Newsstand - The Infernal Fantasy of Pilot-less Planes

This week's Ask the Pilot article on Salon.com tackles the always irritating concept of designing commercial aircraft without pilots. This idea is brought up over and over, usually by researchers and engineers, yet rarely do we hear from a pilot's point of view.

Here are some excerpts from the piece...


<<< Even the Economist, an august publication for sure, but notorious for distortions in its aviation coverage, recently did a piece on it. We don’t hear about proposals for doctorless hospitals or for courtrooms with computerized juries. We understand the limitations of such ideas. The challenges of flight are no easier to surmount, yet again and again we’re told how feasible it will soon be to engineer pilots out of the picture. Bollocks.

We get the usual far-fetched predictions from engineers and scientists and professors speculating how within 20 years pilotless planes will be whisking around the globe, guided by onboard electronics and/or remote control. That’s fine, it’s not necessarily a researcher’s job to be realistic or practical. But they are blindly enamored of their silicon wafers, ignoring the boundless, practical contingencies of commercial flight -- things that that no electric box can, now or in the foreseeable future, be wired to appraise. >>>

To read the full article, click here:
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/08/24/askthepilot242/


Entry to Salon is free. (Watch for the “skip this ad” prompt.)

I think pilotless planes have military and other applications where it would be hazardous for the pilot to physically sit in the plane. But personally I don't like the idea of getting on a plane where all the blinky lights aren't watched over by a person in the cockpit that's trained in operating the aircraft when the blinky lights go wrong.

I would venture to say the pilots union and the pilots would be opposed to the idea of pilotl-ess planes. They have had a long difficult journey getting them into the military.

MisterNice

Why is doing something better and cheaper an infernal fantasy :confused:

Why is doing something better and cheaper an infernal fantasy :confused:

Cheaper, yes... better, I'm not sure. If we can develop computers as well integrated and networked as the human brain, than maybe. Until then, you require a person who is trained to think quickly and efficiently in a situation like an on board emergency. So for the interim, I think the pilot is correct, it is a pipe dream until EE's can develop a more brain like system.

How will they program the computer to know when to turn the seatbelt sign on or off? :)

Those Wright fellas will never get their flying machine off the ground.

Yep. Just a bit over 100 years ago, all but a handful of visionary (and/or crazy) souls said man would never fly. Now I can get from MSP to NRT in about 12 hours, and be awfully close to certain when I board that I'll get there safely. Commercial aircraft without pilots will happen; it's just a question of when. Now that isn't to say that we won't have anybody who has the expertise to fly planes. Just that the way planes are flown will someday be very different than it is now.

That Macintosh computer will never be useful for anything but playing "pong." Etc., etc.

From The Observer (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/26/climatechange.sciencenews)

Passengers would be given sleeping pills and stacked horizontally on beds.

If only - I can't sleep on planes and there's only so many films you can watch without getting the urge to disembowel passengers who crowd your cattle pen

Cheaper, yes... better, I'm not sure. If we can develop computers as well integrated and networked as the human brain, than maybe. Until then, you require a person who is trained to think quickly and efficiently in a situation like an on board emergency. So for the interim, I think the pilot is correct, it is a pipe dream until EE's can develop a more brain like system.

Why not have a remote human as backup? Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are not new. As they have many times in aviation, the military is leading the way.