[sneak]

> The fact of the matter is that there are no technological barriers to making aircraft completely autonomous, but pilots want the world to remain in denial about this for as long as possible for the sake of their job security.

Two words: anomalous conditions.

As we both know, pilots aren't needed in the vast majority of commercial flights. The plane is perfectly capable of taking off, navigating, avoiding collisions, and landing with minimal, mostly unskilled supervision.

We don't need pilots on planes... until something unexpected goes wrong, and we do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

[lisper]

That's true, but 1) anomalous conditions are very rare and 2) as often as not the pilot is the anomalous condition. Pilot error is the most common cause of aviation accidents.

EDIT: Notice that you had to go back 30 years to find your third example of a human pilot saving the day. And automation technology has improved a lot since then.

[snom380]

Most of the time when a pilot saves the day he just disconnects the autopilot and writes an incident report. There's been at least four inflight upsets due to autopilot or sensor malfunction in the past few years that I can recall. Some of these caused serious passenger injury. Latest one I heard about here: http://www.aibn.no/Luftfart/Rapporter/13-18 Another one: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

[CamperBob2]

Devil's-advocate: fine, OK, we still need pilots, for the time being. But do they actually need to be on the planes?

In the case of two recent crashes (AF447 and this one, assuming pilot error turns out to be the cause as seems likely), it's safe to say that a computer would've easily done a better job than the pilots.

Would be interesting to hear Capt. Sullenberger's take on the question.

[bdonlan]

If you're going to use remote pilots to deal with anomalous conditions, you'd better have an emergency electrical supply that'll keep your remote control running for however long it'll take to glide at the plane's maximum range. You'll also need a communication system that'll work over the ocean, in poor weather conditions, while the plane is having difficulty maintaining a stable attitude (good luck maintaining the alignment of a satellite dish when the autopilot disconnects due to a sudden upset).

On the other hand, if your onboard autopilot is in control of everything, you run the risk of having autopilot bugs causing an accident - indeed, a software issue in the airbus flight protections (which, unlike the autopilot, are always active unless a very severe system failure occurs, and can override the pilot's inputs) has caused an incident that resulted in passenger injuries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72

While none of this is impossible, it's certain to be expensive, heavy, have its fair share of bugs at the start, and by quite difficult to get past the regulators. Not to mention passengers probably won't be very happy being on an unmanned plane, even if the system really was perfect. So it's easier in the end to just put pilots on the plane.

[CamperBob2]

If you're going to use remote pilots to deal with anomalous conditions, you'd better have an emergency electrical supply that'll keep your remote control running for however long it'll take to glide at the plane's maximum range. You'll also need a communication system that'll work over the ocean, in poor weather conditions, while the plane is having difficulty maintaining a stable attitude (good luck maintaining the alignment of a satellite dish when the autopilot disconnects due to a sudden upset).

(Shrug) Sorry, but given the complexity of the rest of the aircraft's systems, none of these engineering tasks sound impossible. 40 years ago we did this stuff on the freakin' Moon.

Although yes, I tend to agree that any move in this direction amounts to fixing something that isn't broken. (In the "freakin' Moon" example, the human pilot still had to handle the tricky part.)

[nknighthb]

> 40 years ago we did this stuff on the freakin' Moon.

...

> In the "freakin' Moon" example, the human pilot still had to handle the tricky part.

Since you're apparently well aware that the Apollo missions were conducted with manual docking and landing, why bring it up?

Especially given the relative simplicity of "final approach" on the moon, given the lower gravity, zero wind speed, and slower pace, I don't understand what your point is.

[csirac2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_1

[CamperBob2]

Just pointing out that it's not valid to argue that this stuff is impossible, or even impractical.

[nknighthb]

What "stuff", though? The moon landings were conducted by a human brain in control of a (mostly[1]-)fully-functional machine. How does that translate to fully automated landing of an atmospheric aircraft already experiencing a malfunction?

[1] Actually, the Eagle did experience a computer malfunction that almost caused an abort to the landing before an engineer said they could ignore it. You want a computer to judge for itself whether it can still safely fulfill its mission while malfunctioning?

For further terror, consult the Apollo 12 lightning strike. When the computer is FUBAR, how do you propose it fix itself?

[snom380]

Assuming we could make such a system secure and unhackable as well as unjammable, why would we want to? To save some money? I would rather pay a little more to have the pilot sit in the same airplane and have his life on the line as well.

I just find it fascinating how obsessed people seem with getting rid of pilots. You don't often hear the same discussion about train or bus drivers, or doctors for that matter, even though we are just as close to having automated robotic surgery and expert systems have been around for a long time.

[bergie]

You don't often hear the same discussion about train or bus drivers

Plenty of cities are getting rid of their subway drivers at least. And if many airport shuttle trains around the world are automated as well.

[sneak]

> I would rather pay a little more to have the pilot sit in the same airplane and have his life on the line as well.

I think I agree with you in general about this, but that's sort of a shitty and unpersuasive way of making that argument.

[revelation]

I guess latency is why they are on the plane.

[jlgreco]

Might it be possible to have a "house pilot" at each airport that could be patched in during landings or takeoffs? Latency could be made pretty negligible with a radio link only a few kilometers long at most.

That wouldn't do anything for patching in pilots for planes in the middle of the pacific, but I wonder how often that would be necessary.

[kenkam]

Another big reason for piloted planes is, seriously now, who here would get on a plane knowing that it was being flown without a pilot.

If it's hard for most of us from varying technological backgrounds to say yes than it's going to be almost impossible to convince the more mature passengers.

This is one of the reasons why all planes look the same (they have the same configuration, low wing with engine below wing) even tho Airbus and Boeing keep churning out concepts. Would you get on a plane that looked even slightly funky?

[bradleyland]

> ...seriously now, who here would get on a plane knowing that it was being flown without a pilot.

Given that the most common cause of aircraft accidents (by quite some margin) is human error, I'll take my chances with the computer.