT 5]

Even Starship Enterprise with all its bells & whistles had Capt Kirk, Mr. Zulu and Spocky to manage the office. They did not just strap in, push the TOMTOM button then go to sleep for a few days an wake up in required destination. Pilotless a/c would kill the Greek island holiday market. These are the rantings of a bystander who has a limited view over his subject. If he thinks that everyone flies only between major autoland airports, in calm air with no weather, no diversions, no snags etc, then he is in cuckoo land. Technically it might be possible from LHR to Sydney with ground control monitoring the flight and being able to takeover and manipulate the a/c from the ground; even carry out QRH items. But we all know Murphy is alive and well and lurking in the dark corners. QRH's are used because something has malfunctioned. Who's to say the down-link telling the ground pilot there is a problem will function, or that the the up-link with the solution will function. Electrons have a tendency to migrate without warning. Atmospheric effects can affect the signals. Oops! Try Samos or Corfu at night sitting in an armchair in NATS.
Can he really believe what he spouts? Perhaps he should have listened to Eisenhower instead of MOL.

[main_dog]

I'd say that 3% sounds rather low, but supposing it's correct, most airlines would bite your hand off at the prospect of saving 3% of DOCs.

Though it's not that simple, of course.

Well, I don't know the specifics for pilots, but the entire staff costs for my largish southeast Asian airline accounted for 17% of total operating costs last year. Considering only about one out of every eight of our staff are pilots, but that their retribution/training cost is typically higher than average, I would be surprised if our pilots accounted for more than 4-5% of our costs. Just a back-of-the-fag-packet calculation of course.

Compare that with 40% of total operating costs going towards fuel, 14% for overflight/landing charges, 8% for maintenance, and pilots begin to look relatively cheap. I suspect most pax wouldn't really notice a 4% reduction in ticket prices. They would sure notice the first headline announcing that a remotely piloted/autonomous passenger airplane had crashed killing everyone on board...

[joema]

His statement was "at some point in the not so distant future" -- that is the problem, combined with system-wide (not just aircraft) redundancy and reliability requirements for safety-of-life mass transport.

In narrow cases unpiloted human transport is possible now. The once-planned space shuttle replacement VentureStar would have been unpiloted yet passenger carrying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VentureStar Likewise the air-breathing Skylon space plane (if ever built) is planned for unpiloted but passenger-carrying operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylon_(spacecraft)

However those are highly specialized cases, built in very small numbers, where any needed degree of engineering and redundancy can be added. They were planned from the very beginning for unpiloted operation. Airliners were not.

Besides the aircraft themselves it would almost certainly require complete and reliable NextGen deployment. That itself would have to be re-engineered for safety-of-life unpiloted transport. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transportation_System

It would require total rethink of flight control and navigation redundancy and reliability. Existing planes could not be software upgraded. Today if you lose redundancy during an autoland, the pilot can take over. If there's no pilot, the entire system must be more robust and have deeper, better-tested redundancy. The space shuttle flight control system was quintuple redundant, and it only carried volunteers.

It would likely *first* require a gradual transition to single-pilot operation over many years, first in non-passenger cargo operations, while carefully analyzing the results. Then would come very limited test cases of "no pilot" operation for cargo, where a minimally trained backup pilot would be available. As experience was gained that feedback would refine the aircraft and air transport systems needed to safely support broader unpiloted commercial operations.

Only after the data from early steps in non-piloted cargo transport was available and understood would similar steps be stared for passenger service. It would be very slow and gradual.

I can't see it happening for 50 years or more. It's not in the "not too distant future".

[RCav8or]

Just another SLF here saying hell no as far as my ever flying on a crew-less airliner, but then at my age (70) I'm sure I'll never be faced with that choice:ooh:

I'll put my money on better automatics and their integration with the human pilots.

I was very pleased to learn while watching an inflight demo of the B787 autopilot capabilities being demonstrated by Boeing test pilots. One point that .
I found interesting, was that the 787 autopilot can lose all airspeed input in the case of blocked pitot tubes and not drop out, but rather revert to pitch and power rather than hand the crew a box of rocks. To my mind, this sounds like a good move on Boeing's part.

Hey, I only fly toy airplanes, so what do I know:)
Pete

[Super VC-10]

OK, Nobody show that article to MOL!

[victor tango]

"Pilot-less aircraft because they are safer and we dont trust human beings"

Who programmes the computers to do this monumental job?

HUMAN BEINGS:ugh:

[jimjim1]

@Superpilot
"A truly pilotless commercial jet aircraft is pure fantasy."

I think you will find that will turn out to be incorrect within a few decades.

It seems inevitable that driverless cars will shortly be with us and indeed I predict that eventually we will not permit cars to have drivers due to the (very likely vastly) superior safety record of the driverless ones.

Thus accustomed to automated vehicles, air travelers will I feel accept pilotless aircraft when their safety record demonstrates that they are significantly safer than the piloted version. I guess we will start out with cargo. It seems certain to me that this will happen in a time scale of decades.

@Superpilot
"singing to the tune of what are a bunch of globalist bandits who want to destroy the middle class."

That is of course a political question. In the UK and USA for example lower earners are getting a good kicking and have been since about 1980. In the UK I think the median wage is about £24,000 a year, that is half of all earners earn that or less. My guess is the squeeze on wages and terms and conditions of employment will march up the income scale and affect more and more people leaving a very small proportion isolated in their wealth on the top of the pile.

A few other countries have balanced the increasing earnings of a relatively few with the tax system, Sweden is an oft mentioned example. This is being strenuously resisted in the UK and USA. No one of course knows what the future will bring but it could get quite bleak for many people unless there is a change in direction.

[jimjim1]

Superpilot
A billion years of evolution will always be better than the machine it is capable of producing. By definition.

[Oh, it's Superpilot again, I wrote much of this before noticing:-) Please accept that I am not setting out to argue with everything you write.]

Errr, no.

What if a machine was designed that was equal to human intelligence. Then you make a faster one. Would that be more intelligent?

Ray Kurtzweil writes popular books on topics like this. He is no fantasist having invented the electric piano and turned it into a huge business[1]. He has many other interests. An Electric piano is a device that sounds very, very like a real grand piano and it was not at all easy to make.

Ray Kurzweil was recently presented with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Eta Kappa Nu honor, the societies top honor.

He is convinced that machines will be able to be more intelligent than humans in a few decades.

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a 2005 non-fiction book about artificial intelligence and the future of humanity by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil.
The Singularity Is Near - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near)
He uses the term "Singularity" to mean the point in time where computers are as intelligent as humans.

Kurzweil- It all started with Ray (The Kurzweil Music Story) - YouTube
10 minute history of Kurzweil Music Systems. Fascinating, I had never seen this before, thanks Superpilot for prompting me to find it. Didn't know Stevie Wonder was the instigator. Mr Wonder was a user of Kutzweil's reading machine for the blind.

Ray Kurzweil: The Coming Singularity - YouTube
7 minutes - Ray Kurzweil: The Coming Singularity (2009)

How To Create A Mind: Ray Kurzweil at TEDxSiliconAlley - YouTube
21 Min. How To Create A Mind: Ray Kurzweil at TEDxSiliconAlley
Quite poor sound but managable.

Day 1 - Part 1/2 - The Jeopardy Watson Challenge - YouTube
Day 1 - Part 1/2 - The Jeopardy Watson Challenge (2011) - 3 x 20 min shows
This is a complex, cryptic TV word game that I can't play at all.
IBM built a machine that beat the best human players. The humans are stunning. The questions were sent as files.

Three years after 'Jeopardy,' IBM gets serious about Watson (http://www.cnbc.com/id/102069981)
Where IBM are taking Watson now.

IBM Watson: The inside story of how the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer was born, and what it wants to do next - Feature - TechRepublic (http://www.techrepublic.com/article/ibm-watson-the-inside-story-of-how-the-jeopardy-winning-supercomputer-was-born-and-what-it-wants-to-do-next/)

Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence (http://www.kurzweilai.net/) is his Artificial intelligence web site.

[1] Kurzweil Music Systems is a company that produces electronic musical instruments for professionals and home users

[Herod]

The caption to the picture says "The 2009 Hudson River heroics could have been performed by a machine". OK, how do you programme a machine for "Ooops, we've just lost both engines. We can't turn back, we can't make Teterboro. I know, let's ditch in the Hudson"? It wasn't just Sully's flying skill that saved the day, it was his HUMAN decision-making.

[MG23]

It seems inevitable that driverless cars will shortly be with us and indeed I predict that eventually we will not permit cars to have drivers due to the (very likely vastly) superior safety record of the driverless ones.

Like nuclear fusion, driverless cars have been shortly about to be with us for as long as I remember. GM were making movies about the delights of driverless cars in the 50s, and I'm sure I remember a demonstration of one on the BBC in the 70s.

If we can't make an autopilot that won't throw up its hands and give up in a situation like AF447, we're a heck of a long way from a driverless car that can operate in any but the most contrived and controlled of conditions.

[aterpster]

I trust that Mr Ridley will be an early volunteer to land at, say, Cuzco, in a pilotless plane in the late afternoon.

With lots of TRW around.

[TeachMe]

SLF speaking - Since when does my ticket NEED to get 3% cheaper (assuming figure above is correct)? What I pay for a ticket rarely has much to do with the actual operating costs of the flight (remember that thing about how much it costs to paint the hall). I would be a lot happier with fair pricing on all flights than 3% saved with no flight crew.

Plus, the technology and pilot on the ground to intervene if needed will still cost 1.5%, so the savings is not even 3%.

As for the comment on the BART system, I do not know about it, but driverless trains are now proven tech. They have been in Vancouver since 1986. I have no problem with diverless when the variables are minimal and problems just result in safely stopping where you are. Trains OK, cars maybe, ships perhaps, planes no.

[MG23]

He is convinced that machines will be able to be more intelligent than humans in a few decades.

AI is something else that's been 'a few years away' for as long as I remember. I'm guessing that, when it eventually happens, it won't come from humans developing software, but from scanning humans brains and simulating them in software.

[Flash2001]

"It's relatively easy to remove humans in ground transport."

It's easy to remove them all right, what is not easy is to deal with the consequences. Just have a look at what happened at Lac Megantic when the human was removed!

[FE Hoppy]

AI is something else that's been 'a few years away' for as long as I remember. I'm guessing that, when it eventually happens, it won't come from humans developing software, but from scanning humans brains and simulating them in software.

There are more than a few posters on here that wouldn't pass the Turing test!

[Lawro]

CPDLC , the first step is here already . The equipment allows ground control of the FMGC , the accept option a software requirement only .

Within the next 5-10 years , the technology will allow a CTC McPilot to watch & smile at the passengers for min wage.

[captplaystation]

I guess I don't have to remind everyone the most obvious title that rhymes with Banker :}

I don't write articles pontificating about his "profession" (even though I, like most people shafted by them, undoubtedly hold a fairly strong opinion)

Perhaps he should think twice before sharing with us his "wisdom" concerning stuff he is clearly inept at forming a rational view of.

[kcockayne]

jimjim 1

Isn't it a fact that if the median wage is £24,000 pa., or let's call it "X", then there will be many more than half of the workforce on less than "X" & only a relatively few "Higher Earners" on "X+".

Ie, if the average is "X" that does not mean that half of wage earners receive above "X" & half below "X". Rather, it means that far more are below "X" in order to weight the average down to "X".

Or, to put it another way, 1 person earning 100,000 & 14 persons earning 20,000 gives you an average pay of £25,333.

A ratio of 14:1 !

[Capetonian]

I would not want to fly on an aircraft not piloted by human beings up front. It's quite illogical to take that stance but I feel that is the way most people feel. Earlier today I asked 8 people I was having drinks with, all currently or previously involved in some way aviation.

They all said 'no way'.

I think there is a lot of resistance to overcome before this becomes commercial reality for passenger carrying aircraft.

[F6HellCat]

Computers are not capable of anticipating more than 3 seconds ahead which is why pilotless airplanes will never happen. And Im pretty sure management is the biggest airliner expense after fuel!

[neilki]

@BBK, exactly. One of the enduring lessons from AF447 is that of a sophistacted automation system giving up & dropping out; leaving the remaining people in a worse off situation than had the automation never been provided. Any fully autonomus system must be failure hardened to orders of magnitude greater than currently economic (note i didnt say possible..)
More automation will come, it allows aircraft to operate more efficiently over more direct routes and at optimum altitudes, but the economics of pilotless aircraft are a very long way away.

[Greenlights]

Funny coz, AF477, actually, proved that automation did not work at first...

but one thing I am sure :

the day, the automation will be less expensive than pilots, then for sure they will replace them.

it's all about money... not about pscyhology of passengers, safety or any others "excuses".

[Chronus]

Drake`s Golden Hinde weighed in at 300T displacement with a crew complement of 80 men.

Today a ultra large crude carrier weighs in at 440,000DWT and has a crew of 20-30. The biggest container carrier is 18000TEU with a 165,000DWT and a crew of 13.

We all know that given the economies of scale offered by wide bodied aircraft the maginificent Concorde was a still birth, but kept alive more for political reasons than anything else.

We all know why the Titanic and Costa Concordia went down.

In a world driven by commercial exigencies there can be no room for romanticism. I am afraid the future will be dictated by bankers and financiers, as it always has been and will always be.

[evansb]

Passengerless airliners safer - Daily Telegraph

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/World_Cargo_DC-10_interior.jpg

[jimjim1]

@mg23
I'm guessing that, when it eventually happens, it won't come from humans developing software, but from scanning humans brains and simulating them in software.

That is precisely what Mr Kurzweil says is being worked on. He estimates that the reverse engineering will be complete in 2029. I think this is based at least partly on the rate at which the resolution of brain scanning is improving. He says that a great deal is now known about the architecture of the brain.

I don't understand it myself of course but he is quite a convincing character, essentially being an engineer. I have been watching few hours of his stuff on youtube:-) He has not yet set of my bulls**t detector.

The big thing that is very, very hard to grasp is that the rate of development of new stuff is accelerating and that there is no end in sight to that acceleration. Setting aside for the moment the religion of peace of course.

More Kurzweil.

Authors@Google: Ray Kurzweil - YouTube

[Alsacienne]

Once upon a time ... not too long ago, certainly in my youth .... lifts had human beings employed to open and close metal gates and to press buttons to set in place the machinery necessary for the lift to move between floors.

This is now a bygone era, and may well make younger members of this forum snigger at the very idea.

So maybe, just maybe, the idea of a plane flight with no human on the flight deck is not so far-fetched after all ...

[Hotel Tango]

So maybe, just maybe, the idea of a plane flight with no human on the flight deck is not so far-fetched after all ...

Absolutely, it will happen one day for sure. Future generations will evolve trusting such technology. Thankfully I shall be long gone before it does happen though!

[MG23]

So maybe, just maybe, the idea of a plane flight with no human on the flight deck is not so far-fetched after all ...

It will happen: as someone said up above, spacecraft are moving to full automation as computers are better at flying them than humans, and Buran already demonstrated that capability years ago, even with Soviet-era computers.

But spacecraft don't have to fly in bad weather, or in a sky crowded with other aircraft. Replacing pilots in those conditions won't happen any time soon, just like cars driving themselves around a race track doesn't mean driverless cars are coming to the High Street any time soon. They'll begin with better and better adaptive cruise control on the highways, and progress from there, rather than suddenly appearing in the car showrooms with no steering wheel.

I was watching a DVD a while back with old documentaries about the postal service and banks, showing how money moved from one account to another when you mailed a cheque. The number of people involved in that process, from collecting the mail to updating the bank records, was enormous, compared to the number now required to make an online payment.

[Big Pistons Forever]

UPS has said they plan to start flying pilot less freighters on transpacific routes by 2025. This will pave the way to automated ground controlled flights with a "safety" pilot to take over if something goes wrong which will eventually lead to the elimination of any pilots.

It is inevitable, the only question is when. My guess by 2035 it will be the norm for long haul over ocean and by 2040 it will be the norm for all sched airlines.

As for passenger reluctance, dream on. If the pilotless airline is 10 dollars cheaper than the one with pilots, their airplanes will be full and the other one will fire the pilots or go bankrupt.......

[MG23]

As for passenger reluctance, dream on. If the pilotless airline is 10 dollars cheaper than the one with pilots, their airplanes will be full and the other one will fire the pilots or go bankrupt.......

If $10 was all it took to make us pick a different airline, most of them would have gone bust by now. If I'm already paying $1000+ for a ticket, I'm not going to switch to Pilotless Air just to save $10.

But you're right, cargo is likely to be where it happens first. Just like trucks are likely to be where driverless vehicles first appear on the highways, running between truckstops outside cities.

[F6HellCat]

pilotless airplanes will never happen. First of all if its a computer controlled from the ground it can be hacked and someone else can take over control. The pentagon hasnt even figured out a way to stop hackers getting into their servers you reckon some low cost airline whos trying to save 10 bucks is going to figure it out? naaaaah id definitely call their bluff on this one!

[Superpilot]

I guess in many ways I'm being overly philosophical here. Do forgive me, I just can't see a way for man to design a level of judgement and wisdom that exceeds his own (those that do have clearly been brainwashed by Hollywood) and it's for that reason I don't believe it will ever be a better solution overall. Yes ultimately everything will be judged by safety statistics and given a human brain vs computer brain performing repetitive tasks, 99% of the time the computer will win for obvious reasons but that 1% will forever haunt.

If this is the argument for automation then it should be the same argument for computers running the rest of our lives. An automation bubble will form one day very soon where we discover we have very little to live for if computers are doing everything. What is it that makes this world go around at the end of the day? It is the ability to do something someone else can't or won't whilst taking financial reward in the process. What worth will we have as humans if we can't do anything? We certainly can't rely on the state for help! The automation bubble will burst and it will probably burst long before pilotless airliners are a reality. Automation is making great strides in every sector, what's to say the whole idea of flying from one part of the world to another will still be around by then?

[skridlov]

The Myth Of AI | Edge.org (http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-ai)

Jaron Lanier may not have "invented the electric piano" but he knows a thing or two on the subject of what computers are and aren't capable of.

[racedo]

London's Docklands Light Railway has been driverless since it opened in 1987 and in 2013 carried 101 Million people, its accident rate is way way less than rest of London Underground with drivers attached.

UK's Rail Network uses GPS to decide what door needs to be opened and at which station because simply drivers couldn't cope with the sheer variety of station platforms sizes and door which need opening. There is a manual facility in event GPS goes down but rarely used.

I see Pilotless airlines within 20 years and also believe after initial scepticism they will be accepted.

There is the weather issue but believe that Fuel use will allow airlines to slow and wait outside of weather cells with fuel economy better than current position and closer to other airlines also waiting.

It just has an inevitability about it where computers do the work and humans become drones always at leisure.

[ShyTorque]

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a recorded message. Welcome on board this fully automated, pilotless aircraft. We understand that some of you might be feeling a little nervous about this potentially ground breaking, new era of aviation. Please be assured, nothing can go wrong. The aircraft has a full backup facility in case anything should go wrong......go wrong......go wrong.... BEEP!".

"Ladies and gentlemen, we appear to have a minor problem. Our main flight computers seem to have frozen. The backup facility will now be initiated. Could the passenger in seat number A1 open the small panel on the wall directly above the entertainment screen and press CONTROL, ALT, DELETE."

[BBK]

Some people are mentioning the light rail systems as being driverless. Fair enough but these are highly constrained systems and if all else fails they can apply the brakes and stop.

Any plans to go driverless on high speed trains? No? well I wonder why. Anyone want to be in a high speed train without a driver on board.

Back to aviation how about an automated airliner into that free for all known as JFK. Reckon the software can cope with a Canarsie with the ubiquitous tailwind. Ninety degrees off the runway and about 200 feet below profile. Over to you HAL!

Never say never I suppose. Of course some of you have mentioned freighters and it's not like they ever have technical problems like fires on board that would knock out the automation.

How about the cost of the datalink you'd need. Real time and in the middle of the ocean. After all, lose an engine and you need to react very quickly so what's the cost of satellite comms to facilitate that. It's not that I don't think that it's feasible to remotely fly an airliner but just that the resources involved would be MORE than that currently required by having a suitably trained crew. What the FAA and CAA have recognised is that the human is actually more important not less so hence the encouragement to hand fly where possible.

