unmanned commercial airliners

[shootthebandit]

Theres a popular thread at the moment about the use of drones and UAVs. So i thought what are your opinions of UAVs in the commercial world.

As an aircraft mechanic im in favour of this
1) pilots wages are expensive and probably one of an airliners largest expendatures
2) aircraft can be turned around a lot quicker
3) the majority of incidents are caused by pilot error
4) auto pilots/collision avoidance systems are incredibly advanced these days

Whats you opinion on this. As i maintain aircraft i would feel incredibly safe but i know some of you would still prefer a human pilot and if you are a pilot you probably dont like this idea

 

[Lilani]

I know pretty much everything is very automated, but I still feel like there are certain situations I wouldn't want to trust to a computer. Like when that Sullenberger guy put the plane down in the water after hitting that flock of birds? He wasn't just commended for his quick thinking and the choice he made. The people on the plane praised him for being so calm and frank with them. In an emergency situation, the last thing you need is panic, and the presence of a physical person there to tell you what's going on and what's going to happen makes all the difference to people. It may not actually make them safer, but when things start to go wrong people like knowing there's somebody very near who's on the case.

 

[shootthebandit]

I know pretty much everything is very automated, but I still feel like there are certain situations I wouldn't want to trust to a computer. Like when that Sullenberger guy put the plane down in the water after hitting that flock of birds? He wasn't just commended for his quick thinking and the choice he made. The people on the plane praised him for being so calm and frank with them. In an emergency situation, the last thing you need is panic, and the presence of a physical person there to tell you what's going on and what's going to happen makes all the difference to people. It may not actually make them safer, but when things start to go wrong people like knowing there's somebody very near who's on the case.

that is a good point but there has been a lot of times when pilots have caused a problem and if something does happen (which is ver very rare) 99 times out of 100 there isnt much the pilot can do anyway

I suppose a lot of people would still feel safer (not necessarily if they are) and the airlines dont want to put passengers off flying

 

[Abomination]

If it's just a freight hauling flight by all means I see no problem with it being ENTIRELY unmanned.

However, I would never want to board a flight without a human who is trained and capable of taking the controls in case the autopilot should fail or an event outside the autopilot's parameters should arise.

 

[Zhukov]

I can't say I particularly like the notion of being one incorrect binary sequence away from a very long drop.

Granted, airliners these days are just one unexpected heart attack away from the same thing, but that's why we have co-pilots.

Can't we just stick to having the best of both worlds?

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I need to have a pilot with human reflexes around the cockpit. I hate the idea of the pilot encountering a fatal error and going offline. ._.

 

[tilmoph]

I'm with the majority here; I wouldn't mind having a computer or a remote operator be the default pilot, but especially for passenger flights, I would frankly demand (as in, write my Congressmen and demand a law) that a competent human be available in the cockpit to take over in case of a technical error or communications glitch.

 

[Sandernista]

1) pilots wages are expensive and probably one of an airliners largest expendatures

Where did you hear this? Pilots are paid next to nothing, the biggest expenditure is most likely fuel.

OT: I don't mind, I'd like a google car of my own first though.

 

[J Tyran]

I know pretty much everything is very automated, but I still feel like there are certain situations I wouldn't want to trust to a computer. Like when that Sullenberger guy put the plane down in the water after hitting that flock of birds? He wasn't just commended for his quick thinking and the choice he made. The people on the plane praised him for being so calm and frank with them. In an emergency situation, the last thing you need is panic, and the presence of a physical person there to tell you what's going on and what's going to happen makes all the difference to people. It may not actually make them safer, but when things start to go wrong people like knowing there's somebody very near who's on the case.

For every pilot that saves the aircraft there are others that get it badly wrong and make a simple problem into a disaster, there might even be more pilots that have made mistakes and crashed than there have ones that saved everyone. Hybrid systems can also be a massive problem, there have been instances when pilots have been leaving the automatic systems take care of everything including landing. When somethings gone wrong their reaction to the problem was delayed and inappropriate, even very basic errors like not turning off the autopilot after its gone haywire because the radio altimeter broke.

This is a true incident and actually crashed several aircraft and killed hundreds of people. Only one aircrew ever got it down safely. There have been other instances where pilots operated the autopilot in such a way it caused crashes .You can either have automated or you can have pilots, attempting to have both has caused a lot of deaths.

 

[Henrik Knudsen]

Auto Pilots are incredibly advanced until a slight error makes them fail, then they are a death sentence for everyone aboard.

The biggest expenditure is fuel, that is why Airline companies charge extra for extra luggage as the extra weight is an expense, especially during take-off and some companies consider charging ticket price based on the weight of individual passenger.

How would you turn the aircraft quicker just because an AI pilots it? Passengers are still aboard.

More people die each year from car accidents than plane crashes.
You just dont think so because when a plane eventually crash it is so much more horrible but it is the safest way to travel in terms of casualty rates compared to how many use it each year.

Some crashes on Airliners have been said to could have been avoided if pilots wasn't so reliant on autopilots and actually knew how to fly.

In short, I would never fly with an AI as pilot.

