And then there was only one
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Don’t be consused - A & B are not interested in single pilot airplane. What they doing now is in essence building a pilotless aircraft which for transition/interim period of about 10 years will be MONITORED by pilot, who not will be called “system panel operator” just to avoid upsetting the unions. It also answers your question regarding the training - no more Captains and expensive process of gathering experience. There will be more and less experienced pilots monitoring the systems, max paygrade shall be around current year-5 FO. And then in 10 years after that finally we go into into a fully pilotless aircraft with elements of ground based monitoring functions.
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I won't be around to see it, but I forecast that the regulatory framework, and the cost of compliance will be so great that it will make the cost and flexibility of a human crew the winner in a cost/benefit contest.
If you know anything about the restrictions (the law) around space launches, you will understand what I am getting at.
Tootle pip!!
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Pilots are trusted for a reason. Airline management is not.
So rather than investing, growing and generating a return on investment of many millions of passengers, many millions of dollars of operating revenue over a 30 or more year career, let the industry instead work towards eliminating it all together. Brilliant!
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As we were assured with the elimination of flight engineers and age 60 retirement, 'don't worry son, the union will never let it happen...' 
Airline pilots protest a study on allowing cargo planes to be operated by only one pilot with remote help
Airline pilots protest a study on allowing cargo planes to be operated by only one pilot with remote help
By Hugo Martin Aug 04, 2018 6:00 AM
Unions representing nearly 50 commercial airlines have launched a protest against federal legislation to study the idea of putting cargo planes in the hands of only one pilot with the help of remote-control pilots on the ground.
But this dispute includes a big mystery: Officials of pilots unions don’t know who put the language in the Federal Aviation Administration funding bill to study the idea of one pilot per cargo plane or for what reason. The FAA bill sets aside $128.5 million to research the concept, along with other topics of research.
The pilots unions, representing more than 100,000 pilots, say they are opposed to the idea of eliminating a co-pilot from a commercial cargo plane because the task of flying a jet, communicating with air traffic controllers and monitoring weather changes requires two trained pilots.
The unions also say remote-control flying is vulnerable to glitches and computer hackers.
“Anything less than two pilots physically in the cockpit will significantly increase risk, especially during emergency operations, when timely actions are coordinated and implemented by each crewmember based on real-time information,” said Robert Travis, president of the Independent Pilots Assn., the collective bargaining unit for UPS.
The FAA funding package for 2017-2018, adopted by Congress in April, includes a line that says, “The FAA, in consultation with NASA and other relevant agencies, shall establish a research and development program in support of single-piloted cargo aircraft assisted with remote piloting and computer piloting.”
The legislation does not explain the motivation for the study.
Kara Deniz, a spokeswoman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents pilots that fly for Aloha Air Cargo and Southern Air Cargo, among other carriers, said the union doesn’t know who put the language in the FAA bill but suspects that the study is the first step in a move to propose requiring only one pilot on commercial passenger airlines.
“It’s possible that this is the way to get the camel’s nose under the tent,” she said.
Representatives for FedEx Corp. and Atlas Air, two of the nation’s biggest cargo airlines, declined to comment on the matter.
But this dispute includes a big mystery: Officials of pilots unions don’t know who put the language in the Federal Aviation Administration funding bill to study the idea of one pilot per cargo plane or for what reason. The FAA bill sets aside $128.5 million to research the concept, along with other topics of research.
The pilots unions, representing more than 100,000 pilots, say they are opposed to the idea of eliminating a co-pilot from a commercial cargo plane because the task of flying a jet, communicating with air traffic controllers and monitoring weather changes requires two trained pilots.
The unions also say remote-control flying is vulnerable to glitches and computer hackers.
“Anything less than two pilots physically in the cockpit will significantly increase risk, especially during emergency operations, when timely actions are coordinated and implemented by each crewmember based on real-time information,” said Robert Travis, president of the Independent Pilots Assn., the collective bargaining unit for UPS.
The FAA funding package for 2017-2018, adopted by Congress in April, includes a line that says, “The FAA, in consultation with NASA and other relevant agencies, shall establish a research and development program in support of single-piloted cargo aircraft assisted with remote piloting and computer piloting.”
The legislation does not explain the motivation for the study.
Kara Deniz, a spokeswoman for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents pilots that fly for Aloha Air Cargo and Southern Air Cargo, among other carriers, said the union doesn’t know who put the language in the FAA bill but suspects that the study is the first step in a move to propose requiring only one pilot on commercial passenger airlines.
