Is it possible pilots will be replaced ?
 

Will computers replace pilots in the next 30 years? Or will single pilot cockpits become a thing? Just wondering.

Is it possible pilots will be replaced ?
 

Maybe... Who knows. Depends what people get comfortable with.

20 years ago when I worked for a large auto manufacturing plant, there was a spot weld line (one of several) with over a hundred people working on it. About 9 years ago I was programming robots for the replacement of that line. The new line had zero people working on it.

I know this anecdote is loosely related but it is a good example of technology replacing traditional jobs. In 30 more years I would imagine technology will be more than capable of replacing pilots if it is not already. The more relevant question is will people accept a pilotless plane. IMHO they will. In the next few years driverless cars will be on the road and we will acclimate to letting a computer do the driving. How big of a leap will it be to let a computer do the flying?

Is it possible pilots will be replaced ?
 

I'm sure we can drop some fear grenades and delay pilotless planes a while... Imagine if the plane gets hacked by terrorists.. What if the system crashes.

Also today's ATC system is ill equipped for pilotless airliners and congress isn't too quick to get next gen ATC going.

Pilots aren't needed to fly the plane at all. They are needed for emergencies. When a computer can pull off a "Sully" with a 99.9% success rate, I'll think about flying in a pilotless plane.

Pilotless airliners
 

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/07..._r=1&referrer=

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Mounting evidence that the co-pilot crashed a Germanwings plane into a French mountain has prompted a global debate about how to better screen crewmembers for mental illness and how to ensure that no one is left alone in the cockpit.

But among many aviation experts, the discussion has taken a different turn. How many human pilots, some wonder, are really necessary aboard commercial planes?

One? None?

Advances in sensor technology, computing and artificial intelligence are making human pilots less necessary than ever in the cockpit. Already, government agencies are experimenting with replacing the co-pilot, perhaps even both pilots on cargo planes, with robots or remote operators.
........

I hate articles like this. They never discuss the risks involved with pilotless or single pilot airplanes.

This article says it best and puts to rest a lot of the myths, one might say lies, in these rash of recent pilotless airline stories since the Germanwings disaster.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/10/op...ll-matter.html

Luck and Magic can't be programmed.

That's the point. There are decisions to be made outside of which button to push or system to bypass. If it has to come down, will it aim for a field and not a school? A simple system failure and catastrophic engine or airframe failure are the only scenarios I see man and machine equal. In my opinion, there's a lot of ground to cover in between.

It's been awhile since I read the account but, I think while preparing for ditching he covered items that may or may not have been on the checklist. That may have kept them floating. So luck and magic had human help.

How safe will you feel when the plane you're riding on can be hijacked and crashed by someone on the ground?

This Summer
 

This summer Tesla Motors is selling a model that holds the ability to be the first driver less car. All it needs is a software update to provide the capacity.

Modern regional airline pilots do not commonly have a broad experience base to draw upon. In the past it took thousands of hours of crop dusting, night cargo, and part 135 jobs before one reached an airline. In place of experience and ability pilots are checklist and flow chart driven procedure regurgitating automatons that are largely powered by rote memorization. In effect a heavily technology supported organic computer.

Commonly the weak link in the system is the organic matter that lies between the flight computer and controls. In a short time the public will become comfortable with self driving cars. The next thing to go will be the effective input of a pilot in air travel, replaced by artificial intelligence and ground control. Their purpose will be to serve as a last line of defense should all else fail. As with the cop who goes a career never having to draw his gun so the pilot could go their entire career never actually hand flying a plane.

In cruse they can put on an apron and help the cabin crew serve the passengers. It is only a matter of time.

Skyhigh

That was an insulting description, Sky. But I think flight students should consider the possibility that within their lifetimes the right seat role may be eliminated in commercial aviation, the same way flight engineers went away in the 70s. That will happen before crewless airplanes will happen, and they'll never make a human CA into a part-time flight attendant because they are significantly different work roles and it's a huge security risk to name a few. I doubt pilotless airplanes will happen in the passenger market during our lifetimes, or those of current flight students. It could take place in the cargo market a lot sooner though, and I forecast we will see large drones within the next 30 years. If and when that technology proves safe, passenger operations will gradually adopt it. 2060 at the earliest.

Crewless?
 

I don't think it will be crew-less but rather two people up front with minimal input to the outcome of the flight.

I am sorry if you found my depiction a bit harsh but how else should it be described? Airline pilots fly to the same airports at the same time over and over again. They are trained to follow the decision tree until you run off the map and then call dispatch for further instructions. Pilots are all trained to recognize a situation and then react the same in manner every time. The goal is to standardize everyone's vocabulary and actions to match the script from the office of the director of operations. A pilots hands may be on the controls but the company is flying the plane. The more standardized the better.

