Unnecessary first officer...
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Someone earlier on quoted the example of train services operating using total automation. With a train, this is suprisingly easy. The DLR is a good example of this. You have one train which runs on one track. You can program the train to stop at certain points along the route. Even here, however, there is a trained staff member on board who can stop the train.
However, with aircraft there are far too many variables. For totally automated flight without pilots, we would have to redesign just about everything in our aviation system. Firstly, taxiing from the gate to the runway is difficult. Either every plane would have to be totally automated and interconnected or none at all. Any plane that did not exactly follow the taxi instruction, messes your whole system up. Then there is evaluating issues like Rejected Take Offs etc. The only computer powerful enough is the brain. End of. To be able to compute information in that time requires excellent situational awareness and experience.
Then of course, when airborne, how do you negotiate with weather systems? The TCAS is simple enough but the weather is one of Mother Nature's biggest variables. Then there are fuel issues. The nearest alternate is simple enough, when talking geographically. But you have to evaluate issues like runway length, weather conditions, company facilities, passenger comfort. Again, only a human can make these sorts of decisions.
On approach, how does the computer know when the approach requires aborting and going around. Sure, these occurences would be less common but when you have so many computers interconnected, if something happens to one plane, it will require something else to happen to another to ensure safety. The Artifical Intelligence (AI) involved works off rules. For the flying to measure up to that of a real pilot who may just be operating the systems, the rules would include a hell of a lot of "IF" statements and also quite a few contradictions. There would doubtless be a Catch 22 situation somewhere within the rules.
You cannot phase in AI planes because for it to work, every single aircraft worldwide needs to be interconnected. (For those who doubt this, think about Microsoft Flight Simulator with a traffic add-on. The aircraft are programmed to do specific things but YOU are the unknown in the equation. The amount of mess you cause by not doing everything the computer tells you shows that without every aircraft automated, the whole AI would fail). For a plane to work without pilots, it would have to work without ATCOs (again variables beyond the intelligence of computers). Also, the second anything outside of normal flight happens, the computer is completely stumped.
The immense number of man hours required to create the level of AI required would make any cost saving almost non-existant. You'd also need to replace or upgrade every single aircraft worldwide to ensure that they could all cope with the technology. Imagine the expense.
Even if you just flew with one flight crew member, what if he/she fell ill or needed a second opinion. The idea of having two pilots is to monitor each other. If someone messes something up then someone else is there to rectify it or point it out. If you had one crew member then nothing would happen. You would end up with the error being carried forward therefore detracting from every other decision made until the end of the flight.
I will present my final argument against automated flight which I use all the time. Would YOU let your kids get on a plane without a pilot?
Automation is here to stay and will affect the lives of pilots worldwide but it will never replace us. The unknowns and variables of flying require a human brain to compute them. Sure, the systems will become more advanced and the job of the pilot will be reduced further into the realms of systems monitoring but the pilot must be there to take control. We are now running a skeleton crew of two flight deck crew, it cannot be reduced for safety reasons. The second an idea like this was put infront of the FAA or EASA, no matter the charisma or charm of the Irish Bullyboy presenting it, whoever proposed it would be laughed out of the room.
However, with aircraft there are far too many variables. For totally automated flight without pilots, we would have to redesign just about everything in our aviation system. Firstly, taxiing from the gate to the runway is difficult. Either every plane would have to be totally automated and interconnected or none at all. Any plane that did not exactly follow the taxi instruction, messes your whole system up. Then there is evaluating issues like Rejected Take Offs etc. The only computer powerful enough is the brain. End of. To be able to compute information in that time requires excellent situational awareness and experience.
Then of course, when airborne, how do you negotiate with weather systems? The TCAS is simple enough but the weather is one of Mother Nature's biggest variables. Then there are fuel issues. The nearest alternate is simple enough, when talking geographically. But you have to evaluate issues like runway length, weather conditions, company facilities, passenger comfort. Again, only a human can make these sorts of decisions.