[737er]

Anyone who has flown a large jet on the line for a decade or more knows this guy has a wicked case of cranial rectal inversion.

There isn't a 3 day trip I've flown that didn't involve "saving" automation systems from situations which they couldn't handle. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

50 years? Maybe. Big Maybe. Someday in the far future, well of course. In the meantime this clown, while perhaps being an expert at the automation of pianos, has only demonstrated his complete lack of knowledge of daily line operations and what pilots do everyday to make aviation the safest form of transportation.

[rh200]

Would it be technically possible to have a fully automated airliner, well most likely. Is it practically possible, not likely when you account for all the variables. And there are several tangents to that.

Technology integration and possible investment failure is a line of thought. In fact prematurely introducing a technology before it is mature enough can deal a devastating blow to its image and potentially cripple it for a very long time.

So along these lines. It is one thing testing, its another thing introducing it to the real world. We know for a fact that real world use can bring out all sorts of bugs and faults that should have been foreseen, and others that where not, and could not have been foreseen. Now we don't need to go though a list of aircraft models and faults do we?

The effect is, apart from the general apprehension associated with Jo public in the first place, what do you think is going to happen after the first one or two aircraft inevitable drop out the sky?

Automation on ground vehicles is still in its infant stages, and has troubles. The mining industry is trailing automated haul trucks, and they barely work. We have a long way to go before we have practical automated aircraft.

[TurningFinals]

Personally I can't see myself ever boarding a pilotless aircraft. I want someone up the front who wants to get home as much as I do. Even if they were to perfect the technology, what does the computer do when you're climing out of LaGuardia and lose both your engines at 2700ft. Does it have the decision making ability that will bring you to a safe stop in the Hudson River? Getting aircraft to fly from A to B on a predetermined flight path is all well and good, but what happens when the unexpected happens?

[WingNut60]

You have a point, but not a very good one.
The only doubt here is WHEN!
If not now, then sooner or later .....


You are correct in saying that introducing immature technology would be a disaster.
But the technology is maturing (refer drones) and will, eventually get there.


And undoubtedly, somewhere down the track, the first pilotless aircraft will come to a sticky end.
But that is unlikely to spell the end of pilotless aircraft.
A banner headline saying "pilotless aircraft flies into seawall at SFO" is no more likely to stop people flying than one that says "piloted aircraft flies into seawall at SFO"


I am not arguing the pros and cons - just stating the obvious / inevitable.


As for autonomous trucks "barely working" then I think you would get an argument from Komatsu / Rio / CRA about that.
"... to date, 19 autonomous haul trucks (AHT's) have moved 100 million tonnes of rock in the Pilbara region of Western Australia"


If not now... then when!

[WingNut60]

KCOCKAYNE :


You are quite correct about AVERAGE salaries, both in essence and mathematically.


But your first line is about MEDIAN salaries - not average.
And MEDIAN does mean "half above and half below".

[Massey1Bravo]

I think the vast majority of people here on pprune are totally missing the point. This is actually not a piloted-vs-pilotless aircraft debate.

There will always be 'pilots' in the future, especially on passenger aircraft. However that 'pilot' will also be called the 'purser'

[Standard Toaster]

The caption to the picture says "The 2009 Hudson River heroics could have been performed by a machine". OK, how do you programme a machine for "Ooops, we've just lost both engines. We can't turn back, we can't make Teterboro. I know, let's ditch in the Hudson"? It wasn't just Sully's flying skill that saved the day, it was his HUMAN decision-making.

It's ironic the constant talking about the Hudson landing as an example of human vs machine.
In fact, the landing was highly aided by automation... The protections kicked in several times, and when the plane actually landed on the river, Sully inputs were practically being ignored.

Had Sully been piloting a Boeing, the outcome could have been very different.

Regarding fully automated airplanes, it's not going to happen in the short term... Not that's technically impossible, it's more than possible, but the costs and other factors (liability, when an accident happen, who is liable?) would never justify the adoption in the near future.

Now, it's obvious that in the long term, it's going to happen.

Regards.

[wheels up]

London's Docklands Light Railway has been driverless since it opened in 1987 and in 2013 carried 101 Million people, its accident rate is way way less than rest of London Underground with drivers attached.

The docklands light railway has exactly one variable: speed. The amount of variables involved in flying an airliner to destinations around the world is orders of magnitude higher - there is no sensible comparison.

Reading the Boeing service bulletins in the flight crew operating manual of the 777 I fly is enough to convince me that I wouldn't want to ever fly in a pilotless aircraft - I personally don't think it will ever happen, even though it is technically feasible.

[Standard Toaster]

The docklands light railway has exactly one variable: speed. The amount of variables involved in flying an airliner to destinations around the world is orders of magnitude higher - there is no sensible comparison.

Reading the Boeing service bulletins in the flight crew operating manual of the 777 I fly is enough to convince me that I wouldn't want to ever fly in a pilotless aircraft - I personally don't think it will ever happen, even though it is technically feasible.

And a driverless car, which is more complex in many orders of magnitude than a pilotless aircraft, is already possible. There are some prototypes from several brands (Mercedes and so on).

So, if it's possible to have a driverless car, why can't we have a pilotless airplane, which infinitely less complex?

Regards.

[MG23]

And a driverless car, which is more complex in many orders of magnitude than a pilotless aircraft, is already possible.

You might want to read up on real 'driverless cars', rather than the media fantasy, before you say things like that.

Yes, they can drive themselves so long as the road is meticulously mapped out beforehand, and nothing unexpected happens. But the technology is a long way from being useful on urban roads where the unexpected happens all the time.

I seem to remember that Google cars can't handle rain, either? Not much use in the UK.

[rh200]

6050 It stopped being a real machine when they b@asterized it with Cat engines.

A banner headline saying "pilotless aircraft flies into seawall at SFO" is no more likely to stop people flying than one that says "piloted aircraft flies into seawall at SFO"

Its not about stopping people flying, its about choice and market pressure. The fact is if it was going to happen, it would start as a single model. The first major crash attributable to the automation will have a devastating psychological effect on the punters. Basically they fly on the competition.

Basically the standard to do it may make it uneconomic.

As for autonomous trucks "barely working" then I think you would get an argument from Komatsu / Rio / CRA about that.
"... to date, 19 autonomous haul trucks (AHT's) have moved 100 million tonnes of rock in the Pilbara region of Western Australia"


As for Komatapillars and Rio, 100 million tonne isn't that much. Also don't forget Cat is doing the same thing at FMG and elsewhere. Don't believe all the PR hype, there are significant problems ( the brake parts business is doing well out of it), but the potential savings are that great, it makes it worthwhile.

The point is, if autonomous systems, such as those in haulage in well structured system is having problems, any such system for the general public will be even worse. Throw in aviation and the falling out of the sky scenario, and it becomes even harder.

[dr dre]

There will always be 'pilots' in the future, especially on passenger aircraft. However that 'pilot' will also be called the 'purser'

If we're getting rid of pilots, why not cabin crew as well? Passengers could get food and drink from a vending machine, and be responsible for evacuating themselves in case of an emergency, just like how every Public Transportation bus or metro operates today, even the driverless ones! /s

"... to date, 19 autonomous haul trucks (AHT's) have moved 100 million tonnes of rock in the Pilbara region of Western Australia"

Those trucks operate in a closed environment in a big dirt pit, being stopped to load up with rocks, drive to another location via GPS then dump them. Hardly the same parameters as an aircraft

[Bullethead]

Plenty of pilotless airliners already and with a perfect safety record too! They are all sitting at terminals or in hangars. :ok:

Cheers,
BH.

[arismount]

I don't think it really matters much if at all what workers and professionals think about this issue, it's only a matter of time until it happens, for two main reasons. First, folks like this punditing Gent are in control of our world and when they find a chance to make another buck, it gets taken, no matter how many people get hurt. Second, humanity in general has an unfortunate and innate characteristic, namely that when something becomes possible, it eventually gets regarded as necessary.

[fizz57]

...being stopped to load up with rocks, drive to another location via GPS then dump themPretty good description of certain airlines, I'd say.

[EastofKoksy]

As usual money will determine what happens. Equipment manufacturers have the ear of politicians and finance directors. There is a lot of pressure to install more 'black boxes' because it is claimed they will improve safety, cut costs, reduce emissions, let us all live happily ever after blah blah blah.

Increasing use of and eventual dependency on automation will probably result in jobs being 'evaluated' into a lower skill/responsibility category i.e much lower pay rates. Pilots and controllers will be retained to reassure the public BUT the airlines and ATC organisations will make sure the public are told how much less demanding their jobs are compared with the past.

[WingNut60]

Thanks Fizz ... My thoughts also.


None of this is about whether they can do this right now.
It's whether they will go down that track at some undefined time in the future.
And why there is even conjecture about that I do not know.


The military is working now on getting pilots out of aircraft, though remote operation is likely to become common before autonomous fighters become a reality.
That may be an interim step for commercial aircraft too.
It will all depend on the economic argument at the time that the technology becomes available.


As for haultrucks vs aircraft ... again, no real comparison was implied.
But 15 years ago autonomous trucks were just somebody's crazy idea.
Now they are a reality. Maybe not perfect yet but they're getting there.
The fact that they are in a pit does not mean they use the pit walls for containment.
In fact the manufacturers have had to build some randomness into their tracking to prevent haul roads rutting from multiple loaded trucks all tracking within millimetres of each other.


And truck drivers salaries constitute a very small percentage of total operating costs. But the equipment owners still perceive real advances by getting rid of them.


And if you think that moving 5 million tonnes of rock from one place to another a few kms away (per truck) is "hardly working" then I'm bl...y glad I don't work for you.

[Bobbsy]

Speaking as SLF but one with a background in technology...

Will there eventually be pilotless planes? Maybe.

Will anybody working today be made redundant by such technology? Not you your or my lifetime.

Consider this. Trains have to be the easiest form of transport in the world to convert to driverless. There's no steering, route control is done remotely by changing points/switches, etc. Yet the number of rail lines all over the world that have converted to driver less is still relatively small--and many of those still have a driver on board, just changed to spend most of his time opening doors and such.

The next easiest vehicle to convert to driverless would be the automobile. After all, cars only operate in two dimensions, not three. They're working on driverless cars and debating liability issues but I'm not holding my breath.

So, of all the things a pilot should lose sleep over, I'd say that pilotless planes should be pretty low on the list.

[dr dre]

The military is working now on getting pilots out of aircraft, though remote operation is likely to become common before autonomous fighters become a reality.

That involes combat aircraft in a warzone, not flying mum and the kids to their holidays

Sometimes I get annoyed with pilots who devalue our profession. It's bad enough when members of the public loudly proclaim we just "sit in the cockpit and watch the autopilot fly the plane", but when pilots themselves do it?

I would argue now (and I know this is going to go against the general trend), that the profession of airline pilot is in some respects harder than the "good old days". With more congestion in skies and on the ground, cheaper budgets, tighter turnarounds, huge pressures to save costs and fuel, increased public awareness of our activities through social media, more competition and more complex aircraft, I believe we need our work to be valued more higher by ourselves first.

Patrick Smith is a currently serving airline pilot who hosts the blog "Ask the Pilot"
He writes about the myths of automated airliners with a passion, some links on this are below:

We are told that planes basically fly themselves. How true is this? (http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/)
Cummings and Kelly: More Media Claptrap About Cockpit Automation (http://www.askthepilot.com/cockpit-claptrap/)
Automation and Disaster (http://www.askthepilot.com/automation-and-disaster/)

And this quote from one of the articles:
Pilots too are guilty. “Aw, shucks, this plane practically lands itself,” one of us might say. We’re often our own worst enemies, enamored of gadgetry and, in our attempts to explain complicated procedures to the layperson, given to dumbing down. We wind up painting a caricature of what flying is really like and in the process undercut the value of our profession.

[Piltdown Man]

There are many, many things computers can do better than man. And if an autopilot controlled from the ground flew my aircraft, relegating me to little more than a passenger, my aircraft would probably have been flown more efficiently and more accurately. And probably safer too. Every approach would have been stable and every touchdown would have been in the right place. But we all know there is a 'but' coming... That is apart from the birds I've missed, the three autopilot disconnects, the two lightning strikes that removed chunks of avionics necessary for automatic (and full panel flying) flight, the decisions regarding diversions, the taxiing on icy taxiways, the missing of FOD, people and vehicles on the apron, etc. Banging my own gong, I have improved the ride quality for the passengers, saved time and money by selecting more efficient routes and pride myself on a reasonable number of early departure by working with my colleagues on the ground. Finally, I haven't had six updates of software (bug fixes and "reliability solutions") and I dont really care that CPDLC refuses to work on my aircraft.

When the automatics are better than me, replace me. But never think they will be. That because I'm self programming and generally capable of providing a solution to an unforeseen problem. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have to consider a pension. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure we'll get close to autonomous flight in my life. But this won't happen until we have perfect aircraft systems, airports and weather.

And while we are here, remember that the greedy will try and save a few coppers by out-sourcing the software to somewhere cheap. That will serve them right. Just ask the project managers in charge of large systems how much their 'savings' have cost them. Cheap software is generally nasty software and in aircraft terms, lethal.

PM

[Lawro]

I think it will happen far sooner than people think . One of the security services biggest worries is 'sleepers' being employed by airlines . The minute that happens along with the outcome of the Malaysian crash , the next drunk pilot removed from the flight deck , the general public will be running towards aircraft which can be controlled or overridden by ground based controllers !

[Cough]

We have made this problem for ourselves. Everyday we go to work we strive to give our best and occasionally slip up. Then we write a safety report about the moment and what we did next to correct it.

Thus the aviation regulators have a whole host of pilot errors in their database. They sit there and comment on how many of these rather minor reports that they get so it must of course be safer to remove the pilot for the equation.

The thing they forget is how much intervention we actually do. My jet is reliable, but regularly throws it's toys out of its pram for no good reason.... Thus we intervene rather regularly, but as they don't have ANY statistics to prove any of it, the regulator is only going to come out on one side of this...

[wiggy]

Wheels up made a good point a while back:

Reading the Boeing service bulletins in the flight crew operating manual of the 777 I fly is enough to convince me that I wouldn't want to ever fly in a pilotless aircraft

We are still seeing reports of what could be quite potentially quite serious CPDLC and/or FMC glitches being reported, due to "ghosts in the machine", that could have interesting consequences if there isn't a carbon based life form on board with the ability to intervene. We are a long way from seeing commercial pax aircraft being let lose on their own. It will happen, I'm sure, but not for several decades.

the general public will be running towards aircraft which can be controlled or overridden by ground based controllers !

Um.....no problem there then :ugh:

[Aluminium shuffler]

Pilt, I hope you're selling yourself short - there is no way that an automated or ATC controlled flight is going to be safer or more efficient than many of us manage ourselves - they don't see the short cuts available and don't have the situational awareness or ability to assess performance and options that we pilots have dealing with our one aeroplane, and automatics are not just inflexible but unreliable. I have had many more than three AP disconnects and dozens of FMC failures. Just three nights ago, my autoland lined up with the runway edge just prior to the flare in CatIII conditions and would have stuffed the aircraft into the grass without manual intervention. When the RVRs had dropped so the touchdown zone was below minima, I had to ask for a R/W direction swap to get in because ATC didn't think of it, probably because they can't learn the minima for each and every type they handle. The FMC wouldn't allow the aircraft to descend on the same sector on three consecutive days this week (and I'm sure that is happening every day to others) and almost never gets the descent profile wrong.

So, I'm with you in your assertion that we have to intervene, but I'd dispute how often - I'd say repeatedly on every sector.

[Tourist]

I think you are all delusional.

Various Militaries are already utilising unmanned and autonomous fixed-wing and rotary vehicles at war.

These are point and click UAVs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoCFE8xVhKA

This is orders of magnitude more difficult for a computer than operating an airliner as anyone who has ever operated a helicopter like this knows.

The difficulty level between a vehicle operating in a war zone and one flying airways between airfields with approach aids is astronomical.

The autopilot has been perfectly capable of operating the aircraft to a successful landing since forever. Since then technology has moved into different realms.
Those who say that computers will never beat Sully to land an airliner on the water or fly an aircraft with bad damage like Siux City are exactly wrong. That is exactly what computers are good at. We all know that a 70s airliner consistently flies more accurately and smoothly and economically than a human. Modern fly by wire systems are astoundingly good at working around faults.

http://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/550589-f35-c-first-deck-landing-12.html

Spacecraft have gone unmanned not because space is easier(oh my god the lunacy of that statement!) but because manned is not up to the job.

The airliners you fly are 70s tech, and even then the man is usually just an interference.

We are currently in a transitional phase.

For example.

A malfunction happens.
The ECAM tells us what to do.
It know when we have done it then it moves to the next line.
We are worse than useless. All we can do is mess up and get it wrong.

The sooner they remove the man from that sort of system the better.

Those who think that humans are better in bad weather are even more delusional!
Humans are at their best in VMC because sight is our only valid input when flying. All of our other senses are liable to be spoofed.

A computer can integrate Sight (360degree/spherical) IR, Microwave, radio aid, g, laser, gps the list is endless to find the correct solution. They don't get the leans. The don't get somatographic effects.

Its is a bit like those who are convinced that they are better than ABS breaking in a car.
You are not.
Early ABS was rubbish, but it got better. It is now vastly better than us.

Computers in aircraft are the same.

Don't think I want this to be true, it unfortunately just is.

I got out of flying airliners when I realised thatwas just an interference and went back to flying an aircraft that need me!

Cargo military is already flying unmanned in warzones.

Next I predict USAF Cargo freighters go single pilot. After a few years of exceptional safety next will be civvy cargo single pilot.
Then somebody will take the plunge probably USAF cargo again no pilot.

Before you know it low-cost will dive in.

The manufacturers know it and are spending the money now

http://www.baesystems.com/innovation-rsa/look-no-hands;baeSessionId=5noKtsAQpHXiRooS3dqzL4LxC1jwCKouyUo0QXFdV 7-gYgfak6Wn!1587846731?_afrLoop=1048379532913000&_afrWindowMode=0&_afrWindowId=null#!%40%40%3F_afrWindowId%3Dnull%26_afrLoop%3 D1048379532913000%26_afrWindowMode%3D0%26_adf.ctrl-state%3D19va2aj2vn_4

Don't bury your head in the sand. Every pilot error crash brings it closer.
Asiana must be desperate to get one now.

[Tourist]

Incidentally, Air Traffic are even more ripe for unmanned.
It's crying out for an integrated computerised system. Simple fuel economics will force the hand to avoid all the holding caused buy the system being beyond the capability of a human to run efficiently.

[wiggy]

Those who say that computers will never beat Sully to land an airliner on the water or fly an aircraft with bad damage like Siux City are exactly wrong. That is exactly what computers are good at.

With the benefit of hindsight the computers might handle the mechanics however I'm far from convinced "AI" is anywhere near able to handle the decision making processes that saved lives in both those accidents, and of course not everything is in the ECAM - the BA Triple with the double engine failure probably only cleared the fence/buildings/road traffic in the 27 left undershoot at LHR because the commander made an inspired out of the box decision to reduce the landing flap setting - that's not an action listed in the ECL/QRH.

[qwertyuiop]

Originally Posted by Herod

It's ironic the constant talking about the Hudson landing as an example of human vs machine.
In fact, the landing was highly aided by automation... The protections kicked in several times, and when the plane actually landed on the river, Sully inputs were practically being ignored.

Had Sully been piloting a Boeing, the outcome could have been very different.


Herod,
Can you explain which protections kicked in and how were the inputs being ignored

[joe two]

I am glad you are a tourist

[Basil]

When fully automatic airliners* are demonstrated (difficult) AND passengers are willing to fly in them (easier if the price is right) then we will have them. I think I can safely say that it will not happen in my lifetime.
* Yes, I am aware that some outside the profession think it's all automatic now; it ain't.

