One in Two People Say They Won’t Fly in Fully Automated Aircraft

Megalith

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According to a new survey from UBS, 50% of respondents (that’s it?) would prefer to be on an aircraft that actually has someone piloting it. Unfortunately for them, self-driving (flying) technology is coming to the airline industry, and it’s just a matter of time before cockpits are empty. Boeing, for instance, is testing fully automated jetliners in simulators and believes that AI can replace many tasks conducted by pilots.

Much like the automotive industry, most passengers don't realize that there are quite a few autonomous systems already in place on today's aircraft—including those that land the plane. "Many modern airplanes can autoland," notes retired airline captain John Cox in a USA Today column from 2014. "These new generation jets can fly the approach, flare, touch down, track the centerline of the runway, apply brakes and deploy the ground spoilers. They cannot apply thrust reverse and cannot turn off the runway."
 
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BBC article about this said that some 70% of flight incidents were caused by pilot error, and some 20% of those were because of pilot exhaustion. Aircraft flight is already hugely automated.

In addition, every rocket shot into space is being controlled by computers. SpaceX and BlueOrigin are returning boosters, automated to Earth. If a rocket can be launched to space and returned safely to earth with automation, I think a plane's flight can be fully automated.
 
There are more and more processes and systems that are completely dependent on assisted or automated piloting in modern aircraft. Combined with the fact that most aircraft are equipped with a huge array of safety features that we are adding to cars to make them self-driving and a fully automated flight is not just likely, but inevitable, and soon.

Eliminating the entire flight crew is not something I'm a fan of though. I'm never fond of eliminating layers of redundancy in a situation where hundreds of lives are potentially at risk.
 
Affirm, the autopilot is very capable in a modern aircraft

... But when things go wrong e.g. mechanical failure, bad wx, passenger emergency, you're going to need a pilot.

That's what flight attendants are for.

And a pilot will probably not be able to fix a mechanical failure as that is not his area of expertise so replace him with an engineer and good to go.
 
Well, this is kind of sad because being a pilot is such a dream job for lots of people. Flying is a passion for many and being able to spend your life flying around the world is the ideal life for people with that passion.

Considering costs, flying will be limited to small aircraft now and no human will ever again know the feeling of flying something like a passenger jet... except maybe in the military.

I guess the cockpit will now be the ultra-first class.
 
I'm not climbing aboard a fully autonomous plane with an unmanned cockpit anymore than I'm stepping into a fully autonomous car without some way for me to take control if I feel the need. Crashing automated transportation will surely be how robots start to kill us all.
 
And a pilot will probably not be able to fix a mechanical failure as that is not his area of expertise so replace him with an engineer and good to go.

But a pilot may be able to work their way around the failure and still land the plane safely. Or, if the worst comes to the worst, crash the plane so that it causes the least number of deaths.
 
lmao every flight you take now is practically flow by a computer, and I guess they will never fly because this is where the industry is going regardless of the opinion of a few morons.
Exactly. Modern jets are capable of takeoff and landing on their own
 
That's what flight attendants are for.

And a pilot will probably not be able to fix a mechanical failure as that is not his area of expertise so replace him with an engineer and good to go.

While we may not turn the wrenches, we mitigate problems by following the flight manual--reinforced with thorough systems knowledge. We also exercise judgment when checklists and automation cannot possibly cope- e.g. Sully and countless other issues most of which you never hear about (it's like IT, no one notices when everything appears to be normal).

Besides, who flies the plane when the autopilot fails --The Flight attendant? Or maybe that kid from snakes on a plane movie?
 
A rare exception to a general rule.

An AI would consider the low probability of such an occurrence and consider the loss a loss. Machines won't ever 'do all they can' to save a life, let alone many, because it doesn't think like it has a life. It'll just follow paths of predetermined logical rules and if that means the loss of an entire plane then it will do it so long as it's estimated casualties is accurate for it to make that decision.
 
That's what flight attendants are for.

And a pilot will probably not be able to fix a mechanical failure as that is not his area of expertise so replace him with an engineer and good to go.

I think he meant mechanical failure in that, figure out how to circumvent the issue until you can land. Until every possibility is in AI it won't happen, at least not those things.

What I would do is have an on-call pilot run it remotely, won't be as good as someone onsite but better than nothing. You can also get rid of turbulence by building the seats onto big shocks, like the magnetorheological style. That would be nice =P
 
Exactly. Modern jets are capable of takeoff and landing on their own

Not really. It's not worth my finger typing on an ipad to point out all the fallacies inherent in that statement. At a real keyboard, i'd be happy to.
 
I don't think the computer can handle every failure + weather problem, no matter how advanced it is.
I still want a pilot in the cockpit in case things go south.
 
4 out of 5 brave people who fly in a fully automated aircraft will piss their pants.
 
An AI would consider the low probability of such an occurrence and consider the loss a loss. Machines won't ever 'do all they can' to save a life, let alone many, because it doesn't think like it has a life. It'll just follow paths of predetermined logical rules and if that means the loss of an entire plane then it will do it so long as it's estimated casualties is accurate for it to make that decision.
That simply isn't accurate, at all, and shows you probably have a phobia to be worried about.
 
