*sigh*, I get way too much mileage out of this image.

 

Again, These are not my words but the opinions of global leaders in aviation.

Bill Voss, the president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation made the following comments:

"In modern aviation, these planes almost fly themselves. Voss said that on any given flight, pilots are manually flying the plane for only three minutes -- one minute and 30 seconds each for take-off and landing."

"We moving towards automated operations where the pilot isn't even permitted to fly,"

Another note worthy comment.

"Airbus is proud of the fact, they like to say that their plane is 'pilot-proof,'" said aviation lawyer James Healy Pratt.

Write them a nasty letter. The monorail in Seattle was made in the early 1960's. It still needs an operator however the underground subway at Seatac was built in the 1970's and it does not.

With every advance in automation safety improves. It is inevitable that automation will take complete control and pilots will be the back up system. We are almost there now.

Skyhigh

 

Hoss,

You are one of my best friends here. I really do not like crushing your hopes too badly. Sometimes I can tell that you are struggling so I back off.

I don't like these things any more than you. I just do not think it is healthy to deny the truth. If I were king you and I would work for the same airline and be paid a kings ransom. We would hand fly smokey old 727's VFR all over the PNW and Alaska. Our weekends would be spent in Elk camp in the fall and riding trails on dirt bikes in the summer.

Sadly though the world is not like that anymore. Modern airliners are all automated boredom tubes and the Elk are scarce. The world is changing. We have to change with the times or get left behind.

The future belongs to video games and pilot proof planes.

Skyhigh

 

Yes the future belongs to video games and pilot proof planes. Is it going to happen in the next 50 years? Is there anything I can do about it? We are more likely to see computer generated doctors replacing doctors before we see pilotless planes. Go try and scare them.

 

So long as pilot have a meaningful input to control the plane they will have the ability to crash it. No argument there. Humans make mistakes. Pilot skills dull in the glow of automation.

Once the computer takes complete control from that point on it will be the automatons fault and pilot caused accidents will drop to zero. Hand flying skills will be reserved for the simulator as a last ditch emergency procedure that no one would ever want to do for real.

The video seems very old. It applies to a time when pilots still interfaced with automation in a meaningful way. Once the conversion to total automation is complete pilot input and their dependence on automation will be a moot point.

Children of the XBox.

Skyhigh

 

The pilots will still be there. If little more than to serve as a redundant system and to give the passengers a warm fuzzy feeling. The pay that use to come with the job will be gone however (correction: is gone.)

Skyhigh

 

>FedEx founder Fred Smith came by the Wired offices yesterday for a chat on a range of things, but I'll focus here on the bit relevant to this site. He says that they'd like to switch their fleet to UAVs as soon as possible but that this will have to wait for the FAA, which has a tough road ahead in figuring out the rules of NAS integration. Unmanned cargo freighters have lots of advantages for FedEx: safer, cheaper, and much larger capacity. The ideal form is the "blended wing" (example shown). That design doesn't make a clear a distinction between wings and body, so almost all the interior of both can be used for cargo. The result is that the price premium for air over sea would fall from 10x to 2X (with all the speed advantages of air).

As he notes, a modern 777 is already capable of being an unmanned vehicle. "They let the pilots touch the controls for about 20 seconds, to advance the throttles, and then the plane takes over," he said, only half-kidding. The truth is that the plane can take off, fly and land itself. Today pilots drive the planes on the ground, but there's no reason why the computer can't do that, too. Sully's a hero, but Smith's perspective is that humans in the cockpit make the airways more dangerous, not less.

Because the FAA rules are not in place, nobody's built that perfect blended wing UAV for FedEx yet. But Smith believes it's only a matter of time. As he notes, the key thing is having NO people on board, not even as backup. A single person in the craft requires a completely different design, along with radically different economics and logistics. The efficiencies come with 100% robotic operation.<

So Fred Smith says it will only work if the aircraft doesn't have a pilot on it. Does anyone really think we will see passengers get on an automated aircraft in our lifetime?

I say that because all traffic would have to be automated. You can't have a freighter going to ORD with storms and everyone else deviating. Who controls the UAV? The controller? Or does he take precious time to relay the instructions to someone else. What about the first time one goes down in the tropics due to weather? Is there weather avoidance? How? Radar only paints rain. Go through the ITCZ and you will get spanked relying on just the radar.

 

John Henry
John Henry
By Anonymous Anonymous
When John Henry was a little tiny baby
Sitting on his mama's knee,
He picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel
Saying, "Hammer's going to be the death of me, Lord, Lord,
Hammer's going to be the death of me."


John Henry was a man just six feet high,
Nearly two feet and a half across his breast.
He'd hammer with a nine-pound hammer all day
And never get tired and want to rest, Lord, Lord,
And never get tired and want to rest.


John Henry went up on the mountain
And he looked one eye straight up its side.
The mountain was so tall and John Henry was so small,
He laid down his hammer and he cried, "Lord, Lord,"
He laid down his hammer and he cried.


John Henry said to his captain,
"Captain, you go to town,
Bring me back a TWELVE-pound hammer, please,
And I'll beat that steam drill down, Lord, Lord,
I'll beat that steam drill down."


The captain said to John Henry,
"I believe this mountain's sinking in."
But John Henry said, "Captain, just you stand aside--
It's nothing but my hammer catching wind, Lord, Lord,
It's nothing but my hammer catching wind."


John Henry said to his shaker,
"Shaker, boy, you better start to pray,
'Cause if my TWELVE-pound hammer miss that little piece of steel,
Tomorrow'll be your burying day, Lord, Lord,
Tomorrow'll be your burying day."


John Henry said to his captain,
"A man is nothing but a man,
But before I let your steam drill beat me down,
I'd die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord,
I'd die with a hammer in my hand."


The man that invented the steam drill,
He figured he was mighty high and fine,
But John Henry sunk the steel down fourteen feet
While the steam drill only made nine, Lord, Lord,
The steam drill only made nine.


John Henry hammered on the right-hand side.
Steam drill kept driving on the left.
John Henry beat that steam drill down.
But he hammered his poor heart to death, Lord, Lord,
He hammered his poor heart to death.


Well, they carried John Henry down the tunnel
And they laid his body in the sand.
Now every woman riding on a C and O train
Says, "There lies my steel-driving man, Lord, Lord,
There lies my steel-driving man."

 

We are nowhere near there.

We have the technology to do it right now, in fact we probably could have done it in 1990. But the cost of building in the required additional redundancy/reliability is simply off the scale.

This is an engineering fact, not speculation. Military UAV's (which are cheap only by the standards of military weapons systems) have suffered a near 50% in-service loss rate with the vast majority of losses not involving combat damage.

In fact our most sophisticated UAV appears to have been captured by a hostile power after being digitally hijacked.

It can be done, but it would require a Manhattan/Apollo project, and who the hell is going to pay for that in today's economic climate??? And why? We know why the airlines would, but we also know they aren't going to invest hundreds of billion$ in a project which will reap financial rewards in 25 years...they are too busy looking with next quarter's earnings call to see more than a few months beyond the ends of their noses.

I believe, based on engineering, financial, and regulatory realities, that any management talk about unmanned airliners is probably just a tactic to scare labor. Don't fall for it.

 

Spiffed it up a bit for you Rickair

USMCFLYR