“It’s possible that this is the way to get the camel’s nose under the tent,” she said.
Representatives for FedEx Corp. and Atlas Air, two of the nation’s biggest cargo airlines, declined to comment on the matter.
Airline pilots protest a study on allowing cargo planes to be operated by only one pilot with remote help
Nemo Me Impune Lacessit
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Folks,
I won't be around to see it, but I forecast that the regulatory framework, and the cost of compliance will be so great that it will make the cost and flexibility of a human crew the winner in a cost/benefit contest.
If you know anything about the restrictions (the law) around space launches, you will understand what I am getting at.
Tootle pip!!
I won't be around to see it, but I forecast that the regulatory framework, and the cost of compliance will be so great that it will make the cost and flexibility of a human crew the winner in a cost/benefit contest.
If you know anything about the restrictions (the law) around space launches, you will understand what I am getting at.
Tootle pip!!
From a previous life I still maintain contact with a few underwriters as well as their up coming juniors and the mere mention of single crew long haul and more particularly pilotless aircraft generates expressions of disbelief and horror. The actual hull insurance won't be such a problem, increased somewhat to allow for additional risk, as they see it, but the liabilities insurances for passengers and particularly third party will increase to billions and the premiums increasing by several fold, possibly enough to render the whole idea of a pilotless operation futile. Legal liability and professional indemnity premiums for the manufacturers of the equipment, both airborne and ground could run to telephone numbers.
When all those problems have been resolved, if ever, there remains the question of the travelling public, will they accept a pilotless aircraft at a cheaper price or will they be prepared to pay a few dollars more for a human piloted one? We are talking about the premium fares here, First and Business, not the LCC ones.
As SLF, not for this little black duck. If you don't need two pilots for redundancy, why two engines? Next idea off the cab rank will be to have only one, that must save mega bucks in managements cost cutting scrounge.
I believe that a young pilot starting out today will see total autonomy take his job away before he or she retires
The appearance of huge savings to operators are irresistible
Sad but inevitable
The appearance of huge savings to operators are irresistible
Sad but inevitable
Nemo Me Impune Lacessit
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The actual hull insurance won't be such a problem, increased somewhat to allow for additional risk, as they see it, but the liabilities insurances for passengers and particularly third party will increase to billions and the premiums increasing by several fold, possibly enough to render the whole idea of a pilotless operation futile. Legal liability and professional indemnity premiums for the manufacturers of the equipment, both airborne and ground could run to telephone numbers.
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t the liabilities insurances for passengers and particularly third party will increase to billions and the premiums increasing by several fold, possibly enough to render the whole idea of a pilotless operation futile. Legal liability and professional indemnity premiums for the manufacturers of the equipment, both airborne and ground could run to telephone numbers..
(Are they not rich enough to set up their own country, or purchase a used one, so they can have their own regulator?)
Insurance is all about risk, not perceptions.
And risk is about probability and consequence.
While the consequences (cost) of loss of a single pilot aircraft may increase sharply, at least in the short term, provided the probability does not increase then there is little that I can see to support sky-rocketing insurance rates.
If experience showed that, with time, the overall risk was to decline then, in a perfect world, the insurance rates should reduce also.
Though I wouldn't bank on that happening.
If the probability was to increase then they'd have more to worry about than just paying their insurance premiums.
And risk is about probability and consequence.
While the consequences (cost) of loss of a single pilot aircraft may increase sharply, at least in the short term, provided the probability does not increase then there is little that I can see to support sky-rocketing insurance rates.
If experience showed that, with time, the overall risk was to decline then, in a perfect world, the insurance rates should reduce also.
Though I wouldn't bank on that happening.
If the probability was to increase then they'd have more to worry about than just paying their insurance premiums.
Interestingly I was in conversation with some fairly senior folk from one of the major manufacturers who were saying how they need to improve the role of the PM in the cockpit to achieve fewer safety related events, even with the increase in automation function they are designing. Single pilot was certainly not an option for them in the near future.
Monitoring, the role of the non flying pilot, or the role of a single pilot, are an interesting and debatable issues.
The role and effectiveness of a human monitor will depend on how ‘monitoring’ is defined and what safety expectations exist.
Many people in the industry expect high quality monitoring from pilots; safety evidence suggest otherwise with accident and incident reports citing human error, blame and train. Why should we expect one pilot to understand a situation which the other might appear to have misjudged. Both are human who may have different situational understandings; however, where each is sufficiently close forming a shared ‘mental model’, then there is no need for intervention. Yet where awareness differs to the extent of requiring intervention, which view is correct; who judges, on what basis. This suggest that the concept of monitoring flawed.