A good example of human thought process is a situation where all engines on one side have failed accompanied by drag inducing damage on the same side.
If speed is reduced in level flight to configure for landing then speed will drop below Vmca for the damaged condition and, as power on the live engine(s) is increased, more than full rudder will be required and the aircraft will yaw uncontrollably.
The solution is to configure in the descent from, say, 30nm at 10,000ft HAT.
More than moderate power will not then be required - just don't screw up the final approach :uhoh:
That's only one of any number of scenarios which may give a computer difficulty.

Re the perfectly valid comments about human pilot stuff-ups: more and better training! Ah, but that costs money :rolleyes:

[slast]

The Times letters page lead with my response to Ridley's article this morning, and there were several others on the same lines. They edited out the remarks about bankers and about product liability.

I have just found a paper I gave at the Flight Safety Foundation Safety Seminar in Tokyo in October 1987 (27 years ago!). The conference subject was "Human/Computer Technology: Who's in control?" , and my paper was "Should Technology Assist or Replace the Pilot". This was prior to delivery of the first 747-400. Re-reading it for the first time in probably 2 decades I am frankly amazed by how little I would change.

E.g. early on, "Many aspects of the design of current transports indicate a desire to automate as many "routine" elements as possible, leaving the crew with the task of "managing" the flight and resolving anomalies. Is the next stage to automate response to anomalies (emergencies), whilst "management" is transferred to the ground via data-link?

The basic argument appears to be that we should welcome this as it makes the aeroplane safer, and in essence prevents the crews from making the blunders which are the primary cause of accidents to serviceable aeroplanes. The theme is "prevent the pilot from interfering and everything will be OK" - leading to "and if you can prevent him from ever having a role in it then you will eliminate accidents altogether".

Arguably, ALL accidents in a technical endeavour are caused by human error. Usually when an accident occurs there seems to be some failure by the crew. The crew are the last line of defence: when there has been a failure of design, construction, maintenance, or environmental control agencies, the pilot is usually able to rectify the situation to the extent of preventing a catastrophe; however none of the other parties can normally intervene after the pilot has made an error of similar magnitude. Hence there may be a false belief in the inherent fallibility of crews, compared with a sometimes unspoken belief in the infallibility of engineering and other judgements.

This potentially leads to a serious misapplication of technology, illustrating that when it comes to this conference's question: "Human/Computer Technology: Who's in Control?", the answer might be "People with some Wrong Ideas about what civil transport aviation needs."


Can make it available if anyone wants it - reply or PM me.


Also PS: re infallibility of other parties: just read in today's Times about the NTSB criticism of Boeing / FAA errors in design - manufacture - test - certification of 787 battery system.....

[Hotel Tango]

Incidentally, Air Traffic are even more ripe for unmanned.
It's crying out for an integrated computerised system. Simple fuel economics will force the hand to avoid all the holding caused buy the system being beyond the capability of a human to run efficiently.

Actually, you would be surprised how uneconomical to the user it would be to have a fully computerised ATC system. They've already been working on it for years and still can't eliminate the human element.

[PLovett]

It's ironic the constant talking about the Hudson landing as an example of human vs machine.
In fact, the landing was highly aided by automation... The protections kicked in several times, and when the plane actually landed on the river, Sully inputs were practically being ignored.

Actually, they got in the way and prevented Capt. Sullenberger from attaining the correct nose up angle that is recommended for a ditching. If, the crew had gone through the ditching check-list instead of the double engine failure then the automatics would have allowed the correct angle to have been achieved but without a pilot the automatics would have to know it was going to be a ditching rather than a mere double engine failure.

QF32 got a mention earlier. That was a situation where the crew basically ignored the automated system that was telling them what wasn't working because as quick as the relevant check-list was performed the system told them it had reoccurred. It was eventually decided to work out what was working and make a decision on that information. I cannot see any automated system coming to that conclusion.

There are numerous other examples of where a crew has basically stepped in over the logic of their aircraft systems to achieve a safe outcome. However, eventually there will be non-crewed flights but with people on the ground who can manually intervene when required. Automation and security of communications needs to be much further developed than its current state before that will be achieved but achieved it will be, eventually.

[CargoOne]

Dont get me wrong I really respect Cpt Sully for his exceptional skills and performance but if I recall correctly it is proven that his aircraft would have landed Teterboro (or LGA) if that decision would have been taken immediately and executed right? This kind of decision by human is only possible on "best guess" basis, however computer could calculate it in less than a second having all the data available

[Superpilot]

Statistically computers can perform better given good programming or given extremely large data samples which they can build patterns out of. However, if you are still stuck with the mind-set that computers are more "capable" than the human mind you really ought to learn what the word "compute" means. It doesn't imply an innate ability to do something a human can't. To compute reality (as one would expect a truly automated passenger jet aircraft to do) accurately and successfully you need an interface to the real world. The issue is not with computing power, rather the interface that enables the computing power to be used.

If that interface is unreliable; uneconomical to build and maintain; liable to interference; can be hijacked; breaks when it rains or whatever then you have a fundamental problem in delivering reliable end to end automation. That's what I was talking about when I was saying a billion years of evolution cannot be outdone by something we are going to build, at least in this century.

The arguments involving war machines and UAVs are wrong. They don't carry human payload for starters and are much lighter by comparison. If one of them crashes no big deal, we build more. If people get hurt because they crashed, no big deal they were probably enemies!

Here's an interesting statistic. Today's level of AI has only just managed to mimic the intelligence of a fruit fly and AI is a field being advanced for at least 50 years now. From that is posed a question to the yes brigade, what would you consider to be a safe automated passenger jet? Is it one that can think as well as human (i.e. have the same level of intelligence) or one that can think a billion times faster given the same (known problems)?

Amazing that this just made front page on the BBC: BBC News - Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540)

[MATELO]

Dont get me wrong I really respect Cpt Sully for his exceptional skills and performance but if I recall correctly it is proven that his aircraft would have landed Teterboro (or LGA) if that decision would have been taken immediately and executed right? This kind of decision by human is only possible on "best guess" basis, however computer could calculate it in less than a second having all the data available

Would have landed ??

[OldLurker]

Arguably, ALL accidents in a technical endeavour are caused by human error.Indeed. Perhaps I may go a little off-topic and quote a character of Nevil Shute's:
“Accidents don’t just happen of themselves. ... Accidents happen because men are foolish, and reckless, and negligent, and lazy. Sometimes, because there isn’t enough money for what they want to do. One crash in a hundred may have been because God willed it so. Not more than that.”
— An Old Captivity, 1940

[FakePilot]

Thinking AI will replace the role of the pilot in a system such as today's is simply silly. :p

Seriously, look up AI research in these areas. It's all military (calculated losses ok) or using AI to solve a specific part of the problem.

[Methersgate]

Crew costs are the biggest item in ship operating costs, after fuel. A ship operates in two dimensions and sits still when stopped.

There are no unmanned ships.

[MATELO]

Thinking AI will replace the role of the pilot in a system such as today's is simply silly

AND IS IF BY MAGIC.... A LEADING WORLD AUTHORITY PUTS IN HIS TWO PENNETH.

Professor Stephen Hawking....

...one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence.
He told the BBC:"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."
His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI.
But others are less gloomy about AI's prospects.
The theoretical physicist, who has the motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is using a new system developed by Intel to speak.
Machine learning experts from the British company Swiftkey were also involved in its creation. Their technology, already employed as a smartphone keyboard app, learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next.
Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.

BBC News - Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-30290540)

[Superpilot]

Crew costs are the biggest item in ship operating costs, after fuel. A ship operates in two dimensions and sits still when stopped.

There are no unmanned ships.

Excellent reality check :ok:

Thank you

[slowjet]

Got in here a bit late and apologies if already mentioned, but, I love the robot pilot that exhorts everyone to sit back and relax ; "Nothing can go wrong". click, "Nothing can go wrong", Click, "Nothing can go wrong", click.......................yeah you get it Great thread and we professional pilots know it will never happen. But, headlining stuff sells books and articles. That's all he was after. Relax chaps, I recall my Dad telling me that automation was fantastic, "When you become a pilot, push a button & your seat comes out, push a button & your control column comes out, push a button & the Hosty comes out, push the hosty & your teeth come out !" . Geeez, he was right.

[Herod]

qwertyuiop, My original post was. The caption to the picture says "The 2009 Hudson River heroics could have been performed by a machine". OK, how do you programme a machine for "Ooops, we've just lost both engines. We can't turn back, we can't make Teterboro. I know, let's ditch in the Hudson"? It wasn't just Sully's flying skill that saved the day, it was his HUMAN decision-making.

The bit about automatic systems was inserted by another poster, with whom I do not agree.

[ahdguy]

Bottom line is there will be pilotless passenger aircraft in the next 20 years. As much as you say "who would want to fly in a pilotless aircraft", the fact that people are willing to be hearded like sheep and cramed into a cheap low cost carrier fighting and scrumming for a seat, all to save $5 is all the evidence you need for the cost reduction.

[Faire d'income]

It is ironic that author of that article uses AF447 as his main argument for pilotless aircraft.

How were the automatics getting on before they disconnected themselves and forced the hapless F/Os to get involved?

[joema]

I think you are all delusional.

Various Militaries are already utilising unmanned and autonomous fixed-wing and rotary vehicles at war....This is orders of magnitude more difficult for a computer than operating an airliner...The difficulty level between a vehicle operating in a war zone and one flying airways between airfields with approach aids is astronomical.

You said An *unmanned* military vehicle vehicle. Yes that can be done, in fact could be done years ago.

The topic is airliners. At any moment there are probably 5,000 IFR flight aloft in the US alone, maybe carrying 250,000 people. The challenge of developing an unpiloted airliner with sufficient redundancy for passenger operation is huge. Then you must integrate that into the airspace, presumably with many (eventually hundreds or thousands) of unpiloted airliners.

If a military drone crashes in a war zone -- tough luck. If an airliner (piloted or not) crashes, that's bad news.

The challenge is not getting one unpiloted airliner to fly a demonstration route with a safety pilot monitoring. The challenge is developing the entire aircraft and ATC system with sufficient redundancy and proven safety for all conceivable conditions. That is a gigantic challenge -- as far beyond any military drone as Everest is above the plains.

[Tourist]

Joema

I don't think you quite understand the relative difficulties involved.

That Blackhawks is flying low level over unknown terrain and picking a unplanned route to a landing site that it is surveying itself before landing.

That is absolutely extraordinary.

Flying an airway to an instrument landing is easy. TCAS RA currently uses a man in the machine but there is no reason to, in fact I know for a fact that one major British Airline has worked out that more than 50% of TCAS RA actions carried out by their pilots have been erroneous. A computer would not make those mistakes.

Going on about the Air France Crash misses the point entirely. That aircraft was not designed to be pilotless, so did not carry systems designed to fly without them.
That generation of aircraft works on the principle that a pilot will sort it out. They totally failed to.
An modern integrated computer system would never have got confused in the first place. Losing only pitot info would be trivial.
People seem to think that the systems in an Airbus are in some way modern. Your average KingAir cockpit is light years ahead nowadays, and both are a century behind an iPad.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4

The technology in these quad copters is now so cheap and light it can be put in throwaway toys. They are able to sense each other and their surroundings and work in formations without human input. If you cannot see how this relates to airline flying and that they are light years ahead of human abilities then ask the red arrows how hard they have to work to accomplish similar but simpler formation tasks.

[Tourist]

Incidentally, I am a military helicopter pilot as well as an airline pilot and I can tell you the relative workload of flying a low level route and approach to an LS at night (the trial in the video is in daylight for the stby safety Pilots not the aircraft. It makes no difference to the computer!)is vastly more work than flying even an old school airliner from A to B

[ve3id]

For those who would say aeroplanes would be better off flying by computer (and I am sure there is none here), I would urge you to read the writings of Professor David Parnas.

Dr. Parnas was the man who finally convinced Ronald Reagan to drop his 'Star Wars' idea because, and I quote: "it would be impossible to write an application of sufficient quality that it could be trusted to prevent a nuclear attack"

The same situation is true in an aeroplane. It is not the computers that we need to worry about, for they are triplicated (save the possibility of a Byzantine failure) but the ability of our programmers and software engineers to accurately envisage and write software to handle all possible failures.

So what we need is a group of pilots with 20,000 hours of experience that want to go through six years of University education to become software engineers. Then we might be 99% sure of catching all the possible combinations of holes in the Swiss cheese.

[wiggy]

Tourist

Incidentally, I am a military helicopter pilot as well as an airline pilot and I can tell you the relative workload of flying a low level route and approach to an LS at night (the trial in the video is in daylight for the stby safety Pilots not the aircraft. It makes no difference to the computer!)is vastly more work than flying even an old school airliner from A to B

I don't think many of us would disagree with that, I certainly wouldn't...but that still brings us back to who/what handles any decision making processes involved....

[Tourist]

The one thing that humans are currently better than computers at is the totally new situation.
That is unlikely to change.

The question is how many of the world airline crashes are currently caused by something new?

Most are caused by the same old mistakes and failures.

What computers are exceptionally good at is following instructions without error.

ie, if A happens then do B

You can program them all to be brilliant.
Humans have the good (Sully) the bad (Air France) and the ugly (Asiana)

Once a mistake has been made once, it can be programmed to not happen again.

Wetware does not have that benefit.
Every generation needs to be trained and make the same mistakes along the way.

Computers will make mistakes.
Airliners will crash.
They don't have to be perfect to make it worthwhile, they just have to be better than humans.

Incidentally, people talk about the Sully flight or the BA 777 as if they are good examples of why you need a pilot but actually they are perfect examples of where a computer would be better.
A computer can be programmed with glide profiles whereas a human is learning on the job for the very first time. A computer can fly accurately a perfect angle of attack. It can have the data available instantaneously as to whether it is more advantageous to raise flap or not at a particular height. Exactly when to flare with the engines off. Exact distance from the stall. It knows the exact distance the current glide angle will give it before touchdown. etc etc etc.
A computer can carry out enormous numbers of tasks simultaneously. It can do the ditching checks at the correct moment.
It will not get excited or flustered.
It will perform the same every time.

Computers are used in space vehicles now not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

[Tourist]

wiggy

That helicopter is making the decisions for itself.

[MG23]

Computers are used in space vehicles now not because it is easy, but because it is hard.

More like they're used because a lot of maths is involved, but the maths itself isn't particularly hard if you have the time to do it. Buzz Aldrin could do orbital rendezvous with a sextant, but a computer could do it faster and more easily. The AGC landed the Apollo 11 LEM on the Moon with only a few k of RAM and a CPU with less than 1% of the power of a modern mobile phone, but it couldn't see the crater it was about to land in. The shuttle computers flew the re-entry on most missions because hitting a runway in a glider from 15,000 miles away was... tricky... but it couldn't manoeuvre around other traffic in the air. And Columbia might have been lost on the first test flight if no humans were on board, because the shuttle's hypersonic performance was programmed wrong and the crew had to fly part of the re-entry manually.

One of the reasons the SpaceX Dragon is berthed on the space station rather than docking by itself is the proven low reliability of automated docking systems... something that never prevented a manual shuttle docking.

[Tourist]

Pilotless airliners will have whole new failure modes and accidents will happen, but think of all the failures that will be consigned to the past.

No more drunk pilots.
Bottle to Throttle: A Short History of Drunk Pilots - Businessweek (http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-08/bottle-to-throttle-a-short-history-of-drunk-pilots)
No more Greek Airliners flying around with Hypoxic pilots
Helios Airways Flight 522 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522)
No more vestibular/somatogravic crashes
Crashed 737 pushed into dive during go-around - 11/19/2013 - Flight Global (http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/crashed-737-pushed-into-dive-during-go-around-393302/)
Air India Flight 855 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_855)
No more pilots pressurised to fly/approach when they should not.
2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash)
No more runway incursions due to misunderstandings with human operators.
Tenerife airport disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster)
No more tired pilots
Colgan Air Flight 3407 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407)


An example of the sort of malfunction that people think of as where you need a human pilot is the Sioux City/ DHL Iraq scenario.
United Airlines Flight 232 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232)
2003 Baghdad DHL attempted shootdown incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Baghdad_DHL_attempted_shootdown_incident)
The aircraft loses all control over its control surfaces.

In both these events the pilots pulled off superhuman acts and got the aircraft home intact or nearly intact.
We would all, I think, agree that this is human piloting at its best.

This from Scientific American shows that to a computer, this is almost mundane.

"Crippled but Not Crashed

Neural networks can help pilots land damaged planes

By Mike Corder

On July 19, 1989, as United Airlines flight 232 cruised over Iowa, the fan disk of the tail engine on the DC-10 broke apart, and the debris cut through all three of the plane's hydraulic lines. Because the pilots could not move any of the jet's control surfaces--the ailerons on the wings and the elevators and rudder on the tail--a horrific crash seemed inevitable. But by carefully adjusting power to the two remaining engines, the crew managed to maneuver the plane to the Sioux City airport. Although the jet flipped over and caught fire after hitting the runway, 184 of the 296 passengers and crew members survived.

The pilots of flight 232 proved that it was possible to control a modern airliner using only the engines. And this discovery led some innovative engineers to wonder if they could program flight computers to achieve the same feat, making it easier for a crew to safely land a heavily damaged aircraft. This research has been gradually progressing over the past 15 years, and the technology could be incorporated into commercial and military planes in the not too distant future. To judge how well these computer-controlled flight systems perform, I decided to see if they could enable a moderately experienced pilot like myself to fly a crippled jet.

But first, a little background. On early aircraft, the control stick and rudder pedals were directly connected to the control surfaces with wires or rods or cables. But as planes got faster and larger, pilots found it hard to move the stick. So engineers added "power steering," connecting the cables to hydraulic servos that amplify the pilot's efforts. Then, with the advent of the digital age, aircraft makers developed control systems that feed the input from pilots into a computer. This so-called fly-by-wire system can greatly improve an airplane's performance. For example, a fighter jet may fly well when lightly loaded but not so well when it carries bombs on its wings. With a computer in the loop, the control rules can be modified to make the plane behave more consistently. Fly-by-wire also allows the creation of safeguards: if a pilot tries to do something that would cause the aircraft to break apart or plummet to the ground, the computer can ignore the inputs and take the plane only to the edge of the flight envelope.

Shortly after the crash of flight 232, Frank W. (Bill) Burcham, Jr., then chief propulsion engineer at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., began an effort to develop software that would enable jet engines to compensate for damage to a plane's control surfaces. Initially the research was considered too far-out to be funded, but a few engineers at Dryden volunteered their spare time. The project, which became known as Propulsion Controlled Aircraft (PCA), eventually received a small budget and proceeded to flight tests with an MD-11 jet. On August 29, 1995, the PCA team brought the plane in for a smooth landing at Edwards Air Force Base using only the computer-controlled engines to maneuver the craft. The NASA engineers felt they had demonstrated that airliner safety could be significantly enhanced just by modifying a plane's software. Unfortunately, none of the aircraft manufacturers chose to adopt the technology.

A few years later researchers in the Intelligent Flight Control (IFC) group at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., followed up on the PCA work by developing a system that would allow the computer-controlled engines of a damaged aircraft to work together with any control surfaces that remain functional. The system is based on neural-network software, which mimics the behavior of the human brain by learning from experience--the network's connections strengthen with use and weaken with disuse. The neural networks in the IFC system compare the way the plane should be flying with the way it actually is flying. Differences may be caused by inaccuracies in the reference model, normal wear and tear on the plane, or damage to the aircraft's physical structure. The networks monitor these differences and attempt to minimize them.

For example, if you want to make an undamaged airplane climb, you pull back on the control stick, which raises the elevators. But if the elevators are not working, the IFC system will raise both ailerons to lift the airplane's nose. (Ailerons typically move asymmetrically, with one rising as the other falls.) If this maneuver does not correct the error or if it reaches the limits imposed to prevent the aircraft from rolling over, the IFC system uses the thrust of the engines to achieve the desired pitch.

The Ames researchers tested their system by inviting professional airline pilots and NASA test pilots to fly in the lab's simulator. First, the pilots operated the simulated aircraft under normal conditions. Then the researchers mimicked a variety of failures and observed how the pilots reacted using different types of control systems. In almost every case, the IFC system performed better than a conventional fly-by-wire control system. When the engineers simulated the failure of all tail controls, only half the pilots could safely land the plane using the fly-by-wire system, but all of them made it back to the runway using IFC.