On approach, how does the computer know when the approach requires aborting and going around. Sure, these occurences would be less common but when you have so many computers interconnected, if something happens to one plane, it will require something else to happen to another to ensure safety. The Artifical Intelligence (AI) involved works off rules. For the flying to measure up to that of a real pilot who may just be operating the systems, the rules would include a hell of a lot of "IF" statements and also quite a few contradictions. There would doubtless be a Catch 22 situation somewhere within the rules.
You cannot phase in AI planes because for it to work, every single aircraft worldwide needs to be interconnected. (For those who doubt this, think about Microsoft Flight Simulator with a traffic add-on. The aircraft are programmed to do specific things but YOU are the unknown in the equation. The amount of mess you cause by not doing everything the computer tells you shows that without every aircraft automated, the whole AI would fail). For a plane to work without pilots, it would have to work without ATCOs (again variables beyond the intelligence of computers). Also, the second anything outside of normal flight happens, the computer is completely stumped.
The immense number of man hours required to create the level of AI required would make any cost saving almost non-existant. You'd also need to replace or upgrade every single aircraft worldwide to ensure that they could all cope with the technology. Imagine the expense.
Even if you just flew with one flight crew member, what if he/she fell ill or needed a second opinion. The idea of having two pilots is to monitor each other. If someone messes something up then someone else is there to rectify it or point it out. If you had one crew member then nothing would happen. You would end up with the error being carried forward therefore detracting from every other decision made until the end of the flight.
I will present my final argument against automated flight which I use all the time. Would YOU let your kids get on a plane without a pilot?
Automation is here to stay and will affect the lives of pilots worldwide but it will never replace us. The unknowns and variables of flying require a human brain to compute them. Sure, the systems will become more advanced and the job of the pilot will be reduced further into the realms of systems monitoring but the pilot must be there to take control. We are now running a skeleton crew of two flight deck crew, it cannot be reduced for safety reasons. The second an idea like this was put infront of the FAA or EASA, no matter the charisma or charm of the Irish Bullyboy presenting it, whoever proposed it would be laughed out of the room.
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A second pilot is manning passenger aircraft with 10 seats and more, primarily as medical spare. While onboard and to retain his piloting ability, he alternates as PF. While automation has reduced pilot workload and increased navigation accuracy, a second pilot is still very useful for workload sharing and a watchful eye, due to inherent human error making.
While MOL may be a superb businessman, taxi driver and tax specialist, his flight experience gives him little ability to understand the above so no such nonsense is uttered in public.
While MOL may be a superb businessman, taxi driver and tax specialist, his flight experience gives him little ability to understand the above so no such nonsense is uttered in public.
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GynkyTom
- without pilots, who will be looking out of the window and see the flock of birds or obstruction that would require a GA?
"Without pilots scenario", may come later.
Here the subject is flight with ONLY one pilot (unnecessary first officer)
PS
When this happens, all studies about the "TEEM", "MultiCrewCockpit" and "CRM", may just be unnecessary as well....
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An excellent and detailed post by Capt Sunshine which explains the situation very well but as usual the KISS principle applies as illustrated by GynkyTom's short but sweet post.
Single crew is allowed on smaller aircraft but I lost count of the number of times my PAX asked me what would happen if I were to die at the controls (I know I worked hard and looked tired sometimes but never thought I looked that bad
).
Single crew is allowed on smaller aircraft but I lost count of the number of times my PAX asked me what would happen if I were to die at the controls (I know I worked hard and looked tired sometimes but never thought I looked that bad
).
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Do you actually read the things you are writing? So a human pilot can monitor a degraded system making slow, large errors, but couldn't monitor a perfect system with "micrometer" accuracy making no errors. 
It's amazing the faith people have in automated systems - and the "sci fi" ideas they have of their capabilities.
It's amazing the faith people have in automated systems - and the "sci fi" ideas they have of their capabilities.
They wait very long before acting and they act very slow.
The problem is that the system requires it to be like this, because the system is built with the philosophy that the machine is not reliable and that the pilot must remain in full control of the machine and be able to react when the machine goes wrong.
But if you don' t make it that way, the pilot has no perception of what the machine is doing.
