Are these guys serious -  Just 1 pilot in the cockpit, others remotely controlling several aircraft ?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boeing-apos-apos-797-apos-121856769.html

Edited May 22, 20197 yr by jcomm

I won't get into the Airbus vs Boeing debate as Boeing's issues are Boeing's to take on for themselves. Shame because I grew up loving the 7-Series Airliners.

My prediction by the time the lawyers, investigators, regulators, policy makers and lawsuits are finished Boeing will be broken up into different companies, just my view. It will never be the same moving forward, goodbye to the golden era of aviation

Edit: You changed your original post and removed Airbus, good idea many don't like the old Airbus vs Boeing debate

Edited May 22, 20197 yr by Matthew Kane

Timing and look of such a move would be terrible. They would remove redundancy of a safety-critical system (the pilot) just as they did with the sensors for the infamous MCAS system. It would mean more systems would be controlled by their software; also not really trust-building right now. Plus, there are regulations for the number of pilots in place. While the number of pilots in a plane is certified for each airplane type individually, I am not aware of any single-pilot airplanes that carry more than 10 passengers. If the FAA would certify such a Boeing airplane with 250-300 passenger it would look really bad, given the certification issues with the 737 MAX.

Especially for the last reason I do not think that Boeing would pursue such a plan. However, I might be wrong. 

Peter

Ummmm... thinking this is a bad idea.

Not going to happen. Not after the Germanwings incident.

If airlines want to save money, then I suggest that they increase ticket prices, and stop misleading people into thinking that flying around the world is a dirt cheap exercise.

Not going to happen anytime soon. Just like the 'pilot-less' cockpit concepts that were floating around in the near past. Apart from the technical and safety reasons for pilots to be up at the pointy end, there are also passenger psychological reasons. Back in my training days, we had a fun little project where we had to research on topics such as single pilot/no pilot concepts. I'll try and post my findings, if I remember where I stored them. It was highly interesting to research and read about.

Technology & safety needs to advance a whole lot more before any of these become the norm in commercial aviation and even then it's a big IF with domestic as well as international regulations & authorities.

In the context of Self driving cars , drones by the thousands flying for the military around the world as it is, with the path forward for fighter aircraft being pilotless to permit greater than 9 G maneuvering its no surprise to see this proposed for commercial aviation , that they would have a human onboard is comforting .

Can a Germanwings situation happen in the future ?,  I would expect the aircrafts software wouldn't permit the deviation from its flightplan , technology is capable of determinations ,  doing more than issuing a terrain warning it would conceivably make course adjustments , even a lowly mazda can do that today . 

As it is airliners mostly fly themselves  , pilots have become system monitors , there is little hands-on Yoke/Stick time during a flight , maybe 1%

 

Best CJ

I rank this about equal to the driverless automobile. Bad idea.

 

Bill W

2 hours ago, Jude Bradley said:

Not going to happen. Not after the Germanwings incident.

Immediately after the germanwings suicide crash, there was a lot of discussion about making aircraft pilotless in order to preclude a suicidal pilot from doing something like that again.

I think I’ve already speculated here previously a concept of operations of using a ground based operator who oversees several flights of single pilot uav pax/cargo aircraft. The technology is available to make the next generation of aircraft totally pilotless. That will most likely be a leap too far. But to get rid of one pilot on an aircraft designed with full uav technology is probably not too far a leap. Planes like that will have essentially three pilots. The automation. The pilot on board. And the ground control. I think it would make flying safer with the added redundancy, increased automation, and reduction of pilot error risk (which causes most accidents).

The recent crisis at boeing with the max will affect this in multiple ways. The loss of confidence in boeing is something which will likely hinder public acceptance of this new concept. However, this crisis is likely exactly the kind of kick in the rear that boeing and the faa needs to get rid of the complacency that had developed and build a safe single pilot aircraft.

2 hours ago, Chuck_Jodry-VJPL said:

In the context of Self driving cars , drones by the thousands flying for the military around the world as it is, with the path forward for fighter aircraft being pilotless to permit greater than 9 G maneuvering its no surprise to see this proposed for commercial aviation , that they would have a human onboard is comforting .

Comforting indeed, I expect the general public will not be ready for reduced/no pilot operations for a long time yet. Once driverless cars have become 'normal' and people think nothing of jumping in one to take them on a lengthy journey (and can sleep on the way), then we may see some acceptance of this but until then, there won't be the trust.

2 hours ago, Chuck_Jodry-VJPL said:

Can a Germanwings situation happen in the future ?

