https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/07/technology/business/pilotless-planes-passengers/index.html

Here are $35 Billion reasons to get rid of us. MGT. hates us already. They hate that we have the power to not do what they say, that we can ground an airplane, that we cost the operation money with all of our safety. We are the last layer of safety. We are there with our buts in the seat along with the passengers.

Good, have at it. Let me know how much the first lawsuit costs them when one augers into downtown San Francisco with 250 people on board.

It's not about running the same checklist. I think that knowing I'm dealing with a potential gear collapse vs a landing gear that is totally retracted is knowledge a competent aviator should have. But there is no way to communicate that to AI. I'm pretty certain the jetblue A320 crew with the nose wheel turned 90 degrees off found the info from the "untrained" tower useful. It's a resource that a human pilot would have, that's not available to an AI pilot. This is just one of many examples of things that are fundamentally difficult to write code for. Off airport landings present their own problems that are also exponentially harder to attempt to write code for. There are some things that computers are much better than us at, such as monitoring systems. But there are some things, involving judgement, that they are much worse at.

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Edit - duplicate post

Our FOM states:
“Tower can not provide confirmation of gear position. Therefore, a tower fly-by is not recommended.”

They add the emphasis on “not”. At this stage of the game we are very much needed in the cockpit. There will be a time when the level of technology and reliability reaches a point where we are not. At that point pilots will be up there as monitors while the flying public gains confidence in the reliability and safety of unmanned travel. My guess is that we’ll be dead and gone, but it’s going to eventually happen. Technology gains have enabled many manufacturing jobs to become obsolete. They are now even performing remote robotic surgery. If a surgeon can sit in an office and robotically cut into someone miles away, what makes us think that we’re immune to the same advances in technology?

Probably not much different then what the max fiasco is gonna cost them with pilots. But at 35 Billion a year, they can afford to lose a few planes. We all know this is how MGT. thinks. We need to make our case to the regulators now that we are the last line of defense on safety, that while the “autopilot” is on we are still flying the plane, hackers can hack anything including these things.

The only thing malfunctions induce is a corrective action. The corrective action can either be appropriate or not.

There are exceedingly few scenarios where a malfunction, if properly responded to, might still result in aircraft damage/hull loss. So, in my opinion, an incorrect response to a malfunction is actually a greater threat to the safety of the aircraft than the malfunction itself in 99% of cases.

Therefore, if there is an accident due to improperly followed procedures, I would say it was human induced/human error/pilot error. Whatever you want to call it. The malfunction is almost meaningless at that point.

If someone steps on the wrong rudder during an engine failure and plants it in the dirt, was it the malfunctioning engine that caused the crash or improper response? If you think it’s the former, then please stay away from my flight deck.

I think the litigation barrier is much higher than people think. The 737 max cases have jurisdictional and standing issues which defense can make to devalue. But 250 midwesterners coming out of Indianapolis and an email from the company indicating prior knowledge of the issue is gross negligence which means uncapped punitive damages in many jurisdictions. Those are attorney rainmaker cases. When you get into those areas you have problems finding federal judges or certain circuits reversing billion dollar verdicts. Lloyds of London isn't going with this until we get through at a couple hundred people getting mowed down by driverless cars to see what happens with the case law.

The problem faced when people talk about this issue is that they assume computers of today are flying the airliners. Computers are being designed now to think and problem solve. A completely new era for technology will emerge. There will come a day somewhere in the far future when computers will have greater intelligence than man. Therefore a pilotless airliner is plausible.