That is for instance what happened with that B737-800 in AMS. Because the pilots came in too fast and that the A/T was supposed to be idling, they did not realise that the A/T had entered the autoland flare mode.
That philosophy is why you need double and triple A/P's for CAT3 approaches.
This philosophy comes from the nineties when most of today' s aircraft' s technologies were developped. These machines can be built today with such level of redundancy and low error level that they could fly themselves with immense precision without being monitored by the pilot.
However, with aircraft there are far too many variables. For totally automated flight without pilots, we would have to redesign just about everything in our aviation system. Firstly, taxiing from the gate to the runway is difficult. Either every plane would have to be totally automated and interconnected or none at all. Any plane that did not exactly follow the taxi instruction, messes your whole system up. Then there is evaluating issues like Rejected Take Offs etc. The only computer powerful enough is the brain. End of. To be able to compute information in that time requires excellent situational awareness and experience.
It' s not easy but you just need to position some lines on the ground and there are already proven systems (see Lexus, Citroen, Opel, etc...) that can optically detect lines and symbols.
Take-off situations can be monitored in operations centers where every aircraft' s systems can be monitored by several UAS pilots who can make the abort call in the event that the computer fails to detect or react to a critical situation (which is very unlikely).
There will be people needed to detect that flock of birds or traffic on the runway. On the other hand, in a fully autonomous and monitored system, accidental runway incursions caused by pilots will become a thing of the past.
If a pilot' s wage is an average $50K per year, the wage saving on each aircraft would be at least ten times or $500K per year, even if UAS pilots will be needed to monitor.
The savings on operations will be at the very least another $1 million per aircraft per year through cheaper insurance, lower operational cost due to increased flexibility in terms of cruise altitudes and climb/descent profiles, increased efficiency through improved aerodynamic design achievable from the removal of a cockpit and increased revenues because the square meters wasted by the cockpit will no longer be.
We' re going through the denial phase, but we must face reality.
How many people were not skeptical about replacing the flight engineer by an EICAS and before that how many people were not skeptical about replacing the navigator by an FMS?
15 to 20 years from now, we will be heading into that direction and 50 years from now we will be there.
Last edited by fly_antonov; 20th Mar 2010 at 18:01.
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flyantonov,
You make a very good point BUT if we were to go in the direction of piloting aircraft remote you remove the pilots key motivator- fear. Your ability to perform varies depending on your involvement in the situation. A kid answering a question on a piece of homework wouldn't put half the thought into it as they would in an exam- because it affects THEM if they balls it up in the exam. Would the sort of decision making on Cactus 1549/Speedbird 38 etc. be possible if the pilot was not in the aircraft? The human instinct and desire to survive motivates the pilot to do the best job possible. A pilot based remotely will survive (though perhaps not professionally) regardless of his/her actions. Also, being in the aircraft gives you ACTUAL situational awareness and a pilot's feel for the aircraft is difficult to simulate. The split second decisions you make based just on what you can feel from the responsiveness of the aircraft would be impaired by not being on board.
Cpt Sunshine
You make a very good point BUT if we were to go in the direction of piloting aircraft remote you remove the pilots key motivator- fear. Your ability to perform varies depending on your involvement in the situation. A kid answering a question on a piece of homework wouldn't put half the thought into it as they would in an exam- because it affects THEM if they balls it up in the exam. Would the sort of decision making on Cactus 1549/Speedbird 38 etc. be possible if the pilot was not in the aircraft? The human instinct and desire to survive motivates the pilot to do the best job possible. A pilot based remotely will survive (though perhaps not professionally) regardless of his/her actions. Also, being in the aircraft gives you ACTUAL situational awareness and a pilot's feel for the aircraft is difficult to simulate. The split second decisions you make based just on what you can feel from the responsiveness of the aircraft would be impaired by not being on board.
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Fly Antonov.
I like your anticipated cost saving due to "lower insurance".
Insurance companies, not surprisingly, tend to be fairly conservative in terms of risk assessment as paying out is not their goal.