Compare this with dual tech systems requiring a ‘comparator’ alert, and need for an alternative third system for judgement, yet even that has weaknesses when considering multiple failures.
What happens when both pilots awareness is incorrect, good shared mental model, but wrong; typical of illusionary situations, both visual, and mental constructs.
Does the industry assume that the PM is always correct, yet they may be the less experienced in forming awareness. So should the more experienced be the PM monitoring, which might imply that the less experienced will fly the aircraft.
The design of a modern high-tech aircraft should not consider pilot monitoring of automation (a warning or caution for critical failures), systems alone are less error prone than the human, yet the human is a very valuable monitor for the overall situation, the resultant of human-system interaction and the operating environment (do we think or train for that view). The autos a working correctly but the output is not what the PF intended.
Some aspects of these may be suitable for automatic monitoring; system inputs can be bounded avoiding unsound inputs (flight path protection, FMS data entry), and at a lesser level, cautions questioning intent (selecting low autobrake on a contaminated runway), but even this requires knowledge of the situation which only the pilot may have.
There is not a win-win situation, only a balance; and perhaps that balance is moving more towards automation partly because of mistaken beliefs that early automation reduces training and experience for understanding systems, greater efficiency, lower cost. However recent developments in automation are closing this gap; safer automatic flight with less training, but IF and only IF the operating environment does not expect even more savings and efficiency.
Many of today’s safety issues are within this ‘IF’ proviso (complexity, workload, fatigue), thus without reappraisal of these goals, then single pilot - automatic operations might be no safer than today (but is that good enough). Also in changing to a single pilot the industry risks introducing some other, unforeseen safety issue.
Who monitors the regulators or operators; what is the basis of their risk management training with respect to actual operations.
The role and effectiveness of a human monitor will depend on how ‘monitoring’ is defined and what safety expectations exist.
Many people in the industry expect high quality monitoring from pilots; safety evidence suggest otherwise with accident and incident reports citing human error, blame and train. Why should we expect one pilot to understand a situation which the other might appear to have misjudged. Both are human who may have different situational understandings; however, where each is sufficiently close forming a shared ‘mental model’, then there is no need for intervention. Yet where awareness differs to the extent of requiring intervention, which view is correct; who judges, on what basis. This suggest that the concept of monitoring flawed.
Compare this with dual tech systems requiring a ‘comparator’ alert, and need for an alternative third system for judgement, yet even that has weaknesses when considering multiple failures.
What happens when both pilots awareness is incorrect, good shared mental model, but wrong; typical of illusionary situations, both visual, and mental constructs.
Does the industry assume that the PM is always correct, yet they may be the less experienced in forming awareness. So should the more experienced be the PM monitoring, which might imply that the less experienced will fly the aircraft.
The design of a modern high-tech aircraft should not consider pilot monitoring of automation (a warning or caution for critical failures), systems alone are less error prone than the human, yet the human is a very valuable monitor for the overall situation, the resultant of human-system interaction and the operating environment (do we think or train for that view). The autos a working correctly but the output is not what the PF intended.
Some aspects of these may be suitable for automatic monitoring; system inputs can be bounded avoiding unsound inputs (flight path protection, FMS data entry), and at a lesser level, cautions questioning intent (selecting low autobrake on a contaminated runway), but even this requires knowledge of the situation which only the pilot may have.
There is not a win-win situation, only a balance; and perhaps that balance is moving more towards automation partly because of mistaken beliefs that early automation reduces training and experience for understanding systems, greater efficiency, lower cost. However recent developments in automation are closing this gap; safer automatic flight with less training, but IF and only IF the operating environment does not expect even more savings and efficiency.
Many of today’s safety issues are within this ‘IF’ proviso (complexity, workload, fatigue), thus without reappraisal of these goals, then single pilot - automatic operations might be no safer than today (but is that good enough). Also in changing to a single pilot the industry risks introducing some other, unforeseen safety issue.
Who monitors the regulators or operators; what is the basis of their risk management training with respect to actual operations.
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Insurance is all about risk, not perceptions.
And risk is about probability and consequence.
While the consequences (cost) of loss of a single pilot aircraft may increase sharply, at least in the short term, provided the probability does not increase then there is little that I can see to support sky-rocketing insurance rates.
If experience showed that, with time, the overall risk was to decline then, in a perfect world, the insurance rates should reduce also.
Though I wouldn't bank on that happening.
If the probability was to increase then they'd have more to worry about than just paying their insurance premiums.