So what's it like to fly a plane equipped with neural networks? At the invitation of Karen Gundy-Burlet, head of the IFC group, I recently spent several hours in its lab to see the system firsthand. I am a private pilot with no experience flying larger aircraft. The IFC simulator was set up to represent a very big plane: the U.S. Air Force's four-engine C-17 transport jet. The simulator features a large wraparound screen to show the animated landscape and a mockup of a glass cockpit, which replaces the traditional flight gauges with flat-panel color displays.

Gundy-Burlet set me up on a 12-mile final approach to the San Francisco airport and let me embarrass myself trying to get an undamaged plane to the ground. Don Bryant, a retired U.S. Navy fighter pilot who works with the IFC group, was polite enough not to openly laugh at my ham-handed attempts to control the craft. My biggest problem was my unfamiliarity with the glass cockpit, which is only now starting to appear in private planes. I spent more time staring at the simulated display trying to find familiar values such as airspeed and altitude than I did actually flying the aircraft. That said, I got a basic feel for how the undamaged plane flew.

Then Gundy-Burlet reset the simulator to the initial location and said, "Captain, I'm sorry, but you've lost all the control surfaces on the tail." Both the elevators and rudders were inoperative, which would probably be a death sentence for an amateur pilot in the real world. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that the simulated aircraft was pretty controllable. I made a few gentle turns to get a feel for the plane while also trying to stay on the right heading. The damaged jet was sluggish in roll and pitch, but its behavior seemed more natural once I slowed down my steering. This change was undoubtedly facilitated by the neural networks, which were training themselves to compensate for the damage. As the networks adjusted to the new conditions, the plane kept getting easier to fly. Within a few minutes, I was able to safely land the simulated craft, although it did stray from the runway.

The overall experience was fairly tame, almost ordinary. It was only later that I recognized the true magnitude of this advance. A private pilot who had never flown a large aircraft was able to land a heavily damaged four-engine jet without killing anybody (in a simulation, at least).

How quickly might this technology see actual use? NASA researchers plan to flight-test the IFC system on F-15 fighter jets and C-17 transport craft over the next two years. The earliest adopters will most likely be the makers of military aircraft. Damage-compensating flight controls should be particularly useful to pilots who fly aircraft that get shot at from time to time.


Mike Corder is a freelance writer in Santa Cruz, Calif., who is building a Van's Aircraft RV-7A plane in his spare time."

This is a bit long and years old but makes the point.
This technology is now flying.

[Tourist]

MG23

Yes quite correct, at the time those early systems were in place, the computers were not quite up to some of the tasks as well as the humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igla_(spacecraft_docking_system)
The Russians seem to have solved the problem in 1965 and then updated...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurs_(docking_system)

and we followed along...
ATV completes final automated docking / Human Spaceflight / Our Activities / ESA (http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/ATV_completes_final_automated_docking)

[Tourist]

I could add :-

No more rule breaking.
No more forgetting to check NOTAMs
No more not carrying enough fuel.
No more suicide-by-pilot
No more Hijack? (possibly different mode? Time will tell)
No more pilots distracted by hosties/wife/pretty view

[Tourist]

Not to flog a dead horse, but.......

Northrop Grumman X-47B - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_X-47B)

This thing autonomously operates from an aircraft carrier in amongst manned operations.
It airborne refuels.


To do the same takes years of training and millions of dollars for a human, and very few humans are up to it.
These tasks requires a far higher standard of piloting than flying an airliner and vastly more flexibility.

Compared to the requirements for carrier aviation, airliners are childs play.

The hurdle for unmanned airliners is not technology.

The hurdle is passenger perception.

[MATELO]

It airborne refuels.


To do the same takes years of training and millions of dollars for a human, and very few humans are up to it.


Speak for yourself... I nailed it first time. :ok:

[MG23]

The Russians seem to have solved the problem in 1965 and then updated...

I believe you'll find Kurs has had several docking failures with ISS. If I remember correctly, in some cases they were able to retry and dock, while others required them to use some kind of remote manual control system.

But, for some of them, I may be confusing it with Mir. Didn't they actually hit Mir and damage one of the modules during one docking attempt?

[joe two]

can somebody give that tourist a coke ?

[Tourist]

Matelo

Obviously, Naval Aviators are amongst the few!!:ok:

[AreOut]

"Incidentally, people talk about the Sully flight or the BA 777 as if they are good examples of why you need a pilot but actually they are perfect examples of where a computer would be better."

umm, but why and how would computer choose to ditch it at the first place, all on itself? AI is still not that advanced, and computer would most likely try to get back to the airport and inevitably crash.

[waco]

!. Technology is not going away.

2. Automation of the flight deck will increase (along with ATC and all matters effecting flight).

3. There will probably be a person(s) sat at the front.

4. These people at the front will be paid very little.

You know it...I know it......

These are your salad days......enjoy them....for you don't have long left.

[Tourist]

AreOut

10 If both engines fail over city, try to land in river if runway not available.



That software didn't seem too difficult to write!
Next!

In all seriousness, and no disrespect to Sullenberger who is an awesome pilot who made the correct decision with the knowledge that he had at the time.

'Miracle on the Hudson' Gets Closer Study, Finds Capt. Sully Sullenberger Could Have Landed at LaGuardia Airport - WSJ (http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703612804575222482042335978)

This shows that a computer might have had another option. It would not have to guess, it would know whether it had the reach to get to the runway.

[ShotOne]

Only if someone had foreseen that particular eventuality and written a programme to deal with it, tourist. Every day, indeed hundreds of times every day, airliners experience conditions or malfunctions which haven't. These are dealt with by pilots as a matter of routine. But without one, each instance would be big news!

[FakePilot]

Quote:
Thinking AI will replace the role of the pilot in a system such as today's is simply silly
AND IS IF BY MAGIC.... A LEADING WORLD AUTHORITY PUTS IN HIS TWO PENNETH.

Professor Stephen Hawking....

...one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence.
He told the BBC:"The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."
His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the technology he uses to communicate, which involves a basic form of AI.
But others are less gloomy about AI's prospects.
The theoretical physicist, who has the motor neurone disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is using a new system developed by Intel to speak.
Machine learning experts from the British company Swiftkey were also involved in its creation. Their technology, already employed as a smartphone keyboard app, learns how the professor thinks and suggests the words he might want to use next.
Prof Hawking says the primitive forms of artificial intelligence developed so far have already proved very useful, but he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans.

BBC News - Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind

In the quote he says "primitive forms .. so far".

Tell me, can a digital computer multiply two numbers together, a and b? Such that y=ab?

[Tourist]

ShotOne

Give me some examples of these eventualities that happen daily and are beyond the wit of a programmer to expect. I'm genuinely interested.

[Cough]

Tourist,

Gimme a programmer that can think of every eventuality....

You can't - Thats the problem.

[Carlton1]

This is a bit of a pointless question to ask on this forum . You're all going to slap yourselves on the back of those leather flying jackets , adjust those oversized watches & avoid the next round whilst tell everyone how brilliant you are !

The reality is that technology can do what you do . Airbus 320 family , decades old has a fabulous level of automation & more modern technology is advancing day by day. The ability is there to taxi , fly & navigate large aeroplanes remotely & very safely is here. Anyone who follows these advancements will already see the technology to identify & deal with threats in such things as changing extreme weather conditions & system redundancy are readily available.

The publics' perception of the average pilot isn't what you think it is , I don't think they'll be over concerned about pilotless aircraft whatever you'd like to tell yourselves. Pilot errors , drunk pilots & those with limbs falling off are all pushing the industry towards the inevitable !!!

[Tourist]

Cough

Of course he can't, any more than a human pilot can always pick the best option, and that's why there will be accidents.

The question is merely of whether there will be less accidents than if there is a human pilot.

Of course, one of the nice things about computers is that they only tend to make the same mistake once and then the software is changed so they don't make it again.

[Mick Stability]

I'm sure there could be a thousand such examples.

Right off the top of my head, the pilot of the MD82 or whatever it was rejected take-off way over V1 having collided with an SD360 at CDG. Had he continued they would arguably have all perished.

Or the HS748 that landed straight ahead, a baulked take-off if you will at STN after a catastrophic engine failure. The aircraft was not capable of sustained flight of more than a few minutes at best. Had they not done so, the would certainly have perished.

So I'm with Hawking. The CAA have already identified the lack of basic piloting skills in modern aircraft operation. Lawyers who want to minimise risk and transfer liability to the manufacturer, accountants who hate paying pilots, and managers who just hate pilots.

Presumably they would also have their own children undergoing surgery by the local butcher. After all, what's the difference?

Pilotless aeroplanes are unlikely to be acceptable to the travelling public whilst there's the slightest chance of some mad mullah taking over the control channel, and smashing them into The Whitehouse.

I can think of a million reasons why this ridiculous concept will remain the fanciful imaginings of airline executives as they hide in the gents with a box of tissues.

I'm sure you can think of more.

[Herod]

Tourist. I assume the "software" that will be changed when the computer makes its one mistake would be the passengers. The human frame is not very crash-tolerant.

[AirRabbit]

10 If both engines fail over city, try to land in river if runway not available.

That software didn't seem too difficult to write!
Next!

In all seriousness, and no disrespect to Sullenberger who is an awesome pilot who made the correct decision with the knowledge that he had at the time.

'Miracle on the Hudson' Gets Closer Study, Finds Capt. Sully Sullenberger Could Have Landed at LaGuardia Airport - WSJ

This shows that a computer might have had another option. It would not have to guess, it would know whether it had the reach to get to the runway.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at what some people think is well within the purview of the supposed “all powerful” computer. Computers are certainly a LOT more capable today than they were 50 years ago … but they are a far cry from those that were seen/heard aboard the “Star Ship Enterprise” as it “Boldly Went Were No Man Had Gone Before,” and there is only speculation as to whether or not computers will ever actually function as they were represented on that television series and the television series and movies that followed.

Yes, there are on-going efforts to develop “artificial intelligence,” and in some ways there is some degree of success – but to my knowledge, the basic function of a computer is still an input, a processing of the data, a series of pre-programmed responses is referenced, and one such response is selected and activated. Of course, these input/process/output functions happen very quickly … allowing a mind-numbing number of them to be “processed” very quickly … but if there is an error in any aspect, the output accomplished is very likely to be unsatisfactory … and, while I probably don’t need to say it, … when an “unsatisfactory” output is a potential in an airborne airplane – that simply isn’t “good enough.” Today’s computers do not think – they do not anticipate – they simply compare presently sensed data against what has been preprogrammed, and any response (speed, magnitude, direction, and either hold, release, or return to initial position) would also have to be pre-programmed. When this “if/then” issue is presented and resolved, the computer may then activate whatever control function has been preprogrammed for that specific “if/then” circumstance. At any time a circumstance is presented for which a preprogrammed response is not anticipated, the computer will not respond. It may only take one such circumstance to result in an uncontrolled situation.

As for the comment by Andy Pasztor, in his May 4, 2010, article in the Wall Street Journal, he suggests that perhaps Capt "Sully" Sullenberger may have been able to return to LaGuardia Airport and landed there safely … and the justification he uses is apparently the fact that some number of pilots had been exposed to the same set of circumstances using an airplane flight simulator, and after “…suddenly losing both engines after sucking in birds at 2,500 feet—repeatedly managed to safely land their virtual airliners at La Guardia.” Perhaps Capt. Sullenberger may have been able to do just exactly that. However, at the time, under the existing circumstances, Capt. Sullenberger decided to do what he did. He used all of his background, training, and experience, be they good, bad, or mediocre – in the airplane he was flying and all of the previous airplanes he had flown – and, undoubtedly, all of his fears, and preferences, calling on what he knew, what he knew best, and what he wasn’t sure of … all focused on getting the airplane safely out of the air in a manner that would provide the best possible safety to all on board – and he did it quite successfully.

The issue that many overlook with the use of simulators is that they are exceptionally fine training tools. As such, if someone were to propose, as a training scenario, a circumstance that essentially duplicated Capt. Sullenberger’s situation, the use of a simulator would provide an excellent way to call to the attention of the crew members being trained, the kind of information available, what was not available, what potentials exist at that time, and what were beyond consideration. All of this can be accomplished in an atmosphere of mutual exploration, without even the first “hint” of danger being present. IF, however, any of those crew members who successfully landed the simulator at the LaGuardia airport, were told that they stood to actually lose something they valued very highly – like their current job – if they made a wrong decision or executed any decision in any way except the most advantageous manner … I think it highly likely that not as many would have had the same outcome. Certainly, anyone can understand that a poignantly significant issue is missing in each such “after-the-fact-demonstration” … the fear of losing one’s own life and the lives of all on board that airplane should a mistake be made in executing the decisions and skills necessary to safely return to LaGuardia. It is this over-powering emotion that could easily make otherwise easily made decisions, much more complicated, and perhaps, executed ever so slightly different in the “real world,” than those existing “in the simulated world.” We’re looking at a pure and simple case of “apples” and “oranges” – only on a MUCH more critical level.

I can’t say that “Star Trek” capabilities will be or will not be part of the future of aviation … but I think I can say that it’s not here now … and it is likely that it won’t be for quite a while yet.

[Tourist]

Mick

I think you are missing the point.

Why would a computer be interested in V1?
V1 was invented to aid the decision making process of the human brain after many accidents showed it to be unable to correctly decision make in time constrained high pressure situations like takeoff. Too many people stopped when they should have gone because there was not enough time for the human brain to gather it's thoughts.
A computer would have no such constraint.
It would stop if it should stop based upon all the info it has, speed, thrust, accel, runway left etc and it would go if that was the better option at all speeds. it would not need artificial constraints. The process would be markedly better.

The same with landing ahead. Engines currently datalink far more info home than they give to the pilot. The computer would have all that information at hand to make the correct decision about whether to land ahead, and how many pilots have got that decision wrong over the years?

And what are you talking about a control channel?
A mad mullah that can hack the computer can certainly hack a current Airbus.

AirRabbit.

Not entirely sure what point you are trying to make so apologies if I have misunderstood, but re the fear factor in the real world, that is exactly what computers are good at removing. They work the same day in day out.

Incidentally, you are all aware that there are lots of aircraft that currently fly around that cannot fly without the computer working?
ie if the computer fails then it crashes?
They seem to be doing fine. Computers are quite reliable when they have to be.

[Tourist]

Herod.

The passengers in that circumstance would be dead, yes, just as they are when the human pilot makes his mistake.
The difference is that the next computer won't make the same mistake as the previous one whereas history tells us the next pilot may well do.

All the computer has to do is make less mistakes than a human to make it worthwhile.

[Massey1Bravo]

If we're getting rid of pilots, why not cabin crew as well? Passengers could get food and drink from a vending machine, and be responsible for evacuating themselves in case of an emergency, just like how every Public Transportation bus or metro operates today, even the driverless ones! /s

That's because contrary to popular opinion, cabin crew are all about service and very little about safety. IIRC there was a case somewhere in Asia where a flight attendant broke her arm trying to open a door during an evacuation. Unless we see in the future passengers hibernating in pods during flight (and handled on the ground by gate agents/baggage handlers) you'll always have cabin crew because premium airlines have service standards to uphold, and budget airlines can turn cabin crew into revenue earners (by selling stuff) and make them perform miscellaneous tasks such as cleaning the aircraft.

The trend is not about removing the pilot, but de-skilling the profession so that it can be performed either by people with less training and less pay, or by the cabin crew. A pilot in the future may be expected to 'manage' the automation during takeoff and landing, and serve drinks/sell scratch cards in the cabin during cruise.

[Blues&twos]

Well, I'm a Control Systems engineer (although not aviation). I program systems. The unusual and unexpected ways in which software can 'fail' (although it actually just does what is told) is immense, and more likely the more complex the programming. There is also the possibility of code corruption, caused by external factors such as electrical variation/surges, short circuits and so on

But for a moment, let's assume the software has been programmed perfectly, tested to the n th degree and we have redundancy built in.

The software can only act on information fed by other systems, sensors, signals. On a complex installation there are thousands of inputs/outputs, some virtual (internal software values) and some generated physically. For some of these I/O, under certain failure modes, the computer will not be able to tell if a signal or variable is true, or in some cases which of multiple signals is giving the 'real life' value if there is a mismatch. In the case of a major fault developing (e.g. Control panel fire) the computer may lose some or all of its I/O.

This type of issue in ground based transport could simply cause a stop and shutdown scenario, but of course that's not an option available for aircraft.

[tdracer]

The software can only act on information fed by other systems, sensors, signals. On a complex installation there are thousands of inputs/outputs, some virtual (internal software values) and some generated physically. For some of these I/O, under certain failure modes, the computer will not be able to tell if a signal or variable is true, or in some cases which of multiple signals is giving the 'real life' value if there is a mismatch. In the case of a major fault developing (e.g. Control panel fire) the computer may lose some or all of its I/O.
B&2, that makes a computer no different than a human - we all function based on I/O - and if the input is corrupted, we often do something stupid (see Birgenair), and if the flight deck is on fire, I wouldn't put good odds on any human putting that airplane on the ground safely. The advantage a computer has is it can process infinitely more inputs than any human. If airspeed is corrupted or questionable, the computer can, in a fraction of a second, compare GPS, Doppler, different air data, pitch, etc. and determine which inputs are valid. High traffic environment? How many independent aircraft can the typical pilot track in their immediate airspace (without missing any)? Five, ten, if they're really, really good, twenty? With a computer you're talking thousands, and it can use multiple independent inputs to make sure it doesn't miss one. All engine power loss? A computer can accurately calculate the best glide airspeed and max range to a potential landing site, and if no landing site is in range evaluate options as to where to put the aircraft down that will minimize casualties, and do it in a fraction of a second. The programing to do that is not that hard.
I work engines - if the software in your FADEC is wrong, it can cause every engine on the aircraft to do the same wrong thing at exactly the same time (e.g. shutdown at 500 ft. AGL after takeoff). Yet I'm not hearing people say they won't fly on an aircraft with FADEC engines. Now, because the aircraft in question can easily fly with one engine shutdown, we don't always try to keep the engine running for certain fault conditions so we don't end up with something worse than a shutdown (e.g. uncontrollable high thrust). We could easily design the engine control to try to keep the engine running no matter what, but we've made a conscious decision to allow the engine to shutdown or default to idle as that's considered to be the safer option.
Today, the design philosophy when things fail is to turn it over to the pilot because he/she knows more about the exact situation than the designers do. I've had some pretty heated discussions on how to deal with various failures - maintaining that we don't to automatically take certain actions because it can mislead the pilots as to what is really wrong (even if taking that action makes sense). But that doesn't always turn out well either (AF 447).

Humans still have one big advantage - being able to react to new and/or unknown situations (although they don't always get them right either). But true, unimaginable 'new' situations are really not that common.
I'm not suggesting it'll happen in the next 10 or 20 years, but it will happen. If you'd told a WWII pilot in late 1945 that, within his lifetime, he'd be able to fly on a computer controlled airplane that could travel 8000 miles at Mach 0.85 without refueling he'd think you were crazy. Computer capability is still growing at exponential rates - basically doubling every 18-24 months (that's showing signs of slowing down, but not by much). Human capabilities, not so much.:uhoh:

[wheels up]

Bottom line is there will be pilotless passenger aircraft in the next 20 years.

There is absolutely zero chance of that. Even the latest generation aircraft such as the 777 X, which has a projected entry into service towards the end of the decade, and a typical service life of 20 years plus, still has 2 pilot seats, let alone none!

Do some more research on the number of drone crashes in the USA and you will realise that the reliability is nowhere near a level acceptable to the travelling public. Here's one link:

Crashes mount as military flies more drones in U.S. | The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/22/crashes-mount-as-military-flies-more-drones-in-u-s/)

Bear in mind that drones are RPVs - remote piloted vehicles, where the pilot has not been eliminated, but simply moved to a ground station out of harms way.

WRT to automation things are actually moving in the opposite direction with the realisation that automation has progressed to the point that the pilot either does not understand what the aircraft is doing, or when things go wrong (as they do), the pilot is out of the loop - hence the Boeing philosophy of keeping the pilot in the loop (thrust levers that move with the auto-throttle, manually setting the track bug, control column as opposed to side stick etc.). Even Airbus is recognising this; the first couple of days of A350 training consists of manual handling with all the automatics turned off.