Mainly as a result of this, minimum experience levels exist for command positions in most companies, don't think companies like Ryanair wouldn't like to lower the bar (and the salary ) even further for Commanders if they could get it accepted.
What makes you think these self same very conservative insurers are going to rush to accept NO experience in the Flight Deck, Oh and if anyone does (I certainly wouldn't ) subsequently lower the premium.
When the A320 family arrived , it was proclaimed uncrashable by its creators, well, man-machine interface saw that become a bad joke, and even now with the LH X-Wind whoopsy @ Hamburg, it appears the humans at the front end are still discovering new "gotchas".
How many more "gotchas" will there be for your UAV pilots to discover in your "brave new world".
Of course, as a pilot I'll be fine
safe on terra firma, I doubt the pax will find that of much comfort.
Think this will remain in the realms of an accountants/ computer geeks dream for longer than you estimate.
I like your anticipated cost saving due to "lower insurance".
Insurance companies, not surprisingly, tend to be fairly conservative in terms of risk assessment as paying out is not their goal.
Mainly as a result of this, minimum experience levels exist for command positions in most companies, don't think companies like Ryanair wouldn't like to lower the bar (and the salary ) even further for Commanders if they could get it accepted.
What makes you think these self same very conservative insurers are going to rush to accept NO experience in the Flight Deck, Oh and if anyone does (I certainly wouldn't ) subsequently lower the premium.
When the A320 family arrived , it was proclaimed uncrashable by its creators, well, man-machine interface saw that become a bad joke, and even now with the LH X-Wind whoopsy @ Hamburg, it appears the humans at the front end are still discovering new "gotchas".
How many more "gotchas" will there be for your UAV pilots to discover in your "brave new world".
Of course, as a pilot I'll be fine
safe on terra firma, I doubt the pax will find that of much comfort.Think this will remain in the realms of an accountants/ computer geeks dream for longer than you estimate.
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Ask any left hand seater, did he/she start there. From whom and how does a novice learn and acquire the experience, before sitting on his/her own, speculating his/her navel whilst the gizzmos do it all. I hope no one says the sim.
By the way what about the ANO, and it does not just rest there, what about the rest of the world, will they all go along with such nonsense.
By the way what about the ANO, and it does not just rest there, what about the rest of the world, will they all go along with such nonsense.
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antonov,
I don't know exactly what plane you fly, but the autopilot & auto thrust on the plane I fly are much faster at reacting than I am ... And (without wanting to boast) I'm able to fly all automation off without much difficulty.
But the autothrust doesn't understand things like strong gusts (which I will allow the speed to fluctuate around), or wind shear caused by temperature inversions (which I can see thanks to the haze layer) or even just passing through an adolescent cumulous. One day computers will be able to sense all this, but I think that one day is rather further away than some like to think.
We are, after all, still using turbofan engines which were invented over 30 years ago because they still work and coming up with something radically different would cost too much. As I don't think there is a hugely compelling reason to get rid of pilots I doubt it will happen in the near future... In commercial aviation. Fighter pilots should be much more worried, no one - with the possible exception of the accountants - cares if a hunk of steel carrying bombs suddenly stops reacting.
S.
I don't know exactly what plane you fly, but the autopilot & auto thrust on the plane I fly are much faster at reacting than I am ... And (without wanting to boast) I'm able to fly all automation off without much difficulty.
But the autothrust doesn't understand things like strong gusts (which I will allow the speed to fluctuate around), or wind shear caused by temperature inversions (which I can see thanks to the haze layer) or even just passing through an adolescent cumulous. One day computers will be able to sense all this, but I think that one day is rather further away than some like to think.
We are, after all, still using turbofan engines which were invented over 30 years ago because they still work and coming up with something radically different would cost too much. As I don't think there is a hugely compelling reason to get rid of pilots I doubt it will happen in the near future... In commercial aviation. Fighter pilots should be much more worried, no one - with the possible exception of the accountants - cares if a hunk of steel carrying bombs suddenly stops reacting.
S.
