How soon the pilotless airliner?
 

Flight is starting a debate on this. Can we realistically look forward to the future we dream of, or are we being written out of the equation? The pilotless airliner is no longer unthinkable - Learmount

I believe it is already here. From many of the threads on here it appears that there are plenty of people sitting in the front of modern jets who can't even carry out a simple visual approach, so can't really be called pilots.

Dream of? Have nightmares about!

I would certainly not fly (longhaul anyway) as SLF unless there were at least two pilots at the pointy end. Anything less is just risking single-point failure.

This is not gonna happen...

Decades away, if it ever happens - far too many variables.

Do I think airliners will become more automated - why yes! But there will still be "operatives" up the sharp end.

If we were to have fully automated airliners, who would be liable when the first one spears into the middle of a conurbation such as London or New York?

me neither
 

you are not alone, HDRW. me SLF want drivers at the pointy end! they ain't there, i ain't flying.:D

Think it through …

A manufacturer (let’s call them ‘Airbus’ for example) has to convince themselves of the business case.
Then they have to spend zillions developing and certifying it to the satisfaction of every country it may fly to/over.
Then they have to find launch customers.
These launch customers have to promote it to their potential passengers who will almost certainly have the choice of flying on a humanly-piloted alternative. What will their selling point be?
What happens after the first pilotless airliner crash (there assuredly will be one)?

Just because it’s technically feasible doesn’t mean it will happen.

Learmonth's Concept
 

If there is a central control room with 50 pilots and 10 flight engineers on duty to intervene with Autonomous passenger aircraft (or cargo) it had better be in the middle of Mount Cheyenne as any such centre will be the target for Al Qaeda or organised crime syndicates.

No doubt it is theoretically possible. Would airlines invest in the money required? Especially when they are not prepared to invest in decent communications over Africa and still use HF.

A few scenarios that have happened to me, I wonder how the remote guys would deal with it?

1) A light aircraft without transponder blundered into our path. We saw him visually and took violent evasive action. As far as I can see a remotely controlled airliner would have hit him.

2) Circumnavigating CBs. I very much doubt the controller sitting in a comfortable chair can have the same degree of self preservation and interest and understanding of the associated turbulence that the pilots at the front get. A good Captain and First Officer assess the weather using the radar and visual clues, discuss the options and then agree on the best routing to take.

3) Autopilot dropped out in cruise at FL350 and would not reengage. Aircraft flown manually to destination.

4) Medical emergency, doctor on board, immediate diversion required.

5) Outer pane of flight deck window cracked in cruise. Aircraft did not detect it. There are so many things in an aircraft that can be spotted visually but are not detected by the automatics and sensors.

Pilots can still do things that no automated airliner can do, ie look out of the window, see a runway and visually approach and land on it. I don't think there will be pilotless commercial aircraft flying around in the lifetime of anyone reading this forum. Maybe freighters.

Pilotless technology is there and has been around for some time.

The point is we (the pilots) and they (the passengers) do not want this.

The End.

I am not so certain that the remote pilot would be able to pick up the required situational awareness of all emergencies where the automation has dropped out in this simplistic fashion. What if 'all the flight and system data is not there or is corrupt and the automation dropped out short finals?

Currently, ICAO does not recognize autonomous aircraft, only remotely piloted aircraft - that is continuously remotely piloted. All the current regulations for operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems are being written on the basis of pilot(s) with full IFR ratings to fly the UAS. The beancounters would (and are) really pushing for total automation but there are many technical hurdles to overcome even before we get to the legal and then human factors ones.

It is also unlikely that commercial passenger aircraft will be flying and self separating in IFR as this would be very inefficient. The probability in both SESAR and NextGen is that aircraft will be flying precise user preferred or 'business' 4D trajectories that have been deconflicted out to 20 - 30 minutes ahead. There should be no reason for airborne separation assurance except as another layer of safety and for situational awareness. The 4D trajectories will have been deconflicted by ATC systems and negotiated with the 'aircraft' to come to an agreed conflict free 20 minute + 'contracted 4D trajectory'. This type of system has been demonstrated over 15 years ago. Both controllers and pilots moved to more 'management by exception. BUT there remained a real need for situational awareness and an understanding of what is happening all around the aircraft. Without that situational awareness I cannot see that the required Target Level of Safety could be reached.