I honestly do not think that fully automated passenger aircraft will ever be a reality - first of all it would not be practical (the pilot's not only fly the aircraft, but manage the aircraft - dealing with passengers issues, dispatch issues, assessing DDG issues, de-icing decisions and monitoring, making refuelling decisions, weather decisions, managing diversions etc.). Secondly I don't think it could ever be achieved with an acceptable level of safety.

Of course it is technically possible - in fact a fully automated flight is mostly possible now, apart from taxying and takeoff, but in the real world aircraft very seldom follow a pre-programmed route. We seldom do an autoland, and many of the airports we fly to or use as alternates do not support Cat 3B approaches . Even if they do, the ILS would have to be protected to allow for an auto-land, requiring much greater traffic separation and reducing capacity - completely unfeasible at airports such as Heathrow that would be gridlocked as a result.

Remember 95% of the training airline pilots do in simulators is not for the normal day to day operation where things are going swimmingly, but for when things don't follow the script - this is where automation falls down badly and where pilots really earn their salaries.

Automation is great for flying CPDLC across the Pacific (most of the time), but as good as useless for managing an approach into Chicago ORD during busy periods, especially with weather.

How would you automate a flight over the Himalayas that requires constant assessment of alternates and escape routes, and where a depressurisation or engine failure would necessitate a diversion along an escape route to a possibly minimally equipped airport? What about a rejected take-off due to a runway incursion? TCAS avoidance that requires the auto-pilot and auto-throttle to be disconnected? Ditto for unreliable airspeed..

Automating weather avoidance would be virtually impossible since the weather radar requires a lot of interpretation, and then the required avoidance has to be co-ordinated with ATC, taking into account the required flight path.

Furthermore you would just be replacing the pilots in the aircraft with ones on the ground, but with much greater technical sophistication and associated cost. The bottom line is that by far the highest cost is fuel - the savings achieved by eliminating the pilots would be more than offset by the cost of the increased technical sophistication and the additional ground personnel required.

A number of the recent accidents resulted from the failure of auto-flight systems (think Turkish airlines and AF447), but could have been prevented if the flight crew had responded adequately. If you look at the Boeing service bulletins, the majority of them relate to anomalies in the auto-flight system that in most cases came to light many years after the aircraft was certified. Some of them are quite serious (such as dual FMC failures in the case of the 777), and could have been catastrophic if there hadn't been a flight crew there to take over and fly the aircraft manually.

Most pilots of modern fly by wire aircraft have seen the automatics do some very strange things - in some cases requiring a disconnect and reversion to manual flight. Ever watched a 777 attempt an alt capture with a high rate of climb accompanied by an increasing tailwind? Guaranteed low airspeed situation.

Lastly, who will be the first manufacturer to invest billions in developing an aircraft that in all likelihood would be shunned by passengers - I know I wouldn't fly in it!

[vector4fun]

Retired ATC;

Almost 30 years ago, I attended a trade show where I was shown a crude mock-up of an "automated" ATC system. I smiled and went off to find a bar.

20 years ago, I was told by many people, including *pilots*, that computers would soon be able to do my job much better than humans. I giggled to myself.

15 years ago, the FAA wrote off a few billion $ in hardware and software that proved to be unsalvageable.

3 years ago, I retired. Last I looked, there were still AM com radios and radars at my old unit, and humans manning them.

Of course, 50 years ago, flying cars were just around the corner.

I ain't from Missouri, but they're still gonna have to show me. :p

[Ollie Onion]

Honestly, just don't worry about it. There is no way that 'pilot-less' aircraft are within 50 years of being in mainstream production. Even UAV's (best tech around at the moment) still require a pilot. Although the thought of working from home sounds good, and imagine how nice it would be just to switch off the monitor and go for a cup of tee when it all goes tits up!!

[tdracer]

Some of them are quite serious (such as dual FMC failures in the case of the 777), and could have been catastrophic if there hadn't been a flight crew there to take over and fly the aircraft manually.Wheels up, I'm repeating myself here, but the 777 FMC is designed to "fail passive" and give the pilots control. For obvious reasons, that wouldn't be the case with systems designed for a pilotless aircraft.
Also, the FADEC and FBW computers are "Design Assurance Level (DAL) "A". That means flight critical - a significant s/w error is considered to be potentially catastrophic (e.g. unilaterally surging or shutting down the engines, or commanding a dive into the ground). Yes, we still find errors in the implementation, but to the best of my knowledge a DAL A system has never been identified as the cause of a crash.
The 777 FMC is not a DAL "A" system. It is designed and certified to a lower level - a level that assumes if it screws up the pilots can and will take corrective action (granted, not always a valid assumption).
Also, the 777 systems were designed over 20 years ago. Ancient in electronic terms (compare a 1992 cell phone to one of today's smart phones). In fact one of the larger challenges that Boeing faces today is sourcing those 20 year old electronic components to keep building airplanes.

As I said before, electronics are advancing at an exponential rate. Same thing with s/w development. FADEC s/w isn't people entering lines of code (hasn't been for a long time) - it's people laying out 'flow diagrams' of how the want the s/w to work. Highly specialized automated programs then turn those diagrams into code - which is then exhaustively tested to make sure it functions as intended.
As Tourist pointed out, a pilotless airplane doesn't necessarily need to be perfect, it just needs to better than an all too flawed human pilot.
When SLF are routinely riding to the airport in automated cars that have an accident/fatality rate orders of magnitude better what us flawed human drivers can accomplish today, just how many CFTs, or 777 crashing into a seawall because the human pilot couldn't be bothered to monitor airspeed, do you think they'd be willing to tolerate?
It won't happen this decade, it may not happen during my lifetime (and I expect another 40 years, minimum :E). But it will happen.
BTW, those of you noting the Star Ship Enterprise has human pilots, you do know that's science fiction :ugh:

[parabellum]

This subject has been done to death so many times now, here on PPRuNe.


It may come as a disappointment to some here but, for the foreseeable future, the pilotless airliner simply isn't going to happen and not only for all the computer capability reasons given but, equally, for the much more mundane reason of security.


Dedicated terrorist organisations will have no problem in raiding and taking over a ground control station, particularly in the more remote parts of the world but, with suicidal tendencies, they will be able to manage it in more civilised places too. Alternatively they simply have to produce a jammer that is more powerful than a remote controlling (relay?) station and disconnect a few aircraft from the controlling system, carnage will soon follow.


One final point, the cost of development and demonstration, to a point of safety where the insurance underwriters will come on board and insure pilotless aircraft, is possibly more expensive than keeping pilots on board. No insurance = no fly.

[harrryw]

As a person who only had a PPL and is SLF it would seem that when the pitot tubes of the AirFrance plane blocked the computer would have crashed the plane by itself. It instead disconnected and gave the chance for an experienced pilot to recover the situation it could not handle. Sadly it seems there was not an experienced pilot at the controls.
On youtube there is a movie about round the world in 66 hrs. A kind of promo for Lufthansa.
There are at least two incidents where human intervention became needed to prevent possible serious consequences due to the computers being able to control the situation. One was slow rate of ascent (Overweight?) at a fairly crucial waypoint and the other was a disconnect because of a serious overspeed condition.
I for one would like someone up front, preferably one with real experience but at a pinch I may have to accept someone with lots and lots of simulated training and not just in pushing buttons.

[Tourist]

Wheels up and others.

Please do me the courtesy of bothering to read my links.

No, drones do not need a pilot.
Some currently are remotely piloted and some are fully autonomous and some are in between, ie a mouse click pilot.

I am talking about autonomous airliners.

You talk about drone crashes in the USA as if they are somehow proof that autonomous airliners can't be done, yet the article makes clear that most if not all of the accidents are pilot error or mechanical failure.
Pilot error is irrelevant for obvious reasons, and since the current crop of reaper/predator etc are single engined they are hardly relevant and will obviously have a failure rate closer to a Cessna than a Boeing.

You state that automation is currently moving the other way with increased training of pilots.
Surely you realise this is to deal with a weakness of pilots, not automation! Humans are very poor at dealing with situations we have not regularly practised, such as emergencies or even manual thrust etc. the current state of automation is very difficult for humans. We are expected to let automation carry out nearly all the work yet deal with the situation if the automation finds the going tough. Automation that is decades old in capability. A couple of sims per year will never make us good. Barely competent at best.


You mention having to protect the ILS everywhere.
Why on earth do you think an autonomous airliner would need an ILS at all to land in IMC? The systems required to land without have existed for decades. ILS would be a nice backup to the GPS/INS/Doppler/IR/radar/ etc etc etc that the system would be continuously monitoring for its solution.

You mention TCAS
Why on earth do you think that a human could be better than the autopilot at following TCAS RAs?
As it is now, it tells you what to fly and you try to fly it. Exactly like flight director, and in exactly the same way it would be more accurate itself.

You ask who would bother to develop An autonomous airliner and I have already posted a link to a major manufacturer doing just that!

You mention weather avoidance and say it is near impossible yet if you had bothered to read the link....
http://www.baesystems.com/innovation-rsa/look-no-hands;baeSessionId=lQoO9SCh8GJrZM9FMEcj2mygZqEOrk_pO0TAX8iDm HWD88R2GPvh!1587846731?_afrLoop=1119576350456000&_afrWindowMode=0&_afrWindowId=null#!%40%40%3F_afrWindowId%3Dnull%26_afrLoop%3 D1119576350456000%26_afrWindowMode%3D0%26_adf.ctrl-state%3D152hotkppk_4

Various people keep saying that the cost of the pilots is small.
Not true.
First let's start with the pay. Let's say 20 pilots per aircraft. Each of these needs to be paid, recruited, trained(requiring simulators)
That is the small fry though. The real cost is the huge chunk of the airframe required to house them and give them the info they need.
Remove the entire cockpit and all those heavy controls and screens and armoured doors etc and you get a couple of tons of extra freight every flight and a few rows of 1st class seats every flight. That adds up to a huge amount of cash.

Mentioning flights where automation failed and so did the pilots is hardly helping your case. As tdracer says, those systems are designed to hand control back to a pilot in the (incorrect!)expectation that they will be capable of sorting the problem.

Parabellum

You are talking about a remote controlled airliner.
That is not what people are trying to construct. Autonomous means just that.
Incidentally, you mention terrorists overrunning a control centre. In what way is that different from them overrunning ATC now and giving out bad instructions to cause a crash?
TCAS and EGPWS would be the current final defence against such an event now, and similar for an autonomous aircraft.

Harryw

It is not surprising that an aircraft designed to have humans involved requires human intervention.
The level of automation tech on board current airliners is Stone Age.

I hate to prick your bubble, but "lots and lots of simulator training" is not how I would describe the pitifully small amount of annual sim time given to pilots, and it is mostly just "pushing buttons"

[ShyTorque]

Technical backup for the first fully autonomous passenger airliner:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/shytorque/Interior_of_an_EC-130J_Commando_Solo_Mar_2003_zpse1ed8c13.jpg (http://s7.photobucket.com/user/shytorque/media/Interior_of_an_EC-130J_Commando_Solo_Mar_2003_zpse1ed8c13.jpg.html)

[AreOut]

"AreOut

10 If both engines fail over city, try to land in river if runway not available.



That software didn't seem too difficult to write!
Next!"

then you would have many planes trying to land in river(and eventually cause havoc because rivers are sometimes crowded with ships) when they could actually reach the airport


see, you fail at the first step ;) please revert to your tourism and leave programming and piloting to professionals

[MATELO]

Surely you realise this is to deal with a weakness of pilots, not automation! Humans are very poor at dealing with situations we have not regularly practised

Both Sully & Peter Burkill deviated from the normal actions in the cockpit to minimise the damage/injuries to their situation.

Would a computer have jumped a few steps or just followed the "programme"?

[Basil]

Finds Capt. Sully Sullenberger Could Have Landed at LaGuardia Airport
. . but other pilot, somehow out of the loop, turns finals in front of him :eek:

Seen it happen; fortunately the now #2 had all turning BUT was low on fuel

[ShyTorque]

Incidentally, you mention terrorists overrunning a control centre. In what way is that different from them overrunning ATC now and giving out bad instructions to cause a crash?

Hardly likely, though. Even if someone gave out a false instruction via the radio, it wouldn't be easy to cause a crash, simply because there are natural safeguards in the existing system.

Don't forget, there has to be human input to program the autonomous aircraft in the first place.

[bartonflyer]

.......Of course, one of the nice things about computers is that they only tend to make the same mistake once and then the software is changed so they don't make it again.

And therein lies a whole other can of worms!!

I might just get on a flight driven by software that is at version 99.9 but would I get on version 100.0?

The software industry is incredibly bad at testing new releases - how many times have we seen one new or updated feature cause mahem to something else after an update.

[Heathrow Harry]

Forget the pilot less airliner - but a single pilot airliner seems well within sight.................

[Bergerie1]

What a lonely bloody job that would be!

[parabellum]

Incidentally, you mention terrorists overrunning a control centre. In what way is that different from them overrunning ATC now and giving out bad instructions to cause a crash?

None at all, highly possible, please don't give them ideas! Now you can see for yourself just how improbable an unpiloted airliner is.

[netstruggler]

This thread has drifted into a couple of areas that I know something about so I'm going to stop sitting on my hands.


I don't know whether fully automated commercial airliners will be realised before the aviation fuel runs out, but if they do arrive under current regulations then I'd be quite sure of the following:
They will be 10 to 100 times safer than human piloted craft, because nothing less would be allowed..
They will use "brute force" logic rather than AI, because you couldn't build a safety case around AI.
They will not mix with human piloted air traffic, because that introduces too many variables.
Personally, I believe that all the above is achievable now, but that the cost of providing a 'clean' environment for these aircraft to operate in outweighs their benefit at the moment.

[Pininstauld]

http://www.astraea.aero/downloads/ASTRAEA_end%20_FINAL.pdf

Tucked away in the original article is a short reference to the Astraea program which, provided you can maintain an open mind, is definitely worth researching. The above link is one starting point.

It's clear that the end goal is fully pilot-less air transport and it is probable that this will come, albeit by degrees. We just don't know the timescale yet.

[EEngr]

The hurdle for unmanned airliners is not technology.

The hurdle is passenger perception.
This is true. Particularly when the engineers keep forgetting that the couple of hundred SLF in the back make the aircraft 'manned'. You want to fly an empty* airplane? That's fine with me.

*Cargo is where I can see this being accepted more readily. Amazon can drop as much junk on their way to my house as they want. I'm only paying for the one drone that makes it.

[Tourist]

EEngr

Yes, I quite agree as I said before.

After the cargo fleet has flown for lets say a decade and demonstrated a better safety record then that is when the push will come for passenger aircraft.

[ShyTorque]

They will not mix with human piloted air traffic, because that introduces too many variables.

Probably the only way. But where will all these new "pilotless" airfields come from?

[flying lid]

Flew Emirates a few months ago. On one flight just before take off an announcement was made "Hi there, I'm captain xxxxxxx, and I'm from Los Angeles, etc etc.

Slept well on that flight, somehow that particular captain had a re-assuring voice !!!!!!

For me, no captain no fly, simple.

[Aluminium shuffler]

This quote from Ozzy is the biggest factor:

"The fact that pilots are considered flawed, responsible for (typically 70%) of fatal aircraft accidents, and thus unmanned aircraft would be safer, is an untenable conclusion that ignores the vast proportion of accident or incident-free flights achieved daily by the current manned commercial air transport industry, particularly in States with well-developed aviaiton safety practice. To those who quote the 70% figure I respond: "...but 100% of non-accident flights are the result of the pilots doing their job successfully". Non-accident flights utterly dwarf the proportion of accident flights."

The simple truth is that there are no official estimates, never mind reliable statistics, to demonstrate how many occasions human pilots have prevented automated disaster. My estimate is a couple of times per flight. Not only do they dwarf the pilot error events, they would make the pilot error accidents statistically irrelevant.

[RVF750]

Have a think of this...

Right now, we can hear of a crash involving aircraft "A" or " B" and turn up at the airport next day looking at lines of "A" and "B" on the ramp and still willingly get in and fly (in) them.

Well, the crash was the pilots fault, and these will have different pilots so that's ok, isn't it? worst case, they'll look at the reasons for the crash and try not to make the same mistake themselves.


Step forward into the future. Now, when the airline rep says step up and fly, who will there be to blame for the crash yesterday? Are today's planes flying on Version 3.1 or 3.1.1? And what version was on the one that crashed? Until they can get round this issue, only the deluded fools who designed the system will be brave enough to fly on it.

Also, Google car. It's managed 170,000 miles of safe driving, but only on the roads around their headquarters that are in it's very complex mapping system. Put a set of temporary traffic lights up and it grinds to a halt. The AI is so far off I'll dead and gone before it ever comes down my high street.

[Tourist]

Aluminium

I suspect that you are referring to me with your comment about pontificating?

If so, what makes you think you know my background?
Does Airline, Corporate, Military rotary and Military fixed wing qualify me to pontificate?
Does having operated with and in extremely close proximity to RPAVs for many many hours over Iraq, Afghanistan qualify me to have an opinion?
If not, then tell me what your qualifications are?



Those who believe the technological challenges are insurmountable should ponder on this.

Various militaries in the world are testing autonomous UCAVs
These are unmanned, autonomous combat aircraft.

Autonomous X-47B Flies In Formation With Fighter Aircraft | Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/autonomous-x-47b-flies-formation-fighter-aircraft)

These aircraft must find must take-off (from a carrier in this case) navigate, find and kill the enemy, navigate home and then land on.
No beacons, no radio control, no atc, no TCAS.

Many believe that the F22, F35, Typhoon etc will be the last generation of manned fighters.

Few on here would pretend that an airline pilot needs to be or is as highly trained or flexible as a combat pilot in the military. Militaries all over the world spend years and millions of pounds selecting and training each military pilot.

Yet for some reason the militaries truly believe that a computer can do the job better. Even though an average military mission is vastly more complex and changeable than a civvy flight, with vastly more variables to deal with and vastly more tasks to accomplish such as air to air refuelling, deck landings, combat, combat damage, defending, attacking, ECM, ESM, formation flying etc etc
For some reason those idiots in the military truly believe that they can do all that without a pilot.

What fools they must be....

Unless you truly believe that the job of an airline pilot is somehow a greater challenge.....?

As with many things in technology, things trickle down from the military, and compared to what they are trying to do with combat aircraft, airliners are childs play.

[Tourist]

Ozy

You say that they have not even got a detect and avoid system yet.

Remind me what a current airliner uses at the moment?

Oh, that's right, eyeballs and TCAS, or just TCAS in IMC.

Well TCAS can be fitted easily to a UAV and it won't make a mess of it like humans, and both visual and radars are normal fit to even older generations of military aircraft so no problem there.
UCAVs are having systems designed to enable air warfare against fast moving stealthy opponents.
Avoidance of transponder equipped aircraft is again mere child's play in comparison.


Turkish

Your use of the term "AI" shows your lack of understanding of what is trying to be achieved.
Nobody is going to give them a Turing test, any more than you test your FADEC or Fly-by-wire.

Plus google autonomous cars. Since you brought them up I feel it is only fair to point out that they are doing well...
There are many on public roads in Florida California Sweden Japan and in January guess where? The UK!
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21576224-one-day-every-car-may-come-invisible-chauffeur-look-no-hands
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/how-googles-autonomous-car-passed-the-first-us-state-selfdriving-test
http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/20/7024137/watch-a-self-driving-audi-become-the-fastest-autonomous-car-on-the-planet

[Aluminium shuffler]

Tourist, the UAVs are currently able to fly a pre-programmed route and be given updates while in flight, but can't independently replan a route. Nor can they do any kind of complex air combat manouver, though I would cede the point that if the airframe is strong enough, it could out-turn a human pilot in a simple manouver to escape a guns kill. That ability will eventually come, but as I clearly said, current technology is not intelligent or flexible enough to cope with simple changes in circumstance, and outright manouverability is not much use to an airliner. What is needed in an airliner is a command system that can operate on faulty or partial data and still get the job done. Like I said, I had an autoland the other night that was going to put down on the grass, and manual intervention prevented that. That won't show up in any collated data of automation vs manual skills because there is no forum to collect such statistics as no accident or incident occurred, and that is the point Ozzy and several others have made. If you find that automation is more reliable than two human pilots, you're flying with the wrong people!

