No need for pilots anymore soon. In MSFS or Real.

[pmplayer 8,520]

If we don`t need Pilots anymore in MSFS i give up Flightsimming, and that`s for shure..

cheers 😉

[WestAir 2,434]

7 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

From an ops point of view.. 

 

No standby /airport reserves needed 

No hotels required 

No wake up calls required 

No crew buses needed

No going fatigue at weekends 

No going sick at weekends 

No crew rest/bunks needed

No crew food needed 

No FTL table /max fdp/ discretion / min rest

No Sims needed lpc/opc/lofts 

No tre/tri's needed 

No groundschool or annual line checks. 

No unions 

No gendecs 

No roster swaps or bidding 

No staff needed in crewing  / rostering / training delivery / pilot managers / crew dispatch / hotac  

The list is endless.   It would save airlines millions and millions to get rid of drivers. 

 

 

 

And then they automate ops. And then dispatch. MX. 

And one day we wake up and every company has one employee: The CEO. But it doesn't matter how much he's paid, because 99.9% of people are unemployed, and his money has lost meaning, because the economy doesn't run on Linux.

I believe this is an issue we will have to tackle in our lifetime. There's nothing a human can do that a machine eventually cannot.

[ailchim 204]

I once saw an interview with an airline pilot.  He was asked if he felt a heavy responsibility for the passengers his flights carried.  He said that didn't concern him at all, in fact he never thought about it.  His one and only concern was not killing himself.  

That's the best recommendation for human pilots you can get I think.

 

[Lord Farringdon 439]

Its an interesting subject. I'm torn between embracing technology (if there is a good safety reason to do so), and being a dyed in the wool Luddite!

Is there a good safety reason to do this? In a very broad view I would say, yes. Technological improvement in aircraft and aerospace systems (if we leave the MAX debacle aside for one moment), have without doubt decreased fatal accidents making flying safer and safer for the most part. Where accidents do happen, it has often been attributed to human error somewhere along the safety chain, And of course events like MH370, German Wings (and I think there as one in China recently too) would never happen in an autonomous world. I'm not saying autonomously controlled flights would prevent all accidents but I think it would reduce the number of fatal accidents overall.

But that's a broad view. Putting on my Luddite hat, humans do make mistakes but we are also smarter than AI. We have the ability to apply nuance to complex situations where a program written for a specific situation can't deal with the grey unpredictable outcomes of the real situation. I feel Miracle on the Hudson or even the Gimli glider event were non -fatal accidents that might have involved significant fatalities had AI been in charge! This is because both required 'the right stuff', to ditch or land the aircraft successfully and AI would simply not have been able to fly the airplane outside the parameters it had been programmed for. For example, I can't imagine them ever programming AI to excessively sideslip a large airliner on short finals to wash off speed.

Finally, would AI have avoided the Lion and Ethiopian B737 MAX accidents? Well, since it would require a human to predict the unknown and program the AI accordingly, I suspect not.  In contrast, a number of Southwest pilots who experienced the same issue did get their aircraft back on the ground again despite not being aware that the aircrafts software was menacingly close to killing them.  

In the end, there will be deaths with autonomously operated aircraft.  I don't think that can ever be avoided. For the airlines and National certifiers they will simply balance the number of deaths against the economics and so long as fatalities aren't worse after autonomy has been put in place, they will just coldly spin the stats at each accident presser. 

   

 

 

 

[polosim 676]

This thread brought this news to my mind.
 

Ryanair boss aims to axe 'unnecessary' co-pilot.

Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary will seek permission from aviation authorities to have just one pilot on shorter flights.

 

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ryanair-boss-i-want-only-one-pilot-in-the-cockpit

 

[HiFlyer 9,082]

 

Edited August 18 by HiFlyer

[Stearmandriver 1,865]

9 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

From an ops point of view.. 

 

No standby /airport reserves needed 

No hotels required 

No wake up calls required 

No crew buses needed

No going fatigue at weekends 

No going sick at weekends 

No crew rest/bunks needed

No crew food needed 

No FTL table /max fdp/ discretion / min rest

No Sims needed lpc/opc/lofts 

No tre/tri's needed 

No groundschool or annual line checks. 

No unions 

No gendecs 

No roster swaps or bidding 

No staff needed in crewing  / rostering / training delivery / pilot managers / crew dispatch / hotac  

The list is endless.   It would save airlines millions and millions to get rid of drivers. 

 

 

 

The final statement IS true, but weigh it against the average cost of a fatal accident... Which is Billions, with a B.  For one accident, by the time the lawyers are done.

[g-liner 247]

9 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

From an ops point of view.. 

 

No standby /airport reserves needed 

No hotels required 

No wake up calls required 

No crew buses needed

No going fatigue at weekends 

No going sick at weekends 

No crew rest/bunks needed

No crew food needed 

No FTL table /max fdp/ discretion / min rest

No Sims needed lpc/opc/lofts 

No tre/tri's needed 

No groundschool or annual line checks. 

No unions 

No gendecs 

No roster swaps or bidding 

No staff needed in crewing  / rostering / training delivery / pilot managers / crew dispatch / hotac  

The list is endless.   