AirBear

The Camel's nose is edging closer and closer to the tent:

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-n...chnologies?utm

DogPit

And ATC still can't implement 80s technology. 🤣

sailingfun

Maybe they will do better than Tesla with full self drive!

JohnBurke

What camels nose? With every innovation in aviation, a similar argument has been made.

When Doolittle demonstrated the first autopilot, a Sperry innovation, no one would believe that the autopilot was doing the job. Lawrence Sperry went on to demonstrate it in France, first with a pass with his arms held high. He had to climb outside the airraft and stand on the wing, while he did a pass, to demonstrate the capabilities of the aircraft. Similar arguments were made. Putting yourself out of a job, mate. It's a gimmick. It will never take hold.

Well, not really. The autopilot, flight director, autothrottles, and even autoland have proven immensely useful and safety-enhancing. Today, when it comes to low-visibility taxi, we're not nearly as potentially uncertain or prone to error as not-so-many years ago before moving maps and ownship and real-time information, but even in visual conditions, incursions continue to happen. Tempo, traffic density, and frequency continue to increase and even with experienced hands on controls and mics, errors continue to be a hot button topic. It was a hot topic when hot spots went on the charts over a decade and a half ago, and that hasn't changed.

Is the camel seeking to replace pilots with automation and put us all out of a job? I'd be more interested in the use as another tool in the box. Helicopters use auto hover capabilities during hight vertical referencre rescues, not replacing pilots, but certainly enabling greater focus on the mission and situaitonal awareness. Autoland lends incredible precision and utility and safety, and we all understand it doesn't replace us. It's another means of controlling the aircraft, whether we touch a yoke, or a switch, or button. In most transport category aricraft, we've long since become disconnected from the control surfaces on the wings, be it fly-by-wire or simply cables to a hydraulic servo or proportioning valve, there are components, systems, and capabilities between us and the slipstream, or even the concrete.

If the roll-out function doesn't end when the aircraft slows to taxi speed or stops, but enables a safe turn-off and ground navigation in low visibility, is that a threat to the industry, or a plus?

I'd weigh it as a plus.

JamesNoBrakes

This also makes me think, if taxi instructions are electronic, they can be automatically de-conflicted, a computer can check against whether two or more clearances may be conflicting, as in whether or not routes will intersect...and if the planes follow them.

rickair7777

Taxi is a fairly controlled environment, that should be achievable.

Not sure why they'd bother since you're still paying two pilots but I guess it might be better for low vis ops.

Chimpy

Thats the point, lol. The goal is to get rid of Pilots

rickair7777

Taxi isn't the part of the flight where you really need pilots. Unless they plan to bring out airstairs and board us after the plane taxiis to the hold short line. I guess the FA's can decide when/if/how to evacuate

Anybody with engineering or computer science degrees who pays even a little attention to the state of the art knows that airlines pilots aren't going anywhere for many, many decades... more likely any time this century.

I said exactly the same thing about autonomous cars about five years ago. Elon's hype turned out to be "aspirational", which was a decent marketing pivot on his part.

hercretired

auto taxi will reduce pilots like when autopilots were invented, they reduced pilots back then. anybody remember that? the autopilot got invented and all these copilots immediately got furloughed?

in other words, zero chance

back to regular programming