Pilot-less Airliners
 

With all the bitching going on in our industry with numerous threads here about costs, cadetships, more airframes than pilots avail (so the propaganda Dept's say)Co's greedy way of doing business etc without the slightest hint of caring for their most valuable asset, the pilot I though why not look into our crystal balls & envisage a future with Airliners plying the worlds airways 'Pilot-less'
First before we all go off half cocked here saying not way it wasn't that long ago that mankind was staring up at the sky, the birds & wondering about flight itself.

We already have unmanned vehicles, that's common place these days. We have now GPS when it was only a generation or so ago that this amazing development was in it's infancy. CASA are going thru a huge thinking on how to handle the up & coming remote pilot-less drones out there with FPV taking the world by storm in the R/C field ( I know been playing with toy planes for 45 years now!) so like flight itself we had to start somewhere, the 'Wrong Bros' started it all (used just as a starting point as its not clear who started what back then) but where are we going in the next say 2 generations (50 yrs)?
Auto-land is an everyday event somewhere around the globe.
I mean pilots hardly touch the controls, don't touch or the dog will bite you:-)

The biggest question about all this is the one thing that mankind can't control apart from the weather is the cargo itself, the very reason why we have invented these machines in the first place, for us to move about the globe, you, me & our families, that's the hard one here imagine trying to sell that idea (pilot-less plane) as you board the flying machine.
From an Airlines perspective no more pilots, well as we know it, imagine the extra $$$ the CEO's could pillage out of a Co........the mind boggles!:-)
Am sure the airframe makers have been thinking about this for many years as the technology is there but are we ready for it & indeed are we even ready to trust 100% our lives to a machine only?

Idea's, thoughts guys/gals?

Wmk2

Lots of luck with that .....

N

If you look at pilot costs as a percentage of the total operation, I think it will cost more to make pilotless airliners safe enough, particularly passenger types.

Yes Wally, the hardest part is selling the concept so that there will actually be people who fly on pilot-less aircraft. Airbus is on record, calling upon the airlines to "sell" the concept because they are happy that they can build them, ie, they know they can't sell it themselves so they are trying to shift the workload onto the airlines. The technology for driver-less trains has been around for more than three decades yet there are very few of those in service today - passengers still want human beings looking after their interests when travelling.

I'm convinced that the new Multi-Scan radars in service now were designed to confirm the technology for use on a future pilot-less aircraft in that it does an evaluation of the weather and only displays it to the pilots if it considers it to potentially affect the aircraft. As we know, this radar system has many flaws and can't be trusted by pilots and thus, many years of research and refinement is required before it could be assessed as safe to use on commercial pilot-less aircraft.

I believe that the pilot training schools should keep going at maximum training rate because I believe that the school leavers of today will still be able to have a full career in aviation.

For various reasons I think the next evolution will be single pilot airliners with complete automation and multiple channel ground link. The pilot will possibly play a passive role subordinate to the aircraft + ground oversight. Or be the final arbiter, depending if its Boeing or Airbus designing it :p

One ground-based pilot for many aircraft.

Queensland researchers yesterday announced a new autonomous collision avoidance system for UAVs to enable free flight surveillance missions.

Something goes wrong in a surface transport & it stops, pax can just sit tight till help comes along.
In the air, perhaps they want someone with them with as much at stake as themselves...

'Blogsy' the word 'safe' is subjective, what one person would consider safe may not mean it's accepted by the next person, that word 'safe' is such a grey area, probably the biggest stumbling block here.
The Tech is there but is the interest & are we ready for it?......not for a looong time yet I reckon but it's bound to happen one way or another even if we start the process by having a 'safety pilot' aboard 'till we all get used to the idea.

Remember guys the sound barrier was for a time simply not possible to break, a wall in the sky if you went thru it you would break yr plane apart.
Even flight in it's infancy was considered very dangerous but look where we are now only a 100 yrs or so latter, that's considered 4 generations, not much in the scheme of things really & we look at flight from a pax POV as bloody boring not dangerous!:-)
Oh don't worry 'GB' you & I will be loooog gone b4 this idea gets off the ground & flying schools as we know have little to worry about for now but just like Leonardo Da Vinci he never saw what he kinda started not even the scratching of the flight surface & he would have be burnt at the stake if he even said anything like what we have 2day but we have progressed (some would say regressed if yr an employee with certain Airlines) just a little since his days:-)

Maybe Nostradamus knew well b4 we eve crawled out of the caves to watch the Eagles high above:-)


Wmk2

Note that the "Pilotless" aircraft now in use by the military still have Human operators. The major advantage over manned aircraft is their ability to loiter for long periods and the fact that they can undertake hazardous missions without risking a pilot.

