There are a lot of emotive responses to this theoretical discussion. I think it safe to say that no current pilot will be affected by whatever is over the horizon. The aircraft order books are full for the next eight years...plus a thirty year life span...that's a career right there.

Beyond that, ladies and gentlemen, rest assured that when the time comes you will not get a vote.

NoseGear

I agree. I get the impression some of these people that think that pilotless airliners are just around the corner haven’t been out of their sheltered European, North American and Australian workshops. The reality for most of the airports in Asia, South America and Africa, infrastructure is seriously lacking. From ATC to navaids and runways etc etc the mere idea of pilotless aircraft operating to these places is laughable in the extreme. Without exception military drones operate in a strictly controlled environment, from well supported airfields to dedicated military satellites providing dedicated data communication links. Even then their accident rates are three times higher than their manned counterparts.

Nosey

Troll?! How dare you! How could you even think such rubbish. Perish the thought completely.

I will have you know I have the latest flight simulator software on my computer right now and I am just sussing out the automatics.

Troll, well I never.

doubleu-anker

How about you answer my question. Maybe then you will be taken more seriously.

I'm thinking and flying my sim. But i'm workin' on it. I'm having trouble with the automatics damn it.

Gimme a day or 2.

doubleu-anker

I’ve asked you a pretty simple question. Your condescending drivel doesn’t help your argument.

404, does activation of alpha floor count? Plenty of examples of that, and plenty of corresponding examples of crashes occurring without it.

In any case, I don't think anyone is saying its just around the corner. But the 'it will never happen' argument is just as illogical. The rate of technological change is pretty impressive: What were 'airliners' capable of 90 years ago?

imperial shifter

Your essentially talking about a car with a fancy auto pilot. Aircraft have had those since the 1930's. Can these cars handle tunnels, underground car parks etc without human intervention? The reality is that even cars with this kind of technology aren't driverless. A driver must be behind the wheel at all times. Also good luck getting insurance for them. There's a reason for this.

*Lancer*

No because it was most likely activated due to pilot error. There are plenty of cases of automation saving aircraft from pilot error. There aren't any where automation has saved a commercial aircraft from a major mechanical failure.

By the way I have never said it will never happen but I can't see it happening inside 50 years.

Titan, I may say Bullsh** for you but one thing is sure, you make a mistake about me...
I was pilot too, on 320 and flew in asia. (Which is not so difficult, as it is less crowded than Europe). anyway...

about AF447 for exemple, yes, the autopilot disconnected and so what ?
Guess what would have been better in that case ? easy : don't touch the stick.
In cruise, if they had not touched the controls, nothing would have happened.
the plane simply maintains the same angle of attack. In the worst case it mades a Phugoid (not sure in english), like a sinus/cosinus function.
Even one of the director in Airbus said that. He said, in that case, don't touch the flight controls.
The other guy just pulled up...why ? poor training indeed and poor understanding (maybe an ex-cadet pilot ?).

The recents accidents have demonstrated that pilots can not even deal when things go wrong. So I am seriously wondering, what are they doing in a cockpit.
I guess the next step is single pilot.

I don't say it's good or not. I just noticed that they put in cockpits, bad pilots nowadays.
So, I would start feeling safer in a 100% automated plane than with young pilots coming from OAA or CTC.

As a pilot and passenger too. Believe me, I am more worried about : if pilots do their job good, if they are not entering the runway during a final approach, if they slept well, if they will not burst the tires like LIonnair did, if they understood communications, if they do not land in the wrong airport like Southwest did recently (!!! I am still wondering how come some pilots do this mistake seriously...) etc etc...

Check all last accidents/incidents, and you will see that automations has nothing to do with them.

When I flew, the statistics of my airline about incidents, guess what is was ?
We taxied a bit too fast during turns according to the management. It was the number ONE problem. Then came high or low speed during approach.
Again : pilots behaviour....

I do not say good or not, but many facts should be taken into account. PIlots defend their job, because they love it, I understand though.