Yes, whenever there are people in charge of a machine (in the ground or air), there is a chance the machine can be deliberately misused, even in the pilotless aircraft scenario, there is still a person in charge, they're just not on the aircraft. If you force the people in charge of said machine to suffer the same fate as the machine then you stand a much better chance of avoiding any unpleasantness.

2 hours ago, Chuck_Jodry-VJPL said:

 I would expect the aircrafts software wouldn't permit the deviation from its flightplan , technology is capable of determinations ,

Which would kill everyone very quickly, there're no end of reasons why the flightpath needs to be changed, weather being the most obvious and having a machine fly you right through it all is a recipe for disaster. The determinations a computer can make are limited and it would require a person to initiate or confirm any deviation taking us straight back to my point above...

2 hours ago, Chuck_Jodry-VJPL said:

doing more than issuing a terrain warning it would conceivably make course adjustments

Of course, the aircraft can be programmed to follow EGPWS warnings/cautions and TCAS RAs can already be automatically flown. That misses the point though, both those systems are last chance saloon, imminent death avoidance manoeuvres, the whole point of the crew is to never get anywhere near either of those by thinking ahead, projecting, planning, briefing, noticing and anticipating, a computer doesn't really do any of those, at best, they pattern match. I'm sure, in time, they'll find ways of doing this but right now, as the self driving cars are proving, they're a long way off.

There's also the whole concept of the MEL, at the moment the MEL is quite thick and we can go with quite a few defects, as humans, it's not a big deal to operate around them. Computers can't really do that, especially if the failure occurs in the air, how does it cope with complete electrical failures, subtle, insidious airspeed indication failures, dual engine failures or the ultimate biggie in the pilotless scenario... communications failure.

3 hours ago, Chuck_Jodry-VJPL said:

As it is airliners mostly fly themselves

Airliners fly themselves in the same way email's send themselves, that doesn't mean that anyone who sends emails in their job is just 'monitoring'. The email still needs addressing and composing to have the necessary effect, the same is true of flying. With a job title like 'pilot' there is this assumption that all we do is 'fly' the plane (and, indeed, there's nothing else to it), that's a very small part of the job. Flying a plane straight and level for 9 hours is not hard but would be unnecessarily draining. The autopilot is much like an email client in that it manages the minutia of the job, allowing the crew to concentrate on the bigger picture (clearances, route checking/changing, altitude, contingencies, weather avoidance, etc).

Imagine if, for every email you had to send, you had to write the SMTP header, put together the whole message, break it down into IP sized chunks, create the checksums, do the DNS and ARP lookups, initiate the TCP connection (including all the security layers), log on to your email server before sending each packet individually. It's all possible but it's a big fat waste of your time, you're not being paid to do that, you're just trying to send an email. Given that you don't do all that, do you feel like you're somehow shirking in your job?

The airline pilot's job is to operate the aircraft in a safe and orderly manner, if that's best done with an autopilot, that's what you should do, there's no 'ace of the base' or style awards in commercial flying. Obviously, when conditions allow, doing some extra manual handling practise is a good idea but the most difficult and important bit we tend to do manually 99% of the time anyway so flying the odd approach or departure is not going to make a massive difference. If you're not happy with your pilotage skills then jump back in the sim and get some proper practise in.

3 hours ago, Chuck_Jodry-VJPL said:

there is little hands-on Yoke/Stick time during a flight , maybe 1%

For all the 1% of flying we do, it's nearly all below 1000ft above the ground, i.e. the most dangerous bit and the bit that requires the  most skill, judgement and experience. Just because we choose not to spend our time flying straight and level doesn't mean we're lazy or incompetent or somehow not doing our job as pilots.

Sorry to pick on your message Chuck but you mentioned a couple of standard airline pilot bashing themes that simply aren't true.

I can't see this happening in my lifetime, maybe my kids will see reduced crew operations but I doubt they'll see completely pilotless commercial passenger aircraft either... having said that, it will happen eventually.

 

In order to save money it would be better if rather than airline managers trying to reduce the number of pilots they instead reduced the number of airline managers.

this  is  where   Bryan's  fs2crew  will  come  in handy😀

Edited May 23, 20197 yr by pete_auau

On 5/23/2019 at 10:46 AM, jon b said:

In order to save money it would be better if rather than airline managers trying to reduce the number of pilots they instead reduced the number of airline managers.

I agree ;--)

On 5/22/2019 at 6:55 AM, Jude Bradley said:

Not going to happen. Not after the Germanwings incident.

+1