They also need less redundancy, as a higher loss rate is acceptable- something that wouldn't be the case with a commercial (particularly passenger carrying) aircraft.

They are cost effective because they don't carry ANY Humans- if they did, the cost effectiveness would quickly diminish.

They still need controls and controllers, and as soon as you make a man-carrying craft- particularly a large one- it is probably actually MORE cost effective to have that controller strapped into the front of the machine.

I'd love it if pilotless aircraft became a reality- I often joke I hope to one day be able to work from home!!- but it's still long in the future.

Single pilot airliners on the other hand....

Good luck finding an insurance company who will insure pilotless aircraft.

Freight............maybe.......500 pax....not in the next 50 years or unless there is some sort of communication technology revolution.

Who will pay for all the satcom bandwidth is the next question to ask.

Anyone know how many they lose control of due com failures and other problems?

Crew meal?
Sorry Captain, you can have neither the Chicken or Pork. How about a few nice dry crackers and some bottled water.

Quite a few.

Apparently in recent discussions about retiring the A10 it was mentioned in irony how high the "loss-rate" on predators was.

Guys fully understand where some are coming from here, the insurance angle would be huge alone!
We lose ALL types of aircraft, manned, unmanned & whatever else mankind can dream up so the argument about that is very debatable I'd say.
We every now & then fly a perfectly good airfame into the side of a mountain even falling short of the Rwy on a clear day so having humans up front guarantees zip!:-) In fact the human element to all this (pilot) is probably the biggest issue against safety.

As they say you can make a 100 airframes identical right down to the smallest of switches but you will never make a 100 pilots anywhere near the same despite all the crap feel good CRM rubbish!.

'dogs x 2' I like that one but what makes you think some Airlines even offer crackers in the first place?:)

I can just see it now, Single Pilot Airliner the guy wants to take a dump(no easier way to put that) so he dings the CM, yes Capt, I need to go to the rest room would you please sit here & watch the 'shop'....but Capt what if something goes wrong? ....ahhh don't worry about it my dear I don't know what to do either as I have just been secondment-ed (whatever the word is for that) from the CRM Dept for the day:E


Wmk2

When we were at Boeing back in 1980 for the Ansett B767s their Engineers said the same, over 30 years ago, that back then they were sure they could build Pilotless Airliners and wanted to, they knew the Public would be wary so their idea was they would probably need to have one, or if necessary two, Crew but they would NOT be Pilots as we know them but Computer People with spare computers if needed.

Can not see it happening, but the idea is not new.

Not worried about this one.

The world running out of oil will impact us before this issue will.

Considering man is the weak link in normal aircraft operations I think it is the way ahead. Until something goes wrong of course.

Ok say we are down to one pilot on board monitoring and be there when something goes wrong. What if he/she becomes incapacitated? You're back to a pilot less aircraft with how much redundancy? Not much. Are you going to continue to have 2 pilots monitoring? We are almost there now.

Why not build in numerous redundancy and have the the aircraft monitored from the ground?

Yes at present it will be a hard sell for the passengers. Or will it? If I can get a half price ticket I'll strap my backside to anything, within reason. Knowing and seen who are and what goes on, or not goes on in cockpits around the world a pilot less aircraft is not too far away, IMHO.

Half price of the ticket? HA!

Mate, how much of the ticket goes to the pilots again? I seriously do not see how ticket prices can go any lower as it is.

Automatic train protection
 

Speaking from another industry point of view. ATP has been around for more than a decade. There are dedicated train systems that have no driver, and a faultless safety record.

They did strike a problem not anticipated.

People did not want to ride a train with no driver, and ticket sales plummeted. Hence they employed a "safety operator" to sit where the driver would normally sit, and make all the pax feel good.

If a train fails it simply comes to a stop, and people were still uncomfortable. How many people will trust a pilotless plane?

Deadcut

Ok my poor English.

I meant half price as an example of my willingness to save travel costs.

All rocket launches are remotely controlled or automatic. Why not a/c. Hardly rocket science, pardon the pun.

Might need an ILS on Melbourne RWY 34 first....