SKyhigh

Most jobs are pretty routine, and it's a subjective thing to measure. There's enough variety in flying to make it fresh every day. I would know, I've done many types of work and flying is one of the few things I can really thrive on. I spent the last year flying the same 4 legs over and over, same thing every day, and I was amazed how many different twists there were on the usual routine. Was it always career bliss? No. But no week was the same as all the others, and while some flights were pretty uneventful there was always some new twist. Things like picked up a half inch of ice, diverted due to storms, go-around for ATC, 60 knot tailwind, heard so-and-so on the radio, saw rainbows, witnessed another airplane have an emergency, thought maybe the engine in mine was rough, etc. The job has a fair amount of variety if your expectations are set right for it, and in fact I cannot imagine more variety in a job that stays in the US. Inner city police work or FBI, maybe? I know your standards are high for adventure in Alaska bush flying, but when you get old you do not want as much danger. I hear the trans-con flights get pretty dull. The guys who flew past Minneapolis would probably agree.

Do you fly professionally? I do and this doesnt ring true.
Ive got 22 years till retirement- I do believe that my last 4 or 5 years, ill have noone to talk to on my transcons.:cool:

Not so fast!!

Hackers Could Use Wi-Fi to Control Airplanes, GAO Warns : US : Headlines & Global News

Here's an anec dote. Radar outage at my destination, several of issued holds at the outer marker waiting for other planes to get down and the fog to lift, that goes on for an hour doing laps, several planes watching each other over a cloud deck. Fuel gets to divert bingo so I divert, half way there I hear the tower at the first field say weather is now up to mins, planes now getting in. Asked for and got a return vector, begin the ILS and tower says the winds just shifted to a strong tailwind. Decided to do a circle to land and barely able to see the airport to land going the other way with a minimal fuel reserve. How's that for the daily routine? This isn't every day, but I'd say it's every two weeks or so.

Simple answer, yes. Eventually... Just like everything else.

Maybe it is possible. Nowadays technologies grow in seconds. This may possible after 30-40 years.

Simple answer: NO.

Definitely not in 30 years.

Ability and reality are two far different things. Many things have to be worked out in the software area. The logic of the cars computer has to determine who is to die in some cases. Aircraft will be no different and will take far longer than cars.

Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill | MIT Technology Review
Self-Driving Cars Get a Code of Ethics | MIT Technology Review
Should a Driverless Car Decide Who Lives or Dies? - Bloomberg Business

Airlines will be the last to adopt pilotless aircraft. I think there will be a human up there to monitor the computer for the next several decades. After that....pilots will be relics of the past.

They've been success in remotely flying large commercial aircraft, (for T&E purposes), for a few decades now.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y33N0raKZBo

When you look at reliability of a UAS and you remove the human error, (and tighten up the operational parameters), the UAV programs are pretty reliable vs. traditional manned flt. I believe that the main reason that there is push-back is that the FAA is still afraid of gravity vs. a UAS during an uncontrollable mishap.

IMHO if you restrict a UAS to certain Airways in unpopulated/less populated areas you'll limit the FAA's concerns of (if and when) an unrecoverable mishap occurs the A/C is returning uncontrolled in an mostly unpredictable location.

Most of the mishaps that I have seen have been attributed to human error, (more frequently during the beginning of the UAS Programs), but UAS' safety has improved due to more flt time, policy reviews and the evolution of newer technologies.

It still makes me laugh when I see the UAS Crews still wearing Nomex flt suits in a secure environment.:D

But I guess either you can never be too prepared for a in-flight fire, or the UAS Crews just had a visit from the 0-4 Fire Marshal Bill Flt Safety Officer looking for fire hazards near the Ops Positions.
https://youtu.be/PlLPogmB8M8

Just a friendly jab at my friends who still play with video games ("using" the UAS) and do a pretty good job at it.

No need to invest in a new infrastructure when they can simply change the rules for pilot certification in order to reduce costs.

Vastly over-simplified.

There are some very big hurdles...

Assume the technology exists to do it safely...it already does, assuming you can exert a reliable external human control in cases where complex grey-area decisions must be made. The usual example is being boxed in and forced to fly through thunderstorms...interpreting radar is more art than science.

Cost:
- Cost of all the redundancy.
- Cost of backup ground-based control.
- Cost of TOTAL revamp of ATC enroute system.
- Cost of revamp of terminal approach systems.
- Cost of ground-handling systems.