[ShyTorque]

Tourist, firstly I think you are trolling.

You are concentrating on the technically achievable but ignoring the practical integration of an unmanned aircraft into the existing system. Flying a combat aircraft in a war zone is a totally different environment to a civilian airliner full of passengers operating in proximity to other aircraft, most of which will be under manual control.

How would your fully autonomous helicopter deal with spurious but false warnings such as a tail rotor chip caption (or even double engine chip indication coupled with a main gearbox chip caption, both of which I've seen) over totally inhospitable terrain? I've flown helicopters for over 35 years. Many, if not most, of the "serious failures" I've experienced have actually been spurious warnings.

On the other hand, I've seen inflight total loss of output from both channels of the aircraft's data acquisition system which are supposedly mutually redundant. I've also seen real warning captions that were not in the pilot's flight manual or maintenance manuals. The aircraft manufacturer had to take further specialist advice on what these captions meant; this took some days. How would an autonomous aircraft deal with these situations? The problem is, just like the programming of an aircraft simulator, rubbish in = rubbish out and if there's an off-model event, the outcome of an automatic system is as uncertain as that of any human pilot.

[Tourist]

Aluminium

Try actually clicking on the links I put up.

That Blackhawk is independently is planning a route on video!

Re the bad autoland, what on earth has 60s technology in a system designed to have pilots got to do with this discussion?
I'm not saying that current airliners are autonomous. They are not designed to be.

Shy

The spurious warnings issue is one of the areas where an autonomous airliner has the advantage.

In a modern airliner, the engines are sending vast amounts of info back to Rolls or whoever that isn't even going to the pilots. You can be met on the ground by an engineer that tells you that your engine is tits. The computer can continuously monitor for trends and build up a picture and has a far greater chance of working out whether a caption is spurious or not.

You talk as if integration is an unachievable dream.
It is being worked on and tested today.
Yes combat is different. It is a more difficult problem in just about every way.
Civil aircraft should not and rarely do get into any sort of proximity to each other compared to military. Just ask any military pilot when he first gets TCAS. The response is always "You want me to move for that!? That's not a confliction! It's miles away!!!"

[ShyTorque]

You talk as if you are the only one with any military experience. Also, you haven't answered the question about total data loss or spurious chip warnings.

[Tourist]

Shy

Read my last post. That is all about spurious warnings, though chip warnings are a rotary thing really.

Re total data loss.
An aircraft that is designed to have a pilot in the system relies on him to be there.
Any system designed to not have one replaces him with something else. You are not just going to remove him and leave it as it is.
An autonomous system must necessarily have greater redundancy. There is nothing black magic about it.

An Airbus currently has a bunch of inputs. If it cannot work them out it throws up its hands and gives it back to the pilot like in the Air France crash.

An autonomous system would add in more inputs of which any number of current technologies exist and would have bowled out the problem instantly as pitot problems and the passengers would never have even known something happened.

Current airliners have very limited and frankly archaic data sources in many cases.

[16024]

Right.
Let's agree for the sake of argument that it's theoretically possible. Just about anything is possible given the time, money, will, bloody mindedness etc.
Let's imagine some gambler of a CEO and some trusting shareholders (this is a fantasy "what if" isn't it?) who says, "Ok, why not?".
Now give us a timescale. We've been banging on about this for at least 20 years. Another 10 to make our minds up and put some money down. Another 10 years to get a prototype out, because every single thing is new, as we have already established that our 60's technology won't do it.
10 years possibly loss-making on remote freight-only rotes (loss-making if you have to construct dedicated terminals or airports).
If we start tomorrow, this takes us to 2044. When is the oil going to run out?
Another 10 years of people getting slowly used to the idea, and we are good to go. What's the lifespan of a new design? 20 years before we expect to get to the ADV, NG, NEO life extension versions? That would take us beyond 2074.
It ain't. Going. To. Happen.

[Tourist]

Ozy

TCAS is exactly an automated system with a human thrown in to add errors!
You are not supposed to do anything other than what the computer tells you.
It is extremely conservative and extremely simple. What possible difficulty could an autopilot have in following it?
The pilot does nothing but act as an autopilot on the computers instructions. badly.

Current airliners have no detect and avoid system beyond TCAS. Why are you so insistant that an automated system even have one? Airline pilots barely look out of the windows from one minute to the next, yet you demand something better from an automated system?
Luckily, because the makers know that they will be held to higher standard, they are being worked on and tested.

16024

If it ain't going to happen, why is so much money being spent on making just that happen.
BAe, Lockheed etc are not idiots and don't like throwing money away. Not their own money at least.

[Tourist]

These guys are real players in technology and aviation
They are not chimps.
ASTRAEA Video (http://astraea.aero/presentations/astraea-video.html)
They are not doing it for fun and they are taking it seriously.
62million so far, and this is just the UK

[Huck]

We hardly look out the windows? News to me....

Aaahh.. PPRune.... you never disappoint.

I've been watching this argument for 13 years here, give or take.

I'll say what I always say - I'll start worrying when the freight trains that run by my house are unmanned. They've gone from three crew to two. But not one. And that task is three orders of magnitude easier than operating an aircraft.

[ShyTorque]

Read my last post. That is all about spurious warnings, though chip warnings are a rotary thing really.

Yes, I'm aware of that, having flown both rotary and FW, military and civilian.
I mentioned tail rotor chips specifically because you introduced a rotary wing example to the discussion to further your argument about the available technology. So now you want to disregard it because you couldn't provide an answer to the question I posed about it?

BTW, the military have never so far said that they believe that unmanned aircraft are better than manned. The idea of an unmanned machine is to keep the man safe, away from unnecessary risk due to enemy action.

Of course as an ex military man yourself you will recall that the Defence Minister of 1957, Duncan Sandys, obviously did believe that manned fighters should be replaced with missiles but it didn't really work out that way. It's generally recognised by the RAF that his policy did immense harm to the UK military capability and the associated defence industry, in the long term.

An aspect not yet discussed: If unmanned airliners ever come to be, who is going to be willing to sign off the aircraft to be dispatched, with a known defect? I'll bet a pound to a pinch of ***t that you won't find many engineers willing to sign their life away because once that aircraft gets airborne, it's fully their responsibility, there are no further links in the chain. Many of these extremely complicated aircraft (much more so than now, according to our resident expert, Tourist) will sit on the ground u/s for far longer than today's aircraft.

[AirRabbit]

AirRabbit.

Not entirely sure what point you are trying to make so apologies if I have misunderstood, but re the fear factor in the real world, that is exactly what computers are good at removing. They work the same day in day out.

Incidentally, you are all aware that there are lots of aircraft that currently fly around that cannot fly without the computer working?
ie if the computer fails then it crashes?
They seem to be doing fine. Computers are quite reliable when they have to be.

Hey Tourist – no apology necessary … but I think we’re very likely on opposite sides of this particular point. I know that computers are quite good at doing what they do … and that is they take data and they execute the commands that have been programmed to be taken when the data examined is determined to be of a specifically defined value or value range. Some folks have been very successful in expanding the range of data examination but for all intents and purposes those successes are always limited by the methods used to both gather and submit the relevant data for the computer’s examination. However, it remains true that computers don’t “think” and they don’t “anticipate” … unless, of course, someone preprograms the computer to compare existing data with a history of the kinds of developments that have historically manifested with the same values of the data referenced, and calculate some acceptable level of mathematical probabilities for the development of the same circumstances and then adjust the controls in anticipation of those circumstances developing with the same level of probabilities. Unfortunately, the size of the airplane that would be necessary to house that kind of memory and computing power would likely severely limit the number of passengers that could be accommodated on a typical airliner - and none of this even begins to touch on lightning strikes or EMP kinds of interference scenarios. Just yesterday in Detroit (a major US city) an unknown power outage brought dozens of square miles in the middle and edges of the city to a stand-still for several hours. If a similar problem were to occur while airborne … do we just “write it off” as a Mother Nature hiccup?

And, as for "computer controlled airplanes crashing if the computer quits" … as I understand them, the flight envelope control systems on Airbus aircraft always retain flight control when operating under “normal law,” however, in extreme circumstances, like multiple failures of redundant computers, there is a mechanical back up system for pitch trim and rudder. Instead of this kind of mechanical back-up system, newer Airbus aircraft have an “all-flight-control-back-up system called a “three-axis Backup Control Module (BCM).” Additionally, on the newer Boeing aircraft, the two pilots can completely override the computerized flight-control system to permit the aircraft to be flown beyond its usual flight-control envelope during emergencies.

Regardless of the level of sophistication of any specific computer, its success rate is always going to be limited by the data source, the data sequence, the data accuracy, and the resulting successful submission of that gathered data to the computer. Of course the “computing power” (the speed at which data can be input, processed (compared), and a specifically preprogramed response determined, will be directly dependent on the accuracy of the format of the data to be examined, the number of data sources, the determination of priorities of that submitted data, including those circumstances and potentials that may affect those priorities. Again, whatever the response is to be, that too is limited to what has been provided for by the computer’s structure, and how, and to what, that computer is connected. It is obvious that computer-aided airplane control is here and is arguably successful. But, turning over complete control of those airplanes to a computer or a bank of computers with no human intervention is, in my not-so-humble opinion, still some indeterminable distance in the future – if it occurs at all.

[ConnieLover]

Those who, like Tourist, use the military as an example of technology that is ready to be copied by civilians ignore one crucial fact: in the military a certain percentage of losses is acceptable, which are not acceptable in civilian life.

[Oriana]

Should be re-titled as 'A Bean Counter's Wet Dream"

[Huck]

I'm not so sure.

Lots of folks can explain how it can be done.

Nobody can explain how it will be cheaper.

[Piltdown Man]

So earlier this week NASA, who have a pretty good idea about these things, announced that they will be authorising the launch of the first of a series of rockets to prepare for a manned mission to Mars. If computers were better and more capable they would have been sent. Firing a living thing millions of miles into space is awkward and expensive. Therefore, there has to be an advantage in doing so. I'll suggest that people are being sent because they have a greater chance of dealing with what cannot be foreseen. It's certainly not for the ride as the service levels will be worse than that endured by LoCo SLF - except for the fact they won't be bothered by cabin crew flogging scratch cards. Unless if course NASA will try to offset some of the mission costs...

[Superpilot]

No one from the YES department answered my question:

What would you consider to be a safe automated passenger jet? Is it one that can think as well as human (i.e. have the same level of intelligence) or one that can think a billion times faster given the same (known) problems?

[16024]

With the Mars landing, there's an emotional, and PR aspect to it.
"We are going to Mars". Wow!
"We are sending a machine to Mars". Been done before.
As for the real reason why it won't happen. Yes all the recent posters have great obstacle points which the pro lobby can chip away at, and it seems they have invented half-a-wheel very competently.
The real reason is as I clearly stated a few posts back. Ain't going to happen.
QED

[Tourist]

Shyt

No, I didn't ignore your point at all, just mentioned that it is not a problem that airliners generally have.
My bigger point is still valid.
One of the things that computers are very good at is monitoring mechanical systems. The readings given to you in the cockpit are a very small selection of those available to a modern monitoring system currently fitted to airliners. The machine can do trend analysis and untiringly monitor those systems and is in an immeasurably better position to spot a spurious caption than a pilot who with the best will in the world cannot multitask like a computer.
There is a reason why all complex modern processes across all engineering now have computer monotoring.

[Tourist]

Superpilot

I didn't answer because the answer is neither.

I don't want an intelligent aircraft.
I don't want emotions or artwork or joy.

I just want a machine that flys a plane.

As has been pointed out.
Robot craft got to Mars years ago.
When a manned aircraft goes, it won't be under the control of a human.

[RetiredF4]

@Tourist

Tourist
Various militaries in the world are testing autonomous UCAVs
These are unmanned, autonomous combat aircraft.

As we know flying in to harms way is a high risk business, that is why bombs are released from aircraft and not flown kamikaze style into the target. Therefore cruise missiles had been developped to navigate some distance through high threat areas and finally hit the target without putting the aircrew at risk. UCAV's are just the logical progress to extend the range, endurance and mode of operations of those high risk missions. They operate well in those specialized tasks, but as surface to air missiles could not replace manned fighter aircraft drones will not replace them either.


Tourist
These aircraft must find must take-off (from a carrier in this case) navigate, find and kill the enemy, navigate home and then land on.
No beacons, no radio control, no atc, no TCAS.

There are other missions like surveilance and reconnisance missions, where long endurance over the area of interest is better done with sattelites or unmanned vehicles, the army starts to use robots in their field of responsibility for those tasks.

But what has that to do with commercial air traffic?
While the motive of the forces is to be able to conduct missions not suitable for manned aircraft while risking the loss of those vehicles and accepting collateral damage in a war time scenario, disregarding costs for development, operation and possible higher loss rates due to mission requirement, commercial air traffic has completely different goals and the use of unmanned aircraft would have the only purpose to save money on human resources without loosing safety, flexibility, and reliability of their operations.

If you want to advocate the pilotless airline operations of the future, i think you have to do it without using the forces as valid example.

[Tourist]

An interested reader might get the impression from this thread that I am one of a few deluded idiots who thinks this could work when the sensible educated people of this world know its impossible.

A more realistic view is that the engineers of this world don't post on this site. They just quietly get on in the background making it happen.

BAe
Thales
Cobham
Qinetiq
Lockmart

These are not chumps.
These are the future, and they believe to the sum of billions that it is possible and going to happen.

Some old pilots saying "it ain't going to happen" whilst posting no evidence or links whatsoever to back up their point of view smacks of a triumph of desperate hope over realistic thought processes.

I have posted an endless series of links which support my view.
I challenge the naysayers to do likewise.

[Tourist]

RetiredF4

I use the forces not as an example of why it should be done.
I use them because it is being done with them, and the technical challenges once solved for military will be valid for civil.
The tech required to find and kill an enemy aircraft or defend is easily converted to the simpler task of avoiding others thus sense and avoid.
The challenge of navigating at low level without prior planning is more difficult than navigating airways from airport to airport
Etc etc.

Yes, a big driver for UAVs has been to protect our pink bodies, but that does not stop the tech being valid, plus the latest generation are about more than equaling the human.

[Jwscud]

Those of you talking about space are conflating multiple issues. The main reason most space craft are unmanned are their mission types and requirements. It should be obvious why satellites are unmanned. Space probes are unmanned as their design and objective precludes life support and return.

However, the main reason for unmanned craft is weight! Given the cost per kilo to orbit (around $1,000,000 I believe), all that weight spent on life support systems, seats, food and all the other support stuff us poor old carbon units require is incredibly expensive to get to orbit, and thus is sacrificed if it is not utterly needed.

[Interested Passenger]

Before looking at autonomous cars and planes, the question I would ask is where are the autonomous trains? Anyone who's ever had a model railway and a bit of skill with a soldering iron knows it's very easy to make a train obey signals, and stop at the station. no steering required. no route planning required. And yet we still have a squishy human who looks out the window and says 'green means go' no thinking required.

there's the novelty of the docklands light railway, and the little trundle train at Stanstead, but none of the main lines or the underground are autonomous.

Is it, that we know humans sometimes make mistakes, but we also know that computers crash every single day. We are constantly being told to turn it off and on again. Most people on here know that Airbus and Boeing don't run on Windows, that there is redundancy and safeguards etc, but the general perception to the public is that computers crash, all the time.

[GlueBall]

Irrational fears about pilotless planes must eventually give way to the evidence that they are better and safer.

But there are rational fears about in-flight snafus: Hydraulic leak affecting flight controls/gears & gear doors; electrical anomalies affecting navigation/gyros/fuel pumps/valves/autopilots/auto-throttles; smoke in cabin; bird strike; uncontained engine failure/separation; air conditioning/pressurization failure . . . :{

[RetiredF4]

Tourist,

The military use of thise drones is still limited to specialized tasks despite all that potential they have.Those drones are not replacing helicopters and transport aircraft for airlift operations now or some time in the future, because they are not capable to do the same like manned aircraft can do, they are not able to make decisions, they are only able to stick to them. Therfore there will be always fighters ( not all of them) with pilots, to make the appropriate decisions when they are necessary. If you have ever been a fighter pilot, you would know how many of those decisions have to be made on an average ride.

The crude preprogrammed decision making of computers works well in a preplanned environment with a preplanned task and with the knowledge that you can get away with unplanned losses, because its war and somebody else is paying the bill.


There are less decisions to be made in airliners than in fighter aircraft, but those which are left are important ones and might cause great harm if done wrong.

Nothing has changed since those words were said:

Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.

How would an unpiloted airliner cope with a MEL list, with ATC and weather demands (both can't be foreseen), with inflight emergencies not in the book, with simple software and hardware bugs we encounter on a day to day basis where we are already dependent on functioning computer driven systems? There is no fail safe in live as there is no unfailable human.

The most ridiculous arguments are derived from those statistics, like 70% of airline accidents are caused by human errors. You might know, that 30% of the car accidents in Germany are caused by drunk drivers, and 70% by sober ones. You think that we should remove those 70% sober drivers or make them drink to get the highest improvement in accident rates?

[16024]

It's quite obvious that the people at qinetiq etc are not chumps. If someone was paying 60 odd million, I'd be working quietly away, too.
And there's no desperation in my position. I might have another few years left in this great business, but whatever happens it won't affect me.
The reason it won't happen, I made very clear.
Post #171, if it helps.

[wiggy]

I have posted an endless series of links which support my view.
I challenge the naysayers to do likewise.

If you insist, though I don't think links prove anything..:

An artificial intelligence system is only about a smart as a 4-year-old child, and has very uneven skill levels. (http://www.livescience.com/38310-ai-has-four-year-old-iq.html)

[ShyTorque]

One of the things that computers are very good at is monitoring mechanical systems. The readings given to you in the cockpit are a very small selection of those available to a modern monitoring system currently fitted to airliners. The machine can do trend analysis and untiringly monitor those systems and is in an immeasurably better position to spot a spurious caption than a pilot who with the best will in the world cannot multitask like a computer.
There is a reason why all complex modern processes across all engineering now have computer monotoring.

I'm aware of that.
You appear to be trying to get me to believe that the data given to the pilot via a warning system is different to the inputs actually received by the onboard computer, or sent via data link to the ground station. That's incorrect rubbish.

My point is, if the onboard data collection system fails (and its backup, as did happen in my case), a human pilot can still make real time decisions. Without data, a computer based system cannot.

[netstruggler]

there's the novelty of the docklands light railway, and the little trundle train at Stanstead, but none of the main lines or the underground are autonomous.

The Victoria line has been fully autonomous since 1968, the Central Line since 1995, the Jubilee since about 2005 and the Northern since this year.

The "driver" has to close the doors because automated systems are not able to very that all passengers are safely clear. Otherwise everything is automatic. The door problem has been partially solved on the Jubilee line by fitting platform doors aligned with those of the train.

It's that sort of 'cleaning up' of the environment that has to be provided for an automated system to work. Very expensive but with the added benefit of a massive safety increase.

[Superpilot]

Tourist,


I don't want an intelligent aircraft.
I don't want emotions or artwork or joy.

I just want a machine that flys a plane.

Presumabely though, you still want a plane which is "safe". So what would make an autonomous plane safe? Is it speed/reliability or intelligence? One of these components has the edge, which one? Surely, safety cannot be met by just relying on a "machine that flys a plane"?

[ex-Dispatcher]

I haven't posted to this forum before as I'm not flight crew so a few words of introduction needed. I am an ex FAA qualified dispatcher and a physicist by training - my day job these days is protecting GNSS based navigation systems from threats (RF interference, spoofing (fake signals) and cyber-attack) - I have more than 15 years experience of this (my dispatcher days were on older aircraft types- Viscount, DC9 and L1011 principally)


Interesting to follow some of the arguments on this site. I believe that fully autonomous aircraft are coming, although not in the near future. We do already have autonomous trains (Docklands light railway and Copenhagen Metro are two examples that I know of ). What is also true is that it's a bit easier to provide back up navigation systems to trains in the event that GNSS is not available (masking, underground, RF interference, etc) than for a transport system that does not use fixed tracks.