That is not to say that in some areas these UAS capabilities might be used with pax. There are already 'optionally piloted' aircraft being used by the military. They can ferry supplies but return with casualties on board for example. Moving from that niche into general freight carrying wide-bodies or to passenger carrying is not going to be a simple step so don't worry about jobs just yet.

Spot on! :ok:

Well some pilots can.......

Probably a little redundant in a pilotless aircraft ;)

How soon the pilotless airliner?
 

I can see it happening with Cargo into maybe remote specifically designed airfields, but never with pax aircraft.

Wouldnt surprise me if someone like Fedex weren't looking at it now.

I don't want to put a dampener on things, but with the increase in companies such as Ryanair and the gradual de-skilling of pilots, a point will come where a pilot costs the company no more than a flight attendant. If they are going to retain flight attendants, then why spend billions (and it will be billions!) to save them the cost of two pilots?

Also you may get rid of two pilot wages by going 'fully automatic' but, initially at least, they will be replaced by the wages of all those extra maintenance, software, network managers, certifiers, system monitoring people who will be the price of the deal to allow pilotless flight.

Not just commercial cargo. I can see this also being appealing for the military, who could deliver supplies to war zones without risking crew.

If I just happened to be a passenger on a pilot-less 777 whose engines died from iced fuel intakes on short finals into LHR, could I trust the Auto system to instantly put the nose down, accelerate, thus gaining enough lift and momentum to just clear the perimeter fence and put down on the grass without serious injuries?

Thought not!

It's a different matter with cargo planes and more acceptable because there would be no-one aboard at risk in a situation like that.

People on the ground beneath the freighter might see things differently!

VH-UFO:
This may work in the USA but over here we're crowded enough that you'd find it hard to prang a 172 without hitting someone on the ground (OK, an exaggeration!), and there's no space to build new airfields anywhere useful.

What would be the point of taking the cargo to somewhere remote, when it's wanted at its (presumably usually urban) destination? The extra surface transport costs may well scupper the economics.

In fact I think the economics will defeat it all together - saving the cost of 2 pilots but having to build specialist airfields, with "unstoppable" electronics (what does a pilotless aircraft do when it needs navaids to land, and they're offline?) just doesn't add up. As far as I can see, the only people pushing this idea are the electronics firms who need to project future projects / revenue, and the free-thinkers who haven't considered all the ramifications. And journalists wanting to sell papers, of course.

Remember, the UPS at Birmingham AL didn't even have a glideslope (in fact neither did Asiana at SanFran) which would have made both places inaccessible to a robot aircraft.

Incidentally, we have had AutoLand for some decades, but I don't think *anyone* has AutoTaxy, even in testing? Apart from anything else, it would add to the Ground controller's workload, and I can't see them accepting that.

@joy_ride:
I agree completely, and I'd hate to be the software designer who tries to specify what to do with a double engine failure on short final. And I think everyone considering pilotless aircraft should say out loud: "Remember Sully!"

Part solution...
 

A man and a dog. Man is there to feed the dog. Dog is there to bite the man if he tries to touch anything.

we haven't even managed to get main line driverless trains yet, and that only needs fairly simple speed control in one dimension. making trains obey signals is a trivial exercise, as anyone with a model railway and a modicum of electronic background will know.

so if we can't effectively control an electric motor autonomously, i think aircraft are safe for a while yet.


given how easy automatic trains should be, there must be a good reason they don't do it. public opinion.


docklands light railway or the train at Stanstead just trundle so don't count

Was listening to an interesting programme on Radio Four last night about GPS jamming. (apparently the increase in employees movements being tracked by GPS has led to a big increase in cheap, handheld GPS jammers.)