And risk is about probability and consequence.
While the consequences (cost) of loss of a single pilot aircraft may increase sharply, at least in the short term, provided the probability does not increase then there is little that I can see to support sky-rocketing insurance rates.
If experience showed that, with time, the overall risk was to decline then, in a perfect world, the insurance rates should reduce also.
Though I wouldn't bank on that happening.
If the probability was to increase then they'd have more to worry about than just paying their insurance premiums.
But that concept not withstanding, at least when talking about the the U.S. legal system there is another factor. With a fully automated system I suspect the number of people and companies that can be sued to be much greater as well as what they can be sued for. Just ask Uber's legal department about that one. They have probably dealt with hundreds of fatalities caused by their human drivers, but on their first computer driver fatality the settlement happened so quickly there's little doubt it dwarfed all before it.
Computing power is expanding exponentially as predicted by Moore's Law (which is really Moore's observation, but I quibble), and while there are signs it may start slowing it's still clear that the growth of computing power will continue to outpace "human intelligence" by a huge margin. The shortcoming is programing - it's already incredibly difficult (and expensive) to design and certify flight critical software (Design Assurance Level A - DAL A in the lingo). But even today, most of the coding is done by computer - someone draws a flow chart and that's turned directly into 'machine language' by computer software.
Given sufficient information, a computer can evaluate hundreds or even thousands of possible actions, and determine which one has the best probability of a successful outcome. The weakness is a computer can quickly get stuck when it has 'insufficient information' - something humans are somewhat better at (but still far from perfect). But electronics and the associated sensors are improving so fast that before long, there will simply be more information available than a human can ever hope to process - only a computer would be able to make sense of it.
I was in the industry for 40 years. I listened to people who swore they'd never get on an aircraft with FADEC engines. Same thing with FBW, glass flight decks, and less than 3 engines for long overwater flights. Yet all these things became commonplace during my career. Forty years ago, the idea of fully autonomous cars was wild science fiction - yet it's predicted that within 10 years we'll have exactly that. In fact, I foresee a future where automotive 'human drivers' will be discouraged if not outright banned - and it may happen far sooner than most of us would like...
Autonomous commercial aircraft will come. Aviation is understandably slow to adopt unproven technology (the FAA is on-record as stating 'artificial intelligence' is banned from flight critical software). But when CFIT and other forms of pilot error (and sadly, pilot suicide) make flying more dangerous than driving to the airport into your fully autonomous car - the industry will have no option but adapt.
BTW, many cargo operators are buying brand new, modern freighter aircraft. They'd be delighted if they didn't need pilots...
Given sufficient information, a computer can evaluate hundreds or even thousands of possible actions, and determine which one has the best probability of a successful outcome. The weakness is a computer can quickly get stuck when it has 'insufficient information' - something humans are somewhat better at (but still far from perfect). But electronics and the associated sensors are improving so fast that before long, there will simply be more information available than a human can ever hope to process - only a computer would be able to make sense of it.
I was in the industry for 40 years. I listened to people who swore they'd never get on an aircraft with FADEC engines. Same thing with FBW, glass flight decks, and less than 3 engines for long overwater flights. Yet all these things became commonplace during my career. Forty years ago, the idea of fully autonomous cars was wild science fiction - yet it's predicted that within 10 years we'll have exactly that. In fact, I foresee a future where automotive 'human drivers' will be discouraged if not outright banned - and it may happen far sooner than most of us would like...
Autonomous commercial aircraft will come. Aviation is understandably slow to adopt unproven technology (the FAA is on-record as stating 'artificial intelligence' is banned from flight critical software). But when CFIT and other forms of pilot error (and sadly, pilot suicide) make flying more dangerous than driving to the airport into your fully autonomous car - the industry will have no option but adapt.
BTW, many cargo operators are buying brand new, modern freighter aircraft. They'd be delighted if they didn't need pilots...
My prediction is that it will be self driving cars that desensitise the public to having fully automatic transport. IF fully self driving cars are successful then I think that aviation might end up down the same path. I also think that fully self driving cars will not be here as soon as some are predicting.
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Technically it might be possible, like with military aircraft, but not at high commercial airline safety levels unless you have fully qualified pilots monitoring from the ground at any time. If you do all the cost of the failproof datalink comes on top. So manned cockpits must be cheaper and the flying public is more fearsome than the industry. Let just one crash happen and all your remote controlled aircraft can be converted to freighters. Two pilots "at work" in the cockpit are a minimum that will stay for quite some time.