 

[OneCatch]

Whats you opinion on this. As i maintain aircraft i would feel incredibly safe but i know some of you would still prefer a human pilot and if you are a pilot you probably dont like this idea

At the moment, no. It's better to have the triple redundancy in the form of autopilot, pilot, co-pilot.

It's worth mentioning that most autopilots have fairly limited roles (like keeping the wings level, following an altitude path) and still require pilot oversight. There are fully automated ones, but even they need more pilot input than "Take off is here, landing runway is here, GO".

It's also true that pilots make mistakes (and it's bloody stupid that they can legally drink alcohol before flights), but you've got to consider that pilots generally deal with the most dangerous phases of flights - takeoff and landing. All that most autopilots do is go in a straight line (broadly speaking).
So getting a higher raw rate of pilot error is to be expected, and isn't necessarily an indicator that autopilots are more reliable.

Pilots also aren't that expensive - yearly wage is probably about what it costs to fuel three flights according to google-fu, six if you include pilot and co-pilot.

What I would say is that if and when commercial aircraft (and autopilots themselves) become more advanced the arguments against autopilot become weaker.
For example, planes like the F-117 and B-2 can't be flown without computer because of the rather unfriendly control surfaces. I think the same's true of the F-22 and F-35 as well.

If ever commercial aircraft get that advanced then there's not a whole lot of point in having a pilot because it'll crash anyway with a computer failure.

 

[Bertylicious]

I wouldn't mind a computer pilot. It strikes me that aeroplanes are so complicated that if they aren't falling out of the sky like confetti then folks probably know what they're doing with the whole engineering aspect so if the industry says it's okay then so am I.

 

[blink]

Everyone has been bringing up valid points here which seems to just be going back and forth but what about something new. What about the terrorists?

Yes, in the 1 out of 9999999 chance that terrorists would ever even think about attacking something as big as an aeroplane trip. Would it be better to have a pilot or an auto pilot?

Personally I think the auto pilot would always have a way of being hacked so I believe that a human pilot could pose more of a challenge for any hijackers

Also try not to read this before you get on a plane, you will not be enjoy it.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

-snip-

1) pilots wages are expensive and probably one of an airliners largest expendatures

HAHAHAHAHA! Very funny, a Boeing 777 will set you back over 250 million dollars. Pilots can be paid allot but nowhere near enough to make this a valid reason.

2) aircraft can be turned around a lot quicker

Once a pilot has used up his allotted flying hours he gets off the plane and another takes his place. You save 5 min at max that could be done while the plane is being reloaded.

3) the majority of incidents are caused by pilot error

Debatable, most modern plane crashes are due to a series of errors which end with the pilot.

4) auto pilots/collision avoidance systems are incredibly advanced these days

Again debatable, the systems are theoretically sound but errors still pop up.

 

[Angie7F]

If japanese trains are still manned and they run on rails, I dont see how it is going to be ok to fly airplanes with out humans running them.
There has to be a way to cut costs other than taking the pilot out of the plane

 

[CriticalMiss]

I'd rather have a person behind the...stick? If airlines want to save money then they could get rid of the crappy food, tell people to eat before they get on the plane or bring something on with them. That way people have a larger selection and it will taste better, plus the space the airline saves on the plane means more space for people, less weight and one less thing to load on to the plane. They could also charge fatties extra.

I'd rather not compromise the safety of scores of people just to save the wages of a pilot.

 

[Quaxar]

3) the majority of incidents are caused by pilot error
I bet we don't have much conclusive records on how many possibly lethal technical errors were avoided because a human pilot spotted and corrected it.

 

[Arkitext]

Just in reply to the original post.

With a background in human psychology, I would say this is never gonna happen within our lifetimes.

Why? Well how long has the plane been invented? People still avoid them because they don't understand how they work, and worry they can fall out of the sky.

Removing any human who could possibly take control of this machine, is just not possible. Even if a company were crazy enough to pioneer it, they'd have such a hard time convincing anyone to fly with them, the wages they saved in getting rid of pilots (which is incredibly unethical, when you consider that Pilots need to make a wage, and it's one of those few awesome jobs that people aspire to do.)

Also, 100% of commercial plane "stock" is designed for Human control (even if a computer does most of it), retrofitting, or launching a new brand of Commercial UAV has all the same ethical, social, psychological and economical problems as running an airline with them in. So prototypes may get made, but it's so expensive to launch a new range of airliners, and if nobody uses them, you're pretty screwed.

I don't think this is a good idea, or a practical one. Maybe from an engineer's point of view. From a psychologists... well I'm thinking about the loss of jobs as yet another sector is fully automated.

Where's it gonna end?

 

[manic_depressive13]

I've seen enough movies to know that when a machine is damaged in some way, autopilot is the first thing to go.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I think hooray, way of the future. All vehicles will be automated eventually. It's no use avoiding it for silly reasons now and putting off implementation. Although definitely pilots should be present and able to take control of the craft at any point while the technology would be in its infancy. The main problem I see is commercial. An airline is a massive investment for something people might not be willing to fly on or buy.