404

Got a lot to say for yourself young man.

Trouble with you whipper snappers, no respect for the old guard, whatsoever.

Question? What question? I thought I gave an answer. With airliners no. Can't think of any. However I can think of numerous examples of human error, when automatics would have done the job if man was out of the loop.

However as you no doubt know, when something does go wrong, the first consideration is to make sure the aircraft is flown. In a high profile accident no so long ago 2/3 of the crew were unable to fly the thing. Not their faults as they weren't taught, modern thinking you see. Flying skills are being eroded at an alarming rate, if the skills were there in the first place that is. Would another set of automatics if installed took over have saved all those poor souls? Who knows, but having an operating crew that cant fly the aircraft and no other redundancy is a useless as t*ts on a man.

P.S., without speaking ill of the dead, even if they had no ASI, they had 2 other indications on which to fly or control the aircraft, attitude and power. It appears to me this wasn't done.

doubleu-anker
Agree, that was the point I was trying to make.

Honestly I feel sorry to see that skills are getting worse year after year.

That's why one day, it will be time to do something.
2 ways come in mind :

1) increase training and ask high experience before flying a jet to avoid dream boy with pink glasses in the right seat. (it is as if the captain is alone by the way so!)

2) make automations more and more important and reliable to avoid pilots mistake.

To me, the number 1) will not happen with my regrets though...Too expensive for airline and the mentality of Europe does not even go this way.



Embraer reveals vision for single-pilot airliners - 6/16/2010 - Flight Global

Pilot-less aircraft in terminal airspace in places like LAX, LHR, AMS, FRA, CDG, SIN, KUL, HKG... sounds like a recipe for a ATCO's worst headache or a few hundred passengers getting a roller-coster ride of their life. Particularly with the sort of terminal weather you get in the tropics. Sure the aircraft can avoid weather, but who's to say which way they elect to deviate from one pilot-less aircraft to the next (since weather can be quite dynamic) so could be all over the scope :uhoh:... it's that or barge on through in strict adherance to the STAR/SID :eek:

I mean SIN do a reasonable job of pushing you around the WX but it isn't always perfect, and on a really $hitty day in HKG, SIN or KUL with CB's/TCU's all over the shop ATC try to accomodate us, we try to accomodate ATC... what happens in a pilot-less scenario? Besides, you'd have to wonder if the busiest airports could keep up their arrival rates with pilot-less aircraft in the mix. (And I purposely didn't mention CGK coz ain't no way in the world you'd want to send a pilot-less a/c in there :yuk: )

No problem when the ATCO is a computer too! :}

*Lancer*

I know you’re a little tongue in cheek but ATCO will have to be computerised everywhere including some of the poorest countries in the world. Hell some of them don’t even have a human ATCO service.

Greenlights

Have you actually read the AF447 accident report? If you had you would realise that as well as the auto pilot disconnecting the flight controls degraded to direct law. You would also realise the pilots flew into an area of CB’s in the ITCZ. I have looked at this scenario several times in the sim now all with a rear CofG as it would have been with the stab tank full of fuel, and given the level of turbulence experienced, they all resulted in the aircraft eventually stalling hands free. Automation doesn’t even get a look in due to the severely degraded systems. As I have repeatedly said the human pilots f**ked up big time but automation wasn’t the answer as it was out for the count.
That is a sweeping generalised statement which if factually incorrect. If you had written "Some recent accidents" then you would be correct. Some recent accidents and incidents where human intervention and thinking outside the box saved the day are QF32, US1549 and CX780. I suggest you read the reports and digest them. They are clear examples of what is possible with experienced crews with proper training improvising based on their extensive aviation backgrounds to save the day.
It wasn’t that long ago that to get a job in Australia for example flying a Dash 8 required 3-4000 hours flying experience. Now you can get a job there in the right hand seat of an A320 with 250 hours. Airlines here continually peddle the rubbish that they have had to lower the entry requirements because of a shortage of pilots. This is complete and utter rubbish. The truth is that by lowering the entry requirements they have been able halve the pay in real terms compared to 15 years ago. The European carriers have perfected it and to the Americans credit they could see what was happening and have outlawed it.
It is truly a sad indictment of the airline industry if you feel this way every time you’re a passenger. It is a direct reflection of the poor training standards some airlines have.
And I suggest you do some research into the US Air Forces experience with UAV's. The accident rate is 3 times higher than their manned vehicles. I've posted a link above. Read it and do some research. UAV's aren't safer than manned aerial vehicles, not by a long shot.

