"Automated" Airmanship
 

Everyone is familiar with the phrase "automation airmanship." I think we all know what is lingering over the horizon... somewhere--AUTOMATED airmanship.

What are the projections for when Siri takes over the Boeing (presumably opinion-based)? "Hey Siri, shoot the RNAV" in 10 years? 20? 40?

I suspect we will go single-pilot before the robots take over, doubling the size of the pilot labor force. I am curious to hear what others think about the state of the future.

(Please prove me wrong, by the way).

You want that from Boeing?

They're delivering 737MAX jets for the next 5-10 years and those jets will fly for 30+ years.

I don't need to tell you what the cockpit looks like...!

GM and Ford didn't develop a driverless car; TESLA did. Similarly, Boeing won't create a pilotless plane (maybe Airbus), but it will likely be a brand new company (that could be bought by a major aircraft manufacturer).

First, that small company will produce a working pilotless plane. That plane will then spend 5-10 years proving that it is safe. Then, someone must build a large part 25 certified pilotless plane. Once some airline buys it, they will have to operate it with 2 pilots for about 10 years before they even think about changing regulations to let it be flown with 1 pilot.

That is about 20 years AFTER someone creates a pilotless plane. Within that time, it is more likely that the economy will crash causing airlines to go bankrupt which will cause the pay rates to be slashed which will make pilots cheaper than R&D.

And as others have said, the major manufacturers will want to extract as much money as they can out of their "legacy" 2 pilot airframes before they really push for a single pilot/no pilot plane. That means they will send tons of money to politicians to scare the public away from a single/no pilot plane until their 2 pilot cash cow airplanes are no longer worth it.

In short, no pilot alive today has to worry about it.

You're wrong by the way.

Look around there’s a dozen threads on this subject.

GF

The nerds may design it, but the beancounters will kill it. 👎

I can see a system of acknowledging cpdlc-like commands as IBM Watson spaces traffic before pilotless or single pilot airplanes.

Here is how that Tesla "driverless car" thing is going. "Autopilot" was on, right into the back of a parked firetruck.

http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.news...crash-fire.JPG

Tesla is at level 2. The best system right now, and closest to level 4, is Cadillac's (GM). So if the automotive track record is the one to measure by, Boeing is key to the future and that future is very, very far off.

What's an RNAV? :D (sarcasm, we don't fly that on the legacy herc)

When automated trains are widespread I’ll start to worry. Right now only small monorail type trains are automated. Once Amtrak, subways and commuter trains are automated than maybe we will see it in aviation. But if they aren’t currently automating 18th century technology I don’t think it’ll happen in our lifetime.

An important factor to consider, and one that is often overlooked in these discussions, is whether or not the market, i.e. consumer, even _wants_ an airplane with no pilots on board.

Public acceptance of pilotless aircraft could and probably will change, but I think it will be many decades before we see the confluence of proven technology, public acceptance, and costs controlled to a level that will put pilots out of work in any meaningful scale.

I don't know that everyone is. I hadn't heard that until your post, actually.

Airmanship is a judgment and decisionmaking skill (which obviously includes use of automation). The one thing that AI hasn't been able to crack, even with the most advanced artificial intelligence today, is the ability to make decisions in a dynamic environment.

In the long term, that extremely human characteristic is going to remain the reason our jobs are not going to be replaced by "automation" anytime soon.

Haha, not if SWA has anything to say about it!

Hacker15e

Chris Lutat of FDX wrote a book called, “Automation Airmanship”. Amazon has it.

GF

“Alright, shoot the farm calf”

I fly a Dassault Falcon product. You never know those Frenchmen will come up with.

Love this response. Logical. I would agree than a significant change in the economic environment, resulting in changes in the pilot labor market is more likely than the tech-based, "dystopian" (in this line of work) alternatives that I've outlined.

The only rub--people are already working on this today and are probably considering it a project with huge potential returns if they can beat the competition.

Why are human beings so hellbent on finding ways to replace themselves and their own jobs.

The nerds will “fly” it, too.

GF

If there is any form of transportation ripe for automation, it’s trains. They work in one dimension and two directions—forward and backward. They’re not going anywhere else, nothing happens in a hurry, either. Not even started happening. One coal operator automated a private train hauling coal about 20 miles on their property thirty years ago, closed now. Never duplicated.

GF

Well said "the ability to make decisions in a dynamic environment".