I'm not saying that I won't ever fly on a fully automated aircraft, but I will definitely give the tech a few years to mature. And do you guys really think that a totally automatic flight system could pull off what Capt. Chesley Sullenberger did? I don't. But, on the flip side, a fully automated system would cut back a lot on aircrew error.
 
If you really think modern airline travel is already automated, you are very wrong. There are autopilots and data links...that is NOT the same.

I agree.

I really hate when this argument is presented when people write arguments in support of automated cars. Airplanes only travel from point A to point B on a path generally following a portion of a great circle and without hundreds or thousands of other airplanes flying right in front, right behind, or right next to them during that time. So, yes, autopilot on a plane once it reaches cruising altitude makes perfect sense whereas a car on total autopilot on an LA freeway is a recipe for disaster.
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/world/europe/air-france-flight-447-crash-report-july-2011.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...6ffb874a18d_story.html?utm_term=.8cab6733c231

Humans aren't much use when autopilot fails since it could be ages since they last did anything manually. These are pilots with plenty of experience but they surely don't train they way they did when they came out of their military careers in commercial flight.

Maybe they should just have drone pilots whose jobs are to train/fly constantly (in low risk conditions such as mixed simulator and remote control of actual unmanned training aircraft) and then take over when an actual autopilot failure occurs. With ipad toting pilots, it's like homer simpson running the nuclear plant but IRL.
 
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I would feel safer with an ai that knows every inch of that plane and can calculate all possible scenarios then a tried over worked pilot
 
In some circumstances, pilots do save lives after a mechanical issue or a bird strike. However, it is estimated that 80 percent of accidents are caused by pilot error.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20130521-how-human-error-can-cause-a-plane-crash

If only 20 percent of accidents are caused by mechanical/weather/external issues, we might actually come out ahead even if we assume that a human pilot is always successful in that 20 percent situation and autopilot always fails. In reality not every pilot is a Sully and I would guess that autopilot might not always fail in an emergency situation. Just a few weeks back an Air Canada flight almost landed on two planes because the pilots aimed for the taxiway and not the runway.
 
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Maybe they can use automated planes to transport the robots that will go work in the new Foxconn factory in Wisconsin.
 
For me, riding in a completely automated vehicle at our current tech level is like following your car gps, except if it screws up, errors, experiences interference, or anything like that instead of being lost and/or confused you are dead, and possibly responsible for others deaths.
 
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For me, riding in a completely automated vehicle at our current tech level is like following your car gps, except if it screws up, errors, experiences interference, or anything like that instead of being lost and/or confused you are dead, and possibly responsible for others deaths.

A big part of that decision, rightly so, is that one GPS application was written by a bunch of tweeners building an app QA'ed by another team more concerned about ad monetization and look and feel versus one built to satisfy aerospace sticklers that fly a team of FAA experts to halt your business for months, notify all your customers, and take apart your baby every single time there is a mistake. Compared to risks of driving and taking responsibility for your own fate, the numbers are still on the side of air travel and all the automation involved. I just wish the government cared that much about auto safety.
 
I get nervous riding on the driver-less trains that shuttle people at airports between distant locations. No way I am going to be on an aircraft.

Aircrafts are flown by computers about 98% of the way as it is already. It's got to a point as where pilots are struggling to have enough 'hands on stick' time to keep their flight verifications despite working full hours on commercial flights. Also no modern jetliner does anything without a computer anymore. The pilots stick inputs are just suggestions to the flight computer on what to do. The newest planes will even stop the pilot from doing excessive movements that would endanger the plane for example.

Most accidents happen because the pilots disengage the automation and give wrong inputs in confusion. Of course sometimes a problem may disengage the autopilot by design but that should obviously never happen in a fully autonomous airplane lol.
 
For me, riding in a completely automated vehicle at our current tech level is like following your car gps, except if it screws up, errors, experiences interference, or anything like that instead of being lost and/or confused you are dead, and possibly responsible for others deaths.

The average human driver makes more errors compared to a self driving current car. If all cars would be networked (aware of eachothers locations, speed and intentions) the current rate of accidents could be dropped to a small fraction. Only equipment failure would then lead to accidents.
 
BBC article about this said that some 70% of flight incidents were caused by pilot error, and some 20% of those were because of pilot exhaustion. Aircraft flight is already hugely automated.

In addition, every rocket shot into space is being controlled by computers. SpaceX and BlueOrigin are returning boosters, automated to Earth. If a rocket can be launched to space and returned safely to earth with automation, I think a plane's flight can be fully automated.

ex.flyfag here
It's 80% of all crashes are directly attributable to human error, be it engineering, mechanical, pilot (most common).
I for one welcome our robot overlords and am even more glad I didn't get into the industry 5-6 years ago. I always said it's nothing more than a glorified bus driver, going 1000kmh at 30kft. So much of it is done on autopilot these days it's not even really flying. You're managing the energy systems on the plane more than anything else.
 
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