As I have said a few times now pilotless aircraft will eventually be a reality but the infrastructure to support it worldwide is at least 50 years away. Hell the level of satellite coverage and data bandwidth is only at about 10% of what it needs to be to support the current airline fleet if it were all pilotless. If it’s taken 50 years already to acquire the current satellite coverage, how long do you think it will take to get to 100%?

doubleu-anker

You just can’t help yourself can you. First you a condescending, now your patronising.
You didn’t answer the question I asked but thankyou for answering it now. You are quite correct, no commercial aircraft has ever been saved by automation after a serious malfunction.
This is what I have been saying. Training has been cut and cut to an unacceptable level. It has been done by management trying to cut costs at all costs and now we are seeing the results of it. If airline management think that proper training costs a lot, wait until they have a smoking whole in the ground to see what having an accident costs. Of course they will be long gone with their fat bonus given the short tenure of management in publically listed companies these days.

I think 50 years is probably pretty close. Aviation tends to lag consumer market - if for no other reason than it's so http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...s/censored.gif expensive to certify new technology. I suspect many of you airplane drivers would be shocked if you knew just how old the computer chips controlling your fancy new airplane are :rolleyes:

I think it was Nissan that recently said they expected to selling fully autonomous cars by 2020. While Moore's law is showing some cracks, it's still holding pretty close. That means 10 years from now computers will have between 50 and 100 times the capability they have now. Heck, in the time it takes to develop a new airplane we're talking an order of magnitude change in computing power (which for the most part we can't take advantage of because it takes so http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...s/censored.gif long to certify new flight critical systems).

On Air France, the automatics 'gave up' because that's what they were programed to do when faced with suspect airspeed. But developing flight control systems that can accommodate suspect inputs isn't that hard - what's hard is imagining every possible failure scenario.

Boeing has developed AFM procedures for dealing with bad (or suspect) air data - if we can develop procedures, we can create s/w to do the same thing. Years ago, after a number of crashes after the complete loss of hydraulics - where the flight crew had some success controlling the aircraft with asymmetric thrust, Boeing did a study of automating that capability (I don't know what ever became of it).

CFIT has long been the leading cause of commercial airliner crashes, Asiana and UPS being recent high profile examples. Automatics simply wouldn't allow a CFIT. The weakness of automatics is imagination - when faced with a failure scenario that no one imagined, humans still have a huge advantage. But that advantage is rapidly shrinking.

There is a future - likely not as far out as many of you think - where people ride to the airport in a driverless car. A future when autonomous cars are so much safer than the human controlled type that owning a car that you can actually drive will carry massive insurance liabilities. A future when the most dangerous part of air travel is no longer driving to the airport, because of human caused CFIT.
When the risk of a dumbass pilot flying a perfectly good into the ground is the greatest threat to a safe trip, people will not only accept autonomous pilotless aircraft, they'll demand it.

Sorry guys ... not going to happen .. for a long time.

I seriously question the aviation credentials of many here who optimistically think pilotless passenger aviation is almost here or even within the forseeable future.

Yes, it will happen, but not in our lifetimes .... and I don't care what Airbus thinks .. Humans may be flawed, but they beat the crap out of automation when things go bad. Artificial intelligence and independent systems have a looooong way to go.


N

Pilot-less aircraft
 

I'm with NOIP. As one of those flawed beings I do not believe I will see a high density passenger aircraft in my lifetime. And, even if I do, I sure as hell won't go flying in one.