One of my pet peeves is when friends/family/people ask me about the autopilot or automation in general.. There is a true perception that we are pretty much doing nothing but watching the autopilot do its thing...
I sometimes use the analogy of vehicle cruise control that does a great job maintaining speed in the car but has no idea that it is running up on another vehicle...if you were the only vehicle on the road or the only aircraft in the sky there would be no issue....unfortunately there are hundreds of decisions to be made every flight because it is a dynamic environment.... obviously self driving vehicles have gone well beyond cruise control but the artificial intelligence required to fly a plane will require exponentially more factors to be considered than driving a 2 dimensional land based vehicle like a train or car...

Now that I've said that we can all be amazed when some 12 year old kid from the Midwest comes out with prototype software next year..... Speaking of which, I wish that same kid would focus on an improvement to PBS first....

Lots of remote control trains operating in rail yards and spur lines across the country today and have been for a long time. Point to point cross country isn’t happening but the technology to run trains remotely has been around for quite awhile.

There are several reasons they have not automated trains yet. Like aircraft, train engines take years to design, cost a ton, and have a long service life. Also, train engineers are pretty cheap. Their pay has gone way down and you don't need very many of them.

You mean the C-Series?

Step 1 - single pilot:
"When I mentioned to Rob Dewar that the AHMS had the potential to make the C Series the airline’s first single pilot aircraft, he replied to me saying that this had been envisaged from the very start of the program. However the absence of regulatory framework which adds up to the rejection by the public of such technology left no choice for Bombardier than to let this technology be put to one side. Remember that whilst these two obstacles are currently very much present, if in 20 years the situation were to change then it would not be necessary to redesign a new aircraft."

https://aeroemploi.ca/nouvelles/n/19...-c-series-ahms

Fully automated passenger airliners are at least 50 years away. Single pilot airliners are as close as our idiot unions allow.

Despite the hype, AI is nowhere near what some people would have you believe.

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar

There will be problems. Significant numbers of real self driving cars are at least a decade away. Airliners are way more complex, and operate in a far less forgiving environment

You guys are extrapolating the past and thinking technology grows like this:http://berryberryeasy.com/wp-content...stconstant.png

When in reality it happens like this:
http://tonybarlow.net/wp-content/upl...dTechGraph.jpg

People who are so sure that "anyone alive today" will not see this are likely wrong.

You ain't a real pilot if you haven't shot at least one ADF approach to minimums.

Preferably, in a third country, where the approach has three beacons and your ADFs are of the “coffee grinder” variety. I’m looking at you, Yerevan.

GF

No, you're just not paying attention.

I think everyone grasps the rate of change when it comes to technology. The thing you fail to understand is: Just because the technology is there, doesn't mean it's going to be implemented.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...lotless-planes

“That's why experts expect it will take at least three decades before fully autonomous commercial planes fly in the United States, even though aircraft already use more advanced autonomous technology than driverless cars.”


Technology will be accepted at a faster rate as time progresses. Look how fast iPads got accepted and approved by the FAA.

You’re comparing IPADs to the safe operation of an aircraft by a human v. a computer..

Will there ever be an “un-hackable” technology platform out there? One that would assure Billy next door can’t write some code and ride off with 400 people across the Pacific Ocean? I think that would be the show stopper, at least for the foreseeable future.

True,

Can you imagine how many AI flights will be diverted to land in Nigeria and looted minutes after the parking brake is auto-set?

No passenger has been killed on a US Air Carrier since 2009. I think last year globally was zero as well. It is astronomically safe at this point. So completely revamping the system, including its infrastructure, and meeting and beating those odds is a big step.

And even if it were to happen, by that time it will be the least of any pilots concerns. The director of engineering at Google says 2046 for the Singularity. So Doctors, Engineers, Financial Advisors, even coders and actors will be affected.

Good ol' Moore's Law.

I have no idea. Didn’t one of the early drones end in Iran’s hands somehow?

https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.c...jpg?quality=85

With a procedure turn.

And a timer.

Safety won’t be the driving factor (unfortunately)..economics will be: IF despite all the regulatory change, legal issues, technological investments and massive infrastructure changes, airline management sees significant profit in going single pilot or unmanned. Oh, not to mention passengers willingly hopping on an airliner flown solely by “George.” Let’s hope airline management is smart enough for the time being.

I'm still waiting for the flying cars they've been promising us since the 1950.

Instead we have Alexa to check the weather and play my music and an iPad. Things that were not widely predicted.

It’s Difficult to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future --Mark Twain