Total autonomy in all situations is a straw man.

good enough to replace a relief pilot is easier and still very disruptive.

But it’s actually not. I mean you really think CA legacy rates (All types) are going to stay in the mid $200s ($300s for WBs) with one less pilot? Hell no. CA rates across the board are going to increase because of this (IF it ever happens). I can see a ton of people straight up retiring if this BS gets implemented and they are already late in their career (or even midway through and can afford it).

Say CA rates increase $80-100 (they absolutely are going to be increased) plus the cost of all the implementation for this crap. There’s no way your actually seeing an ROI for a very long time.

If someone makes an avionics upgrade like they did with MD-10 at FedEx that implemented this theoretical technology then I think you’d see it at cargo first. If not then who knows… Maybe a startup.

It will not be a retrofit to existing airframes, it will have to be clean-sheet. Too much integration with existing systems, plus additional backup systems. At least for pax ops. You *might* be able to retrofit an existing airplane, but it seems that would cost too much... more economical to bake into a new design, or at least a major update of an existing design.

Also... the airframe industry is currently jumping through hoops to be ready for possible (likely) future draconian carbon mandates. How much R&D cash do they have to blow on hypothetical autonomy that requires an AI that doesn't exist, which they wouldn't know how to certify if it did?

Sounds like there just gonna modify SOP. The Airbus technology is just an excuse and nothing magical. If relief rest is interrupted for any reason, can’t continue past unaugmented max flight time of 9 hours. Seems like ETOPS logic applied to crew. If flight was normal and rest was achieved during single pilot opps continue to destination, anytime there’s forecasted weather add 3rd pilot to release.

I'm sure mgt is cool with that, by the time you figure that out, you'll probably be past CP/ETP anyway... "divert" to destination.

But what day the FAA about the number of diversions?

i mean, you are never more than 3 hours ( assuming 180 minute ETOPS) from an airport right? If you are flying HKG-JFK or HKG-LHR there are plenty of airports closer than the destination. Diverting to SFO (or ANC or YYZ) instead of JFK with no crew there to continue the flight would be quite disruptive.

I don’t know if I agree. Connect the older airplane’s autopilot and other systems (ecam/eicas, radar, cpdlc, gpwrs, etc…) to this “brain” AI computer and let it do its thing. It’s all theoretical as the technology isn’t there yet but there are videos of a robot first officer that flew a 737 on the internet. Full pilotless airplanes are a long ways off but having something like this while the other pilot is resting isn’t out of the realm of possibilities.




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That's plausible as an automated IRO, with a human in the bunk.

For anything more robust than that, it probably does not make sense to add the extra complexity of having to identify and manipulate human controls... far better to just network into the system and eliminate multiple potential failure modes.

It would be plausible for full autonomy only if the brain was a full artificial general intelligence (AGI), ie human-equivalent in most respects. Nobody knows how far off that is, and there are very real, and very serious ethical and safety issues associated with going there. To say nothing of certifying something like that, which is inherently non-deterministic... and unlike avionics we're used to you'd also need to certify it's sanity. Ie, how do you know it's not going to spontaneously do something we'd consider irrational, possibly for reasons which make perfect sense to the AGI?