terks43

I’d love to watch a computer figure out how to get into a small Mexican airport with no radar coverage surrounded by mountains on a 20 mile final at 10k agl at night with thunderstorms in the vicinity and manage to not kill people. That’ll be the day. The thing about computers is that they are fantastic at math. That’s it, that’s all the do. 1+1=2 that’s exactly what a computer does. They don’t think. They have less critical thinking skills then that bug you hit on rotation. Automation will never replace pilots. Simply because it lacks the ability to think.

HIFLYR

Haha you would love to work were I do!! Your being too literal but most days I have at least one MEL or slight malfunction while flying. i.e. simply a A/P clicking off of a OFF/R switch needing to be reset etc.

Name User

Automation already has replaced pilots - the FE is gone, automated away. The only reason there is an FO now is because of regulations.

The scenario you speak of is perfect for increased automation. It will allow the single pilot to focus on getting around the storms. What we are discussing here is going from 3-4 pilots down to 2 on longer flights and going from 2 down to 1 pilot on shorter domestic or limited int'l stuff.

The great thing about automation is it doesn't think. It won't fly a UPS plane into the ground because it won't get tired. It won't stall the airplane out up at altitude and melt the engines. It won't land at the wrong airport (unless programmed incorrectly by the human).

Etc.

Name User

That sucks, the -80 here is pretty reliable.

"You're"

Did you bother to watch the video of the new software installed and running in current model aircraft?

Bluesideup1

Wrong on all three counts. Automation just plowed a perfectly good 737 into the ground, Automation has stalled airplanes at altitude and because there were no direct links to the controls the pilots didn't have the best SA and the airplane plowed into the ocean.

Who do you think controls the engines? It surely isn't the pilot they just have a little lever they push forward hoping the automation will give them what they ask. A situation where the automated engines didn't give the pilots what they asked because a tube was frozen ended up taking them into the Potomac killing most on board.

It will most certainly land at the wrong airport. Just look at the Drone with some of the highest encryption on the planet that got routed into Iran to land at a runway that it thought was not in Iran. Also it will land at a runway that is intended if the GPS malfunctions and the IRS slews too far out of alignment. It would probably circle until it ran out of gas then give you an error code that they can figure out what happened on the FDR.

Once again please stop your BS with the infallible computer babel as without pilot the airplanes would be falling out of the sky.

TaylorPilot

It took over 20 years to get ADSB going. Pilotless or even one pilot airlines flying over the US in my lifetime....LOL

The system would have to be closed, because an open system would be open to intrusion. So that means the system would have to have enough sensors and enough programming to reasonably handle any emergency and be able to diagnose the system. My car has over 100 sensors on it just so that it can turn on a service engine soon light...

The most insurmountable part would be actually getting men to put their wives and children on the plane. People get on planes now because they know the guy who has a clue about the operation and safety of the plane is sitting up front and has as much skin in the game as they do. You take that away, and I don't care how cheap the airplane is to operate, it wont make money if all the seats are empty.

Go ask random friends and family if their airlines didn't have pilots would they:

A. Drive
B. say no problem I'll let a computer fly my family around the world
C. rather pay 3 times the price to have two qualified humans up there who are going to go down with the ship to.

My last question is, for the guys saying its coming in 5 to 10 years. Why the heck are you on an airline pilot forum and not at college getting trained for your new career, because your current one is going to disappear faster than Hilary's server.

Bigapplepilot

DC9s and 737s were designed in the 60s and did they have flight engineers? AND...on the larger planes that had them it wasn’t a pilot job.

If you were incapacitated on an MD80 the other pilot wouldn’t be there to land the airplane? There just there ‘for regulations?’

OldWeasel

True. The only twinjet with an FE I recall was the A300 series. Miniaturization is one of the main contributors eliminating the FE not AI. The number of bulky relays and other mechanisms to automate their function multiplied greatly with the number of systems, which had a weight/complexity penalty. It also can be argued that the increased reliability of engines was a factor. But motors aren’t perfect and you still need two.

If a plane crashes now due to pilot error, everyone becomes acutely aware immediately of the mistakes the mishap pilots made. Memos are sent SOPs written and training if needed. You don’t miss a beat or a dollar. What will happen when AI fails? Will the fleet be grounded for software update? Will it be done wirelessly? Careful.

All equipment has an MTBF. Engineering provides these predictions. Based on very recent experience (this century) with shiny brand new boxes, the figures can be BS. The customer I worked for purchased spares based on MTBF figures and was cannibalizing before the last plane was delivered. There were supply chain issues that added to the misery. The sad truth is, I’ve been fixing big expensive planes 15 times as long as I’ve been flying them. I’ve worked 1950’s technology as well as the stuff we strap into today. I’m sorry but I call BS. ALL this crap breaks.


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OldWeasel

I’ll double down on my reliability statement with this: The Boeing projections for the number of pilots needed over the next 20 years was accompanied by the number of technicians needed. I didn’t see any significant decrease in those numbers to account for a quantum leap in reliability.


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captjns

Many are too young to remember the original 767’s bound for UAL wound up with Ansett Airlines.