Anyway, according to the programme, the biggest jammers of GPS are large solar flares. Now a single aircraft losing the signal for 20-30 seconds halfway across the Atlantic is no big deal but every aircraft simultaneously losing their GPS in the skys over New York or Chicago is more of a bigger deal.

two dogs
 

Two dogs and a food/water dispenser. They keep each other company and keep SLF from doing anything stupid.

No doubt 'pilotless' ops is coming, but of course the entire aviation ecosystem would be different as well, from insurers to airlines to air traffic to public perception. Long ways off, certainly long after the tech is all available.

Good grief - this AGAIN????

It's never going to happen - apart from in an airline CEO's wet dream. This one has been done to death. Of course it's technically possible - has been for years - decades even. But....

Anything else more worthwhile to ponder?

Autonomous airlines are coming
 

We're not as far away from that day as some of you seem to think.

Airbus fly-by-wire flight controls can 'overrule' pilot inputs if it determines what the pilot wants to do is 'unsafe' := (Boeing FBW is somewhat less aggressive about it relative to Airbus, but also can overrule certain pilot inputs). To a large extent, on the newest airplanes the pilots are basically there in case something goes wrong with the automatics.

40 years ago, accident causes were more or less evenly split between pilot error and mechanical failure. Today, mechanical failure has faded into the background - pilot error is the predominate cause (and most of those are CFIT). Early on in the EROPS/ETOPS transition, the safety guys did a lot of work analyzing accidents where engine failure was involved. What they found was that it was rarely an engine failure that caused an accident - it was pilots doing something stupid in response to an engine failure.

Today, most automatic systems on aircraft are designed to default to the pilot when things go wrong - the rational being that the guy (or gal) driving knows more about what needs to happen in that particular situation then some programer sitting in an office years earlier. But to an increasing extent we're finding that 'being there' isn't the same thing as 'being aware' (Air France A330 comes to mind). Remember Moore's law (which should really be Moore's observation) - computing power will double ever 18 months - while humans have pretty much stagnated. Fully autonomous cars are in development, and self-driving cars have lapped racetracks faster than professional race drivers could do in the same car :eek:

We won't get there for many years, but the day will come when letting a human decide is demonstrably less safe than letting the automatics decide. When we get to that point, it would be irresponsible to let humans drive with hundreds of people in the back.

As for costs - back around 1980, when Boeing was developing the 757/767 - the FAA came out with their finding that a 3 crew flight deck was no safer than a properly designed 2 crew flight deck. The launch customers immediately came in and told Boeing to change the 757/767 flight deck to a 2 crew design. Boeing said 'OK, but it'll cost you another million dollars per airplane' (the first 7 or 8 767's were actually built with 3 crew flight decks and needed to be retrofit for 2 crew and EICAS). The airlines response was 'no problem, we'll save at least a $million per airplane each year in crew costs going to 2 crew'. That was in 1980 dollars (and flight engineers didn't make as much as pilots)

BTW, it's my understanding that the systems for full autonomous trains have been around for years - that they haven't been adopted for widespread use has more to do with the power of the unions and public perceptions than any technical limitations.

Dubai Metro is driverless. So is the one in Toulouse. There are probably more, but those I have used myself.

They are still going to require a pilot on the ground and a standby pilot in the aircraft for a long time after any commencement of operations. The way pilot's Ts an Cs are heading, this won't represent a cost saving. Meanwhile, the testing and certification costs will be enormous.

Creativity. This is the main thing. Maybe a computer can perform infinite calculations per second, but in terms of creativity, it will never be something like a human. As someone said before, think about the BA 777... this is a creative solution. The captain knew what to do without having this experience before... the computer has to be "told" about that situation to give the solution.

So... humans will be in the cockpits, if not forever, for a really long long time...