From a navigation point of view there are challenges to fully autonomous systems - firstly its the case that GNSS probably has to be a part of the overall control system as a common, precise time frame will be required (some of us call this 4D-trajectory management). But GNSS signals as received on the Earth's surface are very weak and thus susceptible to RF interference and from spoofing which could be carried out using a faked replica of a GNSS signal. Obviously this would be of great concern to anyone stepping onto an autonomous aircraft - what happens to the navigation system if a hacker can utilise the GPS channel to inject false or corrupted navigation messages or to report a false position.


Without enough robustness to defend or at least detect and revert to back-up navigation systems, this becomes a major issue.

In the GNSS industry, one of the fathers of GPS, Bradford Parkinson, talks about Protecting, Toughening and Augmenting GNSS. This means that for safety critical applications there is a need to do several things to harden GPS against attack (or unintentional effects):-
Protection through legislation that means if someone uses a jamming device ( and we believe that there are a lot out there in use on the roads today - just type in "GPS jammer" into google to find out how easy it is to get one) there are severe penalties in force to deter their use.


Toughening is about making sure that the GNSS Receiver or sensor has adequate detection and mitigation implemented ( Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) is one of the techniques employed on today's aviation Receivers). This will need improvements to the way RAIM is implemented and advanced detection mechanisms (such as monitoring the automatic gain control of the receiver).


Augmentation is about using a back up system intelligently (INS is a very good bet here as essentially it is a very good dead-reckoning system and will get even better when cold-atom INS technology arrives that will need less fixes from GPS.

My point is that there is still a lot of work to do before we get to the point where our navigation systems can use GNSS and backups safely in a fully autonomous system - and it is an evolving situation - the bad guys will still try to defeat the protection mechanisms whatever industry does.

However, having said all that - autonomous transport is coming. My bet is that we will see autonomous cargo ships first - a lot of work is being done in that area. Ground vehicles and aircraft will follow - it's inevitable as a lot of industry money is being spent in these areas. But the timeline? May not come in my lifetime or in the timeline of most of the flight crew on this forum, especially when it comes to passenger carrying aircraft.


Autonomous systems will have to prove they are safer than ones with human control and that will take a very long time as the transport industry with safety critical concerns is thankfully cautious and conservative about adopting new and unproven technology. It will be a revolution but if it comes about in my lifetime I will still hanker after seeing (from jumpseat) skilled professional flight crew handling the DC9 in bad weather and with minimum automatics.

[AUTO/MAN]

Why fight it?
Barely half way through my career with 20 years at the pointy end and another 20 to go, the idea of remote control has to be the dream!
Ever since my first flight I have been wondering about the next step. Now I´m hauling heavies on legs longer than reasonable and I might also be in a position to tell others what to do.
The idea of sitting down at a desk, telling the thing somewhere on the other side of the world to cruise at M.86 to be economical, turning off the WX-radar before ******* off for lunch at my own convenience and letting others find out what moderate turbulence or penetrating CB´s feels like at long-range cruise speed while I´m out feels severely tempting.
Oops, my bad if it turns to ****, I no longer have to take part in the immideate consequences.
Any day please!

[Basil]

In order to maintain order on board there has to be an appointed Pilot in Command.
At the very least a change in law would be required to appoint, say, the chief steward as aircraft commander.

[cavok_flyer]

Maybe since I use to be part of the military-industrial complex, but these quotes are geting far to rampant

"I think you are all delusional.
Various Militaries are already utilising unmanned and autonomous fixed-wing and rotary vehicles at war.
These are point and click UAVs."

If a UAV goes in, fine, taxpayer dollars are "wasted", but who cares. There is more or less an unlimited reserve.

Do you all REALLY believe that the military is going to devulge how many they have lost and for what reasons. :eek:
Never in a billion years...

[Dont Hang Up]

Whilst I full understand the important distinction between autonomous and remotely piloted aircraft, I would point out that any autonomous aircraft operating in an air traffic environment like the one we have currently will have to allow remote access to its FMS. This is the only way that route changes and other ATC constraints can be conveyed. Therefore many of the concerns regarding hacking into the system remain valid.

Only when we have an air traffic environment where the aircraft can autonomously self separate (in an orderly way which never creates escalating knock-on effects) can we really consider one where the they can autonomously navigate.

So basically the ATCos are all going to be out of work before the pilots.

[Sorry if this has already come up. This thread got too big too quickly for a newcomer to have a hope of reading the whole thing before posting.]

[Jwscud]

As a former professional seafarer, I think autonomous cargo ships are just as much a pipe dream as autonomous passenger aircraft. The demands of the environment are in some respects more challenging than aircraft - exposure to storms, wind, potential damage and so on.

The demands of detection and collision avoidance are also at least an order of magnitude more challenging than in the air.

[ShyTorque]

I would point out that any autonomous aircraft operating in an air traffic environment like the one we have currently will have to allow remote access to its FMS. This is the only way that route changes and other ATC constraints can be conveyed. Therefore many of the concerns regarding hacking into the system remain valid.

Precisely. If this isn't done, how will an aircraft be ordered to "go around" or enter a holding pattern? As I wrote before, what is technically achievable from an engineering stance is one thing, but fitting fully automated aircraft safely into the existing infrastructure is another kettle of fish altogether.

[Tourist]

Cavok-flyer

The fact that some military UAVs, particularly the little ones have "20 minuter" lifespans is utterly irrelevant.

Nobody is suggesting loading them up with passengers.

The ME262 had a huge death rate and engine life spans in single figures, yet within 5 years the Comet was airborne.

Where the military goes, the civvy world follows in aviation.

Shyt

Humans need data just as much as computers to make a decision, unless you have mystical powers.

Don't hang up.

I totally agree.
I think the problems are not technical so much as integrational.

I think the biggest problem will be the transitional phase. I think the initial integration will be very dificult to organise, and as said earlier, ATC is crying out to be computerised.
It is probably easier to computerise ATC first.

The difference is that I think despite the difficulties that it will be achieved within the next 20 yrs.

[ShyTorque]

Shyt

Humans need data just as much as humans to make a decision, unless you have mystical powers.

Sorry, that seems totally nonsensical to me!

[evansb]

Would you put your child in a driverless school bus? In winter? (If you know what winter actually is..) Thought not. Too many variables, just like flying an airliner from Yellowknife to Inuvik. Ever flown from Norman Wells to Baker Lake? FYI: The entire world is not under ATC radar coverage.

BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) was originally designed to be driverless, or conductorless if you prefer, but the ridership demanded human beings up front after a very trouble prone start.
Most high-speed trains could easily be driverless, but are not. Japan, a tech-savvy nation if there ever was one, has demanded conductors be retained.
Yes, there are plenty of examples of conductorless subways, but there are far fewer variables on a closed track, weather protected tube than flying an airliner from Thompson to Churchill. Ever watch "Ice Pilots"?

Here are duties of a BART conductor (Train Operator):

Train operator duties may include, but are not limited to, the following:

Monitors console and radio communications to ensure that vehicles are operating within established guidelines;
Observes and detects problems with passengers entering and exiting train doors and takes corrective action; observes and detects hazards on the track, in the station or platforms, or the train itself, reports them to Operations Control Center personnel via radio, and take necessary corrective action;
Make announcements to passengers regarding station arrivals, transfer points, delays, and emergencies and answers passenger questions;
In yards, on test tracks, turntables and wash facilities, follows directions from Tower personnel and operates console to move trains as directed;
Takes prescribed action such as evacuating passengers, administer first aid, and using a fire extinguisher during emergencies;
Reports basic equipment malfunctions of mechanical or electrical nature to Operations Control Center; works with foreworkers and technicians to isolate reported problems;
Maintains logs of work activities; completes forms to report unusual circumstances and action taken;
Uses a variety of communication equipment, including a public address system, two‑way radios and emergency telephones;
Monitors and learns to apply changes in operating and emergency procedures;
Maintains and upgrades knowledge of policies and procedures as required.


Hmm... anyone considering driverless snowplows, (snowploughs), and sweepers on runways?

[RexBanner]

A serious question guys and this applies to every industry not just aviation. Once we've finished putting everyone out of a job through automation, who exactly is going to be travelling anyway? How will we even have an economy with such a tiny workforce? Perhaps a more pertinent issue here as it applies to everybody.

[MG23]

A serious question guys and this applies to every industry not just aviation. Once we've finished putting everyone out of a job through automation, who exactly is going to be travelling anyway? How will we even have an economy with such a tiny workforce? Perhaps a more pertinent issue here as it applies to everybody.

Watch some documentaries from the 30s/40s/50s, and marvel at how we have more people working today, even though most of the jobs you'll see them doing in those documentaries are gone. Some of the Royal Mail documentaries, for example, are simply staggering when you see how many people used to be required to do things that are mostly automated today.

When we see human-level AI at a low cost, yeah, we're doomed. Until then, people will always find useful things to do that others will pay for.

[RetiredF4]

Tourist,
you keep pointing to the military. Ok, i follow.
Why do you think, the present non piloted military aircraft operations originate from places with overall clear sky WX conditions and land at those places as well? Why do they operate from remote bases with not much traffic, climb to high cruising altitudes and stay there throughout the mission?
Because it is easier, it can be done that way and it would be a lot more difficult to operate those gadgets from high traffic zones under typical north european weather conditions. But passengers like to fly from airports close by their home, and most live in heavily populated areas where all those military gadgets have no fly zones now for good reason.

What is the biggest safing from those unmanned military jets? There is no need for the whole life support system for the aircrew, two ejection seats, oxygen, cabin heating, cooling and ventilation, accessible glassed and instrumented cockpit area and the whole flight control handles. That is a heavy weight burden for jet carrying only two people and reduces the possible payload significantly.

There will be no way to safe that much weight in a passenger aircraft, as all those people on board still need to breath and like to have it warm and cozy. The percentage in weight safing in an A380 would be minimal.

That raises the question what advantage would air travel gain by pilotless aircraft except the costs for the crew? I see none at all at the moment.

[Tourist]

The RetiredF4

It is not quite as simple as you make out.
Yes, good weather flatters the reaper/predator UAVs because they don't have to carry deice anti-ice. If they had to be fitted with all the expensive heavy stuff that a proper all round military jet had to carry around like flaps and a DAS and ejection seats then yes they would be far less capable and attractive.
The fact that the initial attraction had more to do with cost, endurance and safety benefits does not alter the fact that a lot of the work has been done. The thin end of the wedge is in and designers are seeing other benefits.

Your suggestion about only operating from quiet airfields is incorrect however. Kandahar is/was like Heathrow and it was routine to be queueing with the drones.

Yes, in a A380, the percentage weight/space saving is small, but it would still be a few extra 1st class seats per flight and a few tonnes of freight and lots of extra flexibility with no crew duty problems.

The big benefit is that it will be safer.
We are the failure point in a huge percentage of accidents.
I truly believe that the only reason that the safety rate is so good is that the engineers have created amazingly foolproof aircraft. Probably the best engineered machines in history.

They are so good that today's pilots have forgotten how to fly. The managers don't want them to practise, and 2 sims sessions a year is a joke.
On those occasions that something really bad happens and the aircraft gets handed to the pilot we hear about it in the news.

I have sat in sims with guys from both seats from "quality" airlines that quite simply cannot fly a raw data ILS. I'm sure they once could, but they forgot long ago.
Won't practise hand flown approach if it is a bit gusty.
Won't practise manual thrust.
The simple fact is that if you can't do it any time any place, then you can't do it period.
Aircraft always seem to fail on ****ty days.
Computers don't skill fade.
I think there are a lot of people out there who must just pray that they retire before it happens to them.
Yes there are some awesome guys out there. I don't know how they remain at that standard without the chance to practice.
The point being as I said before that autonomous airliners don't have to be perfect, they just have to be equal or better.
There are a lot more Asiana flights just waiting to happen.
The sooner you remove us from the system the better.

p.s. You say that UAVs are not replacing helicopters now or in the future and that they can't make decisions, only follow them.
There have been unmanned helicopters in Afghanistan for years moving freight very successfully. No, they are not autonomous, they require a mouse click, but as I have said many times since nobody seems to bother to watch the links I post, go and watch the autonomous Blackhawks video I posted.
That is autonomous, low level tactical flight to an LS it reccys itself.

[Faire d'income]

This whole argument is based on the premise that computers can do everything perfectly all of the time, or will be able to in the near future. Best of luck with that.

P.S. My computer has crashed twice trying to post this.

[Faire d'income]

Tourist - how would your totally computerised aircraft have handled the AF447 scenario?

[By George]

Humans are slow at programming, make mistakes but have a brilliant mind.


Computers are fast at programming, do not make mistakes but are stupid.


I know what I prefer if locked in a tube high above the earth.

[Dont Hang Up]

Tourist - how would your totally computerised aircraft have handled the AF447 scenario?

Ah, perhaps a bad example!!

If the autonomous programming was not allowed to hand back control to a flight crew, then it would have been programmed to do another level of fallback. Which would almost certainly be something like "power and pitch".

[Herod]

MG 23 said When we see human-level AI at a low cost, yeah, we're doomed. Until then, people will always find useful things to do that others will pay for.

Yep, like flying airliners. The argument has come full circle.

[Tourist]

Faire

You really are not reading what I post are you?

No.
I don't say that they will be perfect or even close.
There will be tragic accidents caused by the blue screen of death.

What matters is whether they can be safer than human pilots. I think that they can, others not so much.

Don't hang up.

Thank you. Just what I was going to say.


"There is no way a machine will ever weave like me!"
"That contraption will never beat a horse!"
"Ridiculous! A ship without sails!"
"Paper money!? That will never work!"
"Voices down a wire!? Preposterous!"
"A phone you can carry in your pocket!?"
"A computer you can keep in your home!?"
"Nobody is ever going to buy a mobile phone with a camera and address book. Why would you want one?!"

By George
Some people have brilliant minds.
Some are total :mad:
Do you interview your airline pilot before you fly?
It ain't hard to get a license nowadays.....

[4Greens]

Main issue, getting SLF on board. Not volunteering.

[Tourist]

Yes, that is the main issue.

They had that issue with planes, once.

[RetiredF4]

Tourist
The big benefit is that it will be safer.
We are the failure point in a huge percentage of accidents.
I truly believe that the only reason that the safety rate is so good is that the engineers have created amazingly foolproof aircraft. Probably the best engineered machines in history.

Now your true thinking shows up. I wait that you prove that statement, at the moment every system and every computer fails, and it fails more often then it is reported and makes the headline. That's because still human operators are still doing the important things and computers the routine stuff. Why has nobody invented a system which cuts in to execute the apropriate emergency actions when the sh*t hits the fan? Your drones blow up in those cases, mission failed, lets do "booom" before more damage is done. That is not good for headlines with more than 300 souls on board.

And while AF447 crew failed to act like they should have done, over 30 reported cases did their job well. Those are 30 reported sensor failures where the autopilot quit working and the pilots did the job. Reported ones and mentioned in the BEA report, but there are much more out there not mentioned and not reported, just handled safe and well by the crews. Those had all been cases where a simple airspeed failure caused the computers to quit. One missing input leading to BS output.

Remove the pilots, and you will have more accidents than ever before.

You are forgetting another thing. Humans make mistakes, and computers and their software are made by humans too. They make mistakes as well, and until this mistake is discovered it is hidden deep in the codes in multiple systems all over the world.

They are so good that today's pilots have forgotten how to fly. The managers don't want them to practise, and 2 sims sessions a year is a joke.
On those occasions that something really bad happens and the aircraft gets handed to the pilot we hear about it in the news.

I would suggest we change the managers, or remove them at all. Let aircrews keep proficiency and make it again a profession with knowledge and honor. Get rid of MPL and pilot to pay jobs. In my country a mason can try to pass his final test three times, after that he is out. A student pilot can repeat his test as long as his money lasts, that way an ape can learn flying.

I have sat in sims with guys from both seats from "quality" airlines that quite simply cannot fly a raw data ILS. I'm sure they once could, but they forgot long ago.
Won't practise hand flown approach if it is a bit gusty.
Won't practise manual thrust.
The simple fact is that if you can't do it any time any place, then you can't do it period.

The system has made them that way, guys like yourself who trust in man made computers and software more than in human manual skills. We only hear from bad pilots, the uncountable good ones do not count in your way of thinking. And its not the pilots fault, it is the system which is wrong.

Aircraft always seem to fail on ****ty days.
Computers don't skill fade.


Wasn't your argument that they do not fail at all? And maybe those pilots, who you talked about think the same. No need to train, computers will not fail, automation will always work. And it was not their idea either. The system has formed them that way.

[Mr Optimistic]

Particularly like post 186. Wrong and wrong. As a pax count me out! As an engineer, what problem do you think you are solving because you sure are introducing a shed load of new ones going along a automation path. Don't think it will ever happen because a) it's a dumb idea and b) there are easier solutions (like what we have now).

[Piltdown Man]

I think Tourist is being a bit if a troll. Because he is missing some really important elements. The first one is that we are not killing enough people. We will have to park a few more aircraft on hills and in smoking holes every year before it becomes economically worthwhile. The cost of implementing this will be enormous and even given our current appalling record, not presently viable. The work being done at the moment is to place the companies working on these projects in first place if this looks like it's viable. They are counting on generating infra-structure, consulting and training income to enable this sort of operation to take place. Next we have the cost issues. Who will pay for the improvements to infra-structure and training to handle aircraft in the less developed parts of the world? Thirdly, we haven't got a single sky over Europe yet. Not until this exists, plus reliable and secure C(remote)PDLC will this be a flyer. Then we have the failure cases. Who can foresee a controller accepting an unmanned aircraft with a problem? Also, will the cabin crew now run the aircraft? Will they press the "something is wrong button" and be told by the cheapest handler, say one in Bangalore or Calcutta to go away or fail to communicate? Who will change international law to make a person in a remote office the "captain"? And there are hundreds more hurdles to be overcome. Will it happen - probably. But not in my lifetime. And when it does, after the first few prangs, prangs only possible because of the stupidity of computers, the public will want to know why it's not safe. And we'll send them over to the Tourist for an answer.

[Delight]

This all reminds me of a story about a group of managers from software companies, who were asked "if you got onto a plane, and found out that the software controlling the plane had been written by your own team, would you get off again?". All the managers except one said they would. When they asked that one manager why he would stay on he said "I would be perfectly safe - if my guys wrote the software, we wouldn't even get off the ground".


:ok:

[Pininstauld]

Great thread.

Consider, though - no human has ever actually "touched" the control surfaces of any Airbus product since the A320 first took to the skies in the 80's.

Even ECAM drills are a matter of putting the switches into the position which the software has already decided is safest.

So much for decision-making...

[wheels up]

Even ECAM drills are a matter of putting the switches into the position which the software has already decided is safest.


I'm sure the crew of QANTAS QF32 would not agree with that statement..

[Tourist]

RetiredF4

There is an accepted methodology in scientific debate.
You put forward an idea.
You say why you think it and try to put forward evidence to support it, either experimental or references.

An example.
You say "why has nobody invented a system that cuts in when the sh1t hits the fan?"
You put forward no evidence to support this, however in the spirit of debate...
I say...
NASA-Pioneered Automatic Ground-Collision Avoidance System Operational | NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/Features/Auto-GCAS_Installed_in_USAF_F-16s.html#.VIFFtiakqnM)

This is where you should come in and either say "oh I'm terribly sorry, I'll do some research in future before making statements" or find some alternative evidence to support your belief.

Or you could just move on and not register your mistake ....

The Air France example and others like it do not help your case. That aircraft was designed that the failure mode is to hand it to the pilot. As has been stated repeatedly, if you were pilotless you would have another option. It just so happens that pitch and power would be more than enough.
Piltdown

I don't disagree with anything you say, except that I think it will be done in the next 20yrs, and since I'm not the one who will be making billions from it, I respectfully decline the offer to speak to grieving relatives.