Cultural:
- Responsibility: This is the biggy. Ultimately the pilot is to responsible if something goes wrong. With automated airliners, *somebody* has to accept that responsibility BEFORE the plane is allowed to leave. Who will that be? And that person or persons will be extremely anal and reluctant to dispatch unless everything is perfect. The greatest value of the pilot to the industry is probably as the scapegoat.
- Government Responsibility: Even bigger, the FAA has to certify such a system is safe. No protocols exist to do that. How do you even get them to agree on the protocols, much less actually certify an automated airliner to fly. Congress could force the issue if there was enough incentive but there probably wouldn't be.
- Fear of Unknown: Will enough of the public buy tickets initially? Half of them are already afraid to fly. Eventually they would get used to it but initially this would be a barrier to economic success.

Chicken vs. Egg: In order for this to happen the government needs to authorize it and update their infrastructure, the airframers to to design and build the planes, and the airlines need to buy. Who's going to spend the money first? No one will make the investment unless they KNOW the other parties are on board.

Government? Several hundred billion $ (look at nextgen costs) just to put 80,000 pilots out of work so the AIRLINES can make more money? And incur a lot of risk in the process. Nope, not government.

Airframers? Not going to spend money on something unless they know someone will buy it. And don't kid yourself, this is not going to be an add-on box to existing airplanes. Additional redundancy will need to be built in from the beginning.

Airlines? They are not going to commit to something for which operating regulations and infrastructure do not yet exist. They would benefit in the long run, but they take a VERY short-term financial view and managers are not going to invest vast sums in something which reap rewards in 50 years. They'd use it if existed, but they're not going to fund it up front.

I'm not too sure it's that impossible.

NAFTA sure did something similar to the American Steel and Auto Industries sending U.S. jobs overseas while, at the same time, eliminating U.S. import tariffs.

They might do it as part of a much broader context, such a complete revamp of the ATC and aviation system in the US.

The problem is that you have to overcome a lot of regulatory and cultural obstacles, which can clearly be done IF there's a potential for great benefit. But what's the benefit? Not safety by any means...to achieve safety with automation equivalent to what we have to today would probably be impossibly expensive (or impossible in the near term).

The FAA, by mandate, CANNOT accept a regulatory change which reduces current safety levels. So Congress would have to order them to to do so, and that's obviously not a popular election year platform!

Even so that's not absolutely impossible, US airlines are statistically very safe so if the public was offered an 80% reduction in airfares they might give up one statistical decimal point. But crew costs are about 25% of total costs so knowing that automation is always going to be at least a little more expensive than non-automated hardware the best you could get is maybe a 20% fare reduction (not even that really since the airlines will pocket as much of the savings as they can).

Also if you're looking to trade a little safety for big fare reductions, beware! The airlines would ultimately make out like bandits, but not so much the public. If you greatly reduce the cost of flying, then more people will fly! But guess what our national aviation infrastructure is getting near capacity (especially the big hubs) so once it's maxed out fares will shoot right back up as travelers essentially have to outbid each other for seats. But the airlines still enjoy the lower cost of automation$$$

No one knows. These types of changes tend to happen non-linear so it is hard to predict when the change will happen.

If you mean pilots in the cockpit replaced by pilots in a ground station I think the answer is yes in the next 30yrs. If you mean completely autonomous without and aviation expert in the loop I think the answer is no.

10 years ago I was flying ISR overseas and it was common to have unmanned and manned aircraft in the same airspace stack. Watch for the change to happen 1st in the military where the pax can be ordered to get on the plane. Once it is proven successful there, it will make it's way to the civil side.

Never underestimate the public's willingness to accept risk as long as it is $10 cheaper. Offer all passengers free beer and internet on the flight and you could fill up a pilot-less aircraft even today:)

I don't see insurance carriers going for it any time in the near future. If they do, that $10 fare savings will cost the airline a heck of a lot more in premiums.

I think the bean counters will push for unmanned airplanes because it looks good on paper but they have no concept of the realities. It will be difficult to MEL items on an aircraft that needs to fly with everything working. How does an unmanned aircraft fly with auto-throttles, auto fuel systems and other "auto" systems inoperative? Stuff breaks all the time and real live human pilots take up the slack flying with numerous MEL stickers everyday! This science fiction looks great on paper but the realities are, it will cost an air carrier way more than paying a human being to fly an aircraft.

I've said for a long time, managers that are sick of working with pilots and want them out of the cockpit have yet to consider what it will be like working with a bunch of young tech and IT people:D

Manager: I need that airplane to take off at 0430 tomorrow

IT kid: What's 0430 and how come the break room is out of free breakfast burritos by the time I come in every morning?

Manager: Put your phone down and respond to that flashing red light!

IT kid: Just a minute, I'm making sure I don't break my Snapchat streak with my BFF.

Manger: You're fired.

IT kid: Fire? Where? On the aircraft I'm monitoring? This job is too stressful I quit!! I'm taking that Amazon job where I can go play ping pong when I'm stressed, this place sucks!

.......