Here's an old one on the pilotless aircraft that I stumbled across on a Flying Jokes site:

Back in the 1970s, automation was creeping into many of the systems associated with large airliners. One day after the boffins and engineers had laboured mightily for many weeks, a fully-loaded Convair 880 took off from Heathrow bound for New York. The cabin crew did the normal safety demonstration and the aircraft taxied out to the active runway, lined up and took off in the usual manner. As the Convair climbed through about 26,000 feet, an announcement came from the flight-deck:-

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome onboard this the first fully-automated transatlantic flight from London to New York. So advanced are the automatic systems onboard this specially-equipped Convair 880, there is no actual flight crew onboard in the flight-deck, the door to which is therefore locked. The entire flight-plan, with all imaginable contingencies, has been programmed into quadruplicated flight management computers, all backup systems are duplicated and there is a fifth, entirely separate set of automatic systems in case of any unforeseen problems. So relax, sit back, enjoy the cabin service from our excellent crew, and again we hasten to assure any of you who may feel slightly apprehensive about this flight that nothing, I repeat, absolutely nothing can go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong..."

You have that already...

This will be the way I fear. A single "minder" forbidden to intervene unless the automatics fail. We're already half way there with the children of the magenta line. It's only a step or two further down the road.

Auto taxi will be the easiest bit to solve.

If you think there can be pilotless aircraft then please do the following for me.
Mark a line on the floor. Stand exactly 1/3 of the way from either end and let us know.

The technology is certainly available now, and those who believe that human eyes in the cockpit are superior to the optics in modern military aircraft are deluding themselves both in terms of acuity and in terms of all round global field of view when it comes to avoiding other aircraft/CFIT plus of course the ability to use conventional/nvg/flir combined.
The military is developing autonomous UCAVs which are going to go out, find enemy aircraft and shoot them down. This is orders of magnitude more difficult in terms of other aircraft awareness than merely replicating the TCAS/human eye configuration currently used in manned airliners to avoid hitting each other. Incidentally, I recently saw a brief that showed that in recent TCAS RAs at a large European airline, more than 50% of the RAs were executed incorrectly. A machine would not make those errors.

There are helicopters currently flying in Afghanistan carrying freight which is significantly technically more challenging than airliner automated flight, and those who don't believe there are trains all over the world operating driverless need to spend a little time on google.

RASCAL Blackhawk takes second unmanned flight « Helinews Asia ? Pacific

This helicopter is a whole stage further. Whilst it is still in development, the challenges it is overcoming are a whole step change in terms of technical difficulty compared to airliner operation. It is autonomous. It can find it's own landing spots. You will notice on one of the videos that it is also able to autonomously avoid other aircraft visually.

The difficulty for automated airliners is in no way technical, it is public image, which may or may not be insurmountable.

Draws line one inch long
Stands on line

and?

:8

Previous thread on this subject here - have things changed that much in 3 years?

Fully automated flight

One point re helicopters - not many airliners that can hover.....

They are Metros not mainline railways.

They have identical trains at low speeds on routes with few junctions, and, have reserved infrastructure from non automatic trains. ie few variables to account for in programming.

There are no main line automatic rail services. The worlds first automatic metro is nudging 50 years old and yet the technology has still not been applied to real main line railways.

Well the military and government have been working on UAS that can carry out complex maneuvers for some time. Such as rotary wing operations from ships.


The old aphorism "just because you can do it doesn't mean you should" applies.

....................................

A human being has an input of self preservation .. a computer does not ....

A computer will gladly fly into a mountain if the sensors say it should ... a human would think " I do not care what the sensors are saying .. I am not flying into that mountain"

That is why there will always be pilots in the front ... maybe making less input, but there all the same ...

I.Duke

Based on what happened in Spain last month, one could argue that we're killing people by not increasing automation on mainline railways. I'm pretty sure a computer wouldn't have tried to take a 60mph corner at 120....

As I noted previously, the slow adoption of fully autonomous rail has more to do with union featherbedding and public perception than in real technical shortcomings (with union spread miss-information contributing heavily to the public perception).

Yet three pilots flew a perfectly sound 777 into a seawall. Do you really think a computer would have done that?