[wiggy]

Even ECAM drills are a matter of putting the switches into the position which the software has already decided is safest.

So much for decision-making...

Have a hard look at the likes of a Fuel Imbalance checklist...(Boeing)

Having gone through Uni in the 70@s when AI was supposed to be around the corner forgive me for being a bit sceptical about some of the current claims.

I'm also well aware (from my friends that stayed in academics,) that these days it's all about funding and getting your project into the public eye...so I don't think providing links to any PR about some blue sky project gives the general public any real idea about the state of play ( putting forward links to projects is not "scientific debate"...but on that subject I could provide some great links on cold fusion BTW...).

IMHO reckon you might just see regular unmanned freight across the pond, between specific freight hubs, in the next 20 -30 years.

Routine unpiloted passenger flights between the like of CDG, LHR, JFK...at the very least 50 years off...but maybe that's me being a luddite.

[RetiredF4]

Tourist
This is where you should come in and either say "oh I'm terribly sorry, I'll do some research in future before making statements"

There is a different way of knowledge in discussions, except research, and that is expierience. Those who sat in cockpits for years expierienced the hours of boredom and the seconds of horror. they need no research on that matter, they know it is not going to happen in the next 50 years.

You would wonder how often ECAM procedures include the famous word "if" in wording or in sense. All piloted aircraft are designed for the failure mode to hand it to the pilot, my words. The computers do the easy stuff, easy to design, easy to implement, and easy to drop out when the sh*t hits the fan. That is the present concept. Your unmanned drones have a bit of explosives for those cases when the computers run out of ideas. What proof do you have, that this failure fall back mode of yours concerning AF447 ( you brought that example yourselve) is anywhere available in close future?

I think you got too far detached from real flying, leading a meeting in a comfortable chair is different to flying aircraft, even when computers help in doing the job.

[Dont Hang Up]

All piloted aircraft are designed for the failure mode to hand it to the pilot, my words.

You are simply stating current design philosophy - you are not describing a fundamental limitation of automation.

There are good arguments against autonomous flight but that is not one of them. Every failure mode could ultimately be automated. In each case a fair sized mountain of a safety case would need to be addressed, but it could be done. The big question - is it "worth the candle".

[MrMachfivepointfive]

F4 dude is right. In 5 years your car will offer you to drive you home from the pub, or your kid to school. Not much later the public will demand the same technology on airliners. The pilot of the future will reside over a cubicle in flight ops and control 20 or more aircraft during one shift.

[ShyTorque]

The deciding factor in most things is cost. For example, it's all very well to design an automated car but it relies on an infrastructure. That infrastructure costs money. The way things are going round these parts, they aren't even repairing the road surface, due to lack of funding, let alone building in the necessary new equipment for autonomous cars to be commonplace.

Same with new medical research. The manufacturers can produce miracle drugs but they are often too expensive to be put in common use.

It's no different for airborne cars.

There remains the problem of customer resistance. If the customer won't buy the product, the designers have wasted their time.

[parabellum]

F4 dude is right. In 5 years your car will offer you to drive you home from the pub, or your kid to school. Not much later the public will demand the same technology on airliners. The pilot of the future will reside over a cubicle in flight ops and control 20 or more aircraft during one shift.

This post must take the prize for the scenario least likely to happen.

Spoke to a good friend yesterday who is an underwriter and partner for one of the major aviation insurance syndicates at Lloyds, he has followed PPRuNe for many years, mainly for entertainment, but loves the threads like this one, as I mentioned in an earlier post, "It aint going to happen"

[parabellum]

Even ECAM drills are a matter of putting the switches into the position which the software has already decided is safest.

So much for decision-making...

There are many, many Airbus flying instructors out there who will only take a few minutes to prove that statement very wrong. Nice troll though, :)

[Landflap]

Parabellum, of course you are right, all the professional pilots on this forum will agree and so will the non-pilots who do not have a commercial agenda. I like the troll bit too as many bit the bullet and have waded in, much to the delight, no doubt, of the envious poor souls out there who would love a leather jacket and big watch !

Sunning myself with an old mate who told me of the glory days when we would allow pax visits to the Flight Deck. One guest was a train driver who suddenly remarked, out of the blue, that he felt my colleague was not worth the money he was getting as he appeared to be "not doin nuffink!". Skipper replied, "Well, Driver West, at the moment we are around 5 miles above the planet earth", 'Yeah ?', replied West, in quizzical fashion, "and", continued Commander," we are doing, about, eight miles a minute," ' Yeah ?', replied West, in quizzical fashion, "and" continued Boss, "if anything fails, we can't stop !". West went ashen-faced, bleated 'F..K !!' and scurried back into the cabin.

We are talking about Air Transport here with all the regulation it requires. Of course the paying public will never stump up the cash to set foot in a pilotless, public transport aircraft. The very notion beggars belief. I agree with Parabellum as I , also stated in previous posts, It aint gonna happen.

[Aluminium shuffler]

Sorry, Tourist, but your faith in the infallibility of machines and computers is more than a little disturbing, and your stated view that all modern pilots are incapable of light without the aid of computers is as insulting as it is plain wrong. There are some pilots who have been lead into automation dependency because of dire airline management philosophies, and I am proud to count myself as one amongst many who stand against that deterioration and encourage as much hand, visual and raw data flying as circumstances prudently permit. Many companies are trying to reverse the rot, and there are a lot of skilled operators out there, just as before.

If all pilots were inept and all computers infallible, then you'd be making sense, Tourist, but you come across as a theoretical engineer and someone who has never flown the line. Even line engineers, despite all the banter, know full well that computers aren't reliable enough to be left unsupervised and in total control. And a man far more intelligent than any of us on this forum just made a public statement that AI will be the death of humanity - a point often cheesily made in Hollywood, but true all the same.

[GlueBall]

Every failure mode could ultimately be automated.

...as, for example, US1549 where the automaton would KNOW that ditching on the Hudson was the only safest option; and the automaton would be able to see and to avoid a collision with moving vessels on the surface. :ooh:

[Uplinker]

Of course it will never happen. I've just had a long argument on a science forum with some science folk who reckon that personal, automatic pilotless cars will be both possible and available in the near future.

They say the machines will "....have 100% redundancy and be computer controlled so they won't be able to crash."

The only 'evidence' for their assertions is a single driverless car that Google is developing.

When I asked how such a machine would be able to look down and assess the landing site on someone's driveway for cross wind, turbulence, fixed hazards, loose hazards, loose pets and children, they told me "360 degree cameras, range finders, infra red, and anyway the technology is already used in CGI films". I then asked how any computer would be able to collect all that information and assess the risks by PREDICTING what might happen, in the way a helicopter pilot does.

After several carefully reasoned posts from me I have given up. Thing is they read too many comics and believe science fiction programs.

I don't see how there can ever be pilotless passenger aircraft. Before there could be, the human brain would need to be completely modelled. As of now, only a small part of the decision making process can be simulated. What about icing, avoiding thunderstorms, lightning, engine failures, gear failures, flap jams, generator failures, medical emergencies, bird strikes, explosive decompression, cabin fires etc. etc. ???? No computer or software could ever be developed to consider and react to the massive amount of variables and potential problems in even the most 'simple' passenger flight.

And before pilotless airplanes, we would need to have developed and proven driverless trains. (Operating in one dimension: forward speed) I know there are some, but we would need to operate and prove 100% of them. Then we would need to develop and prove driverless cars and lorries - 100% of those too. (Operating in two dimensions on defined roads). Only then could we even begin to dream of the concept of pilotless commercial aircraft. (Operating in three dimensions in the air and also unable to stop within a few vehicle lengths at any time).

The concept of pilotless computer controlled aircraft has arisen because some pilots make accidents, and some people's knee-jerk reaction is to say "well, obviously we must get rid of the pilots then, they are the problem" NOOOO! What is actually the root cause of this? = Bad training. Bad working conditions. Long working hours and working during the circadian low points. Minimum possible training hours to just pass then onto the line in an A320 with less than 200 hours actual flying experience in an actual aeroplane and NO experience in actual multi engined aircraft or of flying in bad weather. Or onto a Dash 8 without possessing the correct instinctive reaction to a stall for example.

Instead of all this nonsense, let's go back to some decent pilot training, some decent hand flying practice and some decent conditions and decent hours and decent contracts for pilots. That's what is really needed.

[Aaronski]

Trains - at LHR well there is the HEX and HEC the passenger trains, both have drivers, well a bag of meat at the front. (Self described driver). Guys and Gals who all to frequently incur SPADS. (Mostly in the shunting yards) - I guess akin to ground movements.

Then the disused PAD - LHR baggage only line - and last (that I am aware of) is the very busy secured baggage system, so unless you talking about the staff car park bubbles ? More of a Disney ride I don't see it as these I don't think go between the terminals,

On the subject of automation, I consider nuke power stations would be a better system to start to automate, remove the people from the control room - consider the risk of an aircraft hitting a full stadium vs the risk of issue at a nuke power plant, - of course worse case would be the aircraft hitting the said control room.

[Aluminium shuffler]

To programme computers to handle every eventuality, the engineers first have to envisage every eventuality, and we see time and time again new and interesting scenarios with subtleties previously unconsidered. And of course, the fallible human engineers have to build and programme these wonder machines...

[SLFguy]

"It aint going to happen"

I'm not sure if that throughout the history of the world that this isn't the phrase that has proved more people wrong than any other.

[cavok_flyer]

Ummm, Me 262 was a wartime aircraft flying in a war in the '40s. Please do not compare that to a commerical air service in peace time. There are no similies or metaphors to be used for flight safety.
My favourite example of how humans can save an a/c is illustrated in this clip (skip to 28:05). Please write me an algorithum to fix the problem at 34:05.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfNBmZy1Yuc&list=FLe7aMAZC_j89qQFkC_pb1dg&index=14

Sorry, don't know yet how to embed the veiwer... :rolleyes:

[Tourist]

Humans are almost exactly what you don't want in a modern cockpit.

We can be very good at things if we have enough practise.
In a modern airliner we so rarely ever get to practise it might as well be never.
We respond badly to dull repetitive tasks.
Airline flying is dull and repetitive.
We respond badly to time zone changes and unsociable hours..
Airline flying is all about the unsociable.
We work well in well rehearsed teams.
All the good SOP stuff can't avoid the fact that we have rarely even met the other guy.
We have a limited capacity for concurrent tasks before we max out.
A modern airliner is spectacularly complex.

Machines don't get tired.
They don't need practise
The love dull
They care not about unsociable.
They don't need to rehearse.
They excel at complex concurrent tasks

I say again.

I don't expect them to be perfect. There will be smoking holes.
They just have to be better than humans, which isn't hard.

People keep mentioning how often they have to make an input.
The first point I will make yet again is that the current crop are designed that way. They expect a human to be there and they use you to make that input.
The second point is a question. How many times is that input just turn it on and off again.
In an Airbus, nearly everything is solved by "leave it alone, it's just having a bad morning" or off then on.
The third of course is why are you judging the future on a really old piece of archaic junk like an Airbus?

Glueball

Read back a few pages.
There is a strong suggestion that the river was not the best option. If that is the case, that is the sort of thing a computer is good at judging. It is just a matter of geometry and speed distance time glide angle calculations. That is where a computer has us totally beaten.

Uplinker.
I don't think you have thought this through.
What do you do in an engine/generator/gear failure/flap jam failure that involves thought? You follow the ECAM. You are not supposed to think. All you currently are is an error waiting to happen as you don't follow the instruction properly or most likely you make a tiny error in the landing distance chart and totally mess up.

The ECAM tells you what to do.
You do it. well done, you must be a pilot.

Yes there are non ECAM procedures, but they are usually just awaiting an ECAM change or outside the current scope of the very old systems to check and monitor.
I'm guessing the fuel imbalance checklist is like the Airbus one and for similar reasons. Don't try to tell me you think that is outside the scope of a computer to run.

Aluminium shuffler

You talk as if I think that current airliners should be left to get airborne by themselves. They shouldn't, they are not designed to.
A line engineer working on 30yr old computer tech will of course say that. Look at your 30 yr old phone/telly/car. It's sh1te.

The world changes fast.
Many flight engineers thought it couldn't happen to them. Where are they now?

Can we please put to bed this "we can't even do driverless trains!" thing.
List of automated urban metro subway systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems)

Is that enough trains running by themselves? I'm not sure that it matters, because it is vastly simpler, practically one dimensional, but here they are..

Cars are inbound at great speed.
Autonomous car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car)

[Ancient Observer]

Where's Mayday38 when you need him?

He had about 10 seconds to decide what to do. Maybe a bit less.

What he did was not what the 'puter would have done. 'Puter, (programmed by humans) would have done something else. Even more quickly than Mayday. ...........and got it wrong.

Mayday38 got it right.

[Tourist]

Just a quick one.

There seems to be an assumption that I "like" automation and unmanned aircraft.

I don't. I loath the things.

They suck the fun out of life.

I left airline flying because I enjoy flying and being a pilot. I now fly a real old school aircraft again that needs me.

No autopilot
No ECAM
No TCAS
No EGPWS
No CVR
No ACARS
No magenta line
No mode S
No weather radar


What I don't do is fool myself that I'm better than automation.

Thankfully, since there are not that many of us left that can fly without the toys I get paid very nicely to do it!

[Greenlights]

I think, the problem is that pilots are not objectives in their point of view.

Personnally I don't care much what will happen in the futur, but for sure, you bet, there will be pilotless planes.

first of all, pilots are not even engineers to give an opinion about what a technology can do or can not do...science can go very far, more than we know. Unless you are a scientist.

2) human being, in all cases, always like challenge. We always want to go further and create new technology. It's an exponential curve.
As many doubt about it , that pilotless planes are difficult to make, yes maybe. In that case, it means it's a challenge. So you can be sure that engineers want to win this challenge.
A challenge is what makes us motivated. Keep this in mind.
It seems impossible for you now. But in the futur it will not. Your kids will tell you that.
It is not honest to think that such things won't happen. As long as we have brain, then, we will still invent new technology, better than today.

[Tourist]

Ancient

Not sure who that is, but fail to see what relevance a single pilot getting something right has?
Plenty get it wrong.

the list of pilot error crashes that a computer would never have made is enormous

Asiana
Colgan
Shall I go on?

It makes no difference, to my argument. I conceded that there will be occasions, the black swan events where a human would be better.
Most accidents are not something new.

It's not that the best pilots are not great, it's that the worst are so much worse than a computer.
Computers are consistent. You can produce 1000 and they will perform the same day and night, and if they don't, you swap them out!

[kcockayne]

Tourist

I don't know you , or your piloting skills, but trust me, you are FAR better than a computer !

[Superpilot]

My final conclusion...

No, pilotless airliners are not safer

My reasoning is that absolute safety can only be guaranteed by intelligence, not by speed and efficiency or a "computer that never gets tired". Intelligence has the edge and no amount of AI will ever beat it because the AI we develop will contain the inherent limitations of our minds, at least in ability. If you have ever coded an application you will know what this means, if you haven't then keep banging on about your DLR and UAV examples till the cows come home.

An automated airliner carrying 100+ pax takes off (and lands) might be commissioned before I leave this planet but it will be on the basis of the accepted reality that it is "safe enough". By then, every aspects of our lives will be so automated and so "local" that air travel would be a thing of the past anyway.

* intelligence being that thing that computes multiple inputs and outputs to achieve the correct outcome in a previously undefined situation

[Tourist]

Thank you for your vote of confidence, but nope, there are plenty of things I can do that computers cannot currently do, but in the range of skills that the automation can currently do in aircraft, I cannot think of something I am better at.
Sometimes I land better than autoland, often worse, certainly less consistently.
I cannot fly an approach as well.
I burn more fuel
I cannot fly with unwavering attention for 17hrs.
Sometimes I need to get up to pee.

[Tourist]

Superpilot

Go read up on what an AI is.

I don't think it means what you think it means.
I wouldn't want an AI in the cockpit.

What are you talking about absolute safety for?
There is now way to have absolute safet.
We don't have it now and we never will.

[Superpilot]

Thank you but I know exactly what AI is. I just read the wiki article and it concurred with my thinking ;)

Computing and software/hardware development is the other career I still run in parallel to my flying career, therefore I'm not just another steam guage era jet jocky with a mentality to defend.

You are right, absolute safety can never be achieved but safety itself is better achieved through employing intelligence (the natural kind being better than the artificial kind).

[Pininstauld]

To the folks who see trolls behind every comment they disagree with, stop posting ad hominem and address the issues. FYI, I have +10k hours, am a qualified TRI on the A320 family and now teach conversion courses. The point I made about ECAM is valid, because most of the time ECAM has already closed a valve, opened a contactor, isolated a faulty component, etc. and the pilot is just changing a FAULT caption to an OFF caption when she follows the drill. No one is arguing that ECAM is perfect - that's why the QRH is still so thick - but that doesn't alter the original design goals: to use automation as much as possible to reduce workload and minimise human errors. We are on a journey and the end of our journey is fully automated passenger flights. Not saying I like it any more than anyone else. Just making obvious comments on a very sensitive issue. If that's trolling to some, well - just thanks for your honesty.

[RetiredF4]

It's not that the best pilots are not great, it's that the worst are so much worse than a computer.
Computers are consistent. You can produce 1000 and they will perform the same day and night, and if they don't, you swap them out!

Your examples are all single point references, which prove nothing. The single train line from A to B and back, the single car driving with limited speed, the military UAV's for special missions. Everybody can have a quadrocopter and program it to fly from A to B and back, carry a camera or a small box.

That does not equal to a complete pilotless system. What good is it when the computer runs without probs ( which no computer does), but the input devices and the technical stuff which makes a functioning airframe has not the same reliability? There is no pitot boom on the market which is fail safe and no engine. All sensors are prone to fail once now and then, and sometimes even at the same time.

To make such a purly computer driven aircraft safe, the redundancy of the systems would have to increase significantly. The amount of software and database to cope with all possible failure modes and all asociated variables would exceed any imagination. You mentioned the landing in the Hudson. Who would have foreseen that? Landing in the water, yes. But landing in that spot of water? No. To cover all these possibilities zillions of options would have to be taken care of, any strip of water on this earth suitable for such a landing would have to be foreseen and acounted for, under any weather phenomena and under all the different aircraft failure modes. Your statement that a computer would have done it better is as true as it might be is useless, because no programmer and no software engineer would have been prepared for such situation, so no software code written. And without that pre programmed database any computer system is just blind. You would need an artificial self adapting and self learning intelligence system to be prepared for all situations.

Computers are almost consistent, and all 1.000 of them produced may work identical. One software bug discovered in one of them (hopefullly not by a smoking hole) will ground all other 999 until new software is developped, written, tested and uploaded. That will be a bad day for shareholders.

How difficult, time consuming and cost intensive the developping and implementation process of software to a required standard (even with pilots as fallback position) turns out to be can be seen on the status of the F35and the Typhoon. The jets fly since years, the software development for them is still on its way.

The so-called Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) used a real time operating system, which enabled astronauts to enter simple commands by typing in pairs of nouns and verbs, to control the spacecraft. It was more basic than the electronics in modern toasters that have computer controlled stop/start/defrost buttons. It had approximately 64Kbyte of memory and operated at 0.043MHz.

My first computer 1985 was a commodore PC10 III and it was far better than the one astronauts in the Apollo spacecraft had available. Todays computers are far better, smaller, faster and cheaper and the software can do magic things. But they are still just man made systems with man made software and man made failures, and if they should operate a passenger transporting aircraft around the globe on various routes, different times and in different weather conditions, then you need not only more reliable computing capacity, but the reliability and redundency of aircraft systems have to improve as well. As other industry changing inventions have shown the initial momentum of improvement slows dow, because some day it reaches the end of its economical development potential. To assume that the speed of further development continues to increases over time is misleading.

Manned aircraft achieved Mach 1 in 1947, Mach 2 in 1953, Mach 3 in 1956, Mach 4 in 1961. In the year 1970 the first supersonic comercial airliner Concorde flew Mach 2. It is amazing that 45 years later we have no supersonic transport aircraft in service despite all those technical advances and this vast computing power available.

Would we like to see even % of that loss rate of present UAV's?

http://dronewars.net/drone-crash-database/