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Why don't RYR go fully automatic? Think of the saving. No bloody whinging pilots, at least three extra seats for sale. What is the problem? With the savings made on flight crew, RYR could pay passengers to fly on their aircraft and still make money.
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PM
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Come on be realistic, pilots will always be there because otherwise there will nobody to blame when things go wrong.I'm really looking forward for the first crewless liner to go down, and to see the poor nerd who programmed it to be prosecuted.
p.s: for all the nerds and FS fans, are YOU ready to take this??! This is what we are facing everyday!!
p.s: for all the nerds and FS fans, are YOU ready to take this??! This is what we are facing everyday!!
Last edited by Lazy skip; 21st Mar 2010 at 01:06.
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By the same token...he does not need a driver, a secretary, or a wife...it would be interesting if this CEO was asked to implement his ideas by managing British foreign policy,reducing the costs in the civil service and the NHS.
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Huck said:
"I'll tell you what, my boys. There are about 10 freight trains a day that rumble by my house, on their way to Chattanooga from Birmingham, AL.
They operate in one dimension, they travel 70 mph max and they are worth about one tenth of one O'Leary's jets. And they carry a crew of three. When they get down to one occupant we'll start talking about airliners....."
Huck- Actually trains operate in all three dimensions, backward/forward, left/right, and up/down would be the third dimension they would operate in due to mountianous terrain. Wouldn't want a runaway train now would we?
The fourth dimension, according to Rod Taylor in "The Time Machine" is, of course, time itself.
But we can save that discussion for some other time (can't believe I said that).
"I'll tell you what, my boys. There are about 10 freight trains a day that rumble by my house, on their way to Chattanooga from Birmingham, AL.
They operate in one dimension, they travel 70 mph max and they are worth about one tenth of one O'Leary's jets. And they carry a crew of three. When they get down to one occupant we'll start talking about airliners....."
Huck- Actually trains operate in all three dimensions, backward/forward, left/right, and up/down would be the third dimension they would operate in due to mountianous terrain. Wouldn't want a runaway train now would we?
The fourth dimension, according to Rod Taylor in "The Time Machine" is, of course, time itself.
But we can save that discussion for some other time (can't believe I said that).
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Until recently, I wrote aviation software and I can assure you, I would be standing in the terminal with Capt Playstation waving any pilotless commercial aircraft farewell.
There is no such thing as truly artificial intelligence - computers cannot think for themselves. Every action they take has to be programmed into their memory cells.
As for single pilot operation of an airliner - yes, it is possible. But I doubt the various civil aviation authorities will ever permit it. (Think back a few months to the CO flight crossing the Atlantic when the unfortunate captain died).
In the spirit of MOL though, I think all are agreed that, apart from take-off and landing, pilots are virtually redundant due to the current state of automation. So, once in the cruise, the single pilot could go back into the cabin and man a trolley, thus saving the salary of a pilot and a flight attendant.
There is no such thing as truly artificial intelligence - computers cannot think for themselves. Every action they take has to be programmed into their memory cells.
As for single pilot operation of an airliner - yes, it is possible. But I doubt the various civil aviation authorities will ever permit it. (Think back a few months to the CO flight crossing the Atlantic when the unfortunate captain died).
In the spirit of MOL though, I think all are agreed that, apart from take-off and landing, pilots are virtually redundant due to the current state of automation. So, once in the cruise, the single pilot could go back into the cabin and man a trolley, thus saving the salary of a pilot and a flight attendant.
Last edited by kenhughes; 21st Mar 2010 at 06:29. Reason: Changed aircraft to airliner
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F/O as an asset to the captain.
AS A CAPTAIN , I FEEL FIRST OFFICERS ARE AN ASSET TO ME, and that's what the manufacturer thinks, when he allots specific roles for a PF AND PNF , neither of them is complete without each other, its just my more experience as a captain , that I am more aware and have in the past dealt with the situation before, and my decision making process helps me with that, F/O is equally capable, he has a type rating, he clears his checks every 6 months, he flies with other captain ( good and bad) and is more situationally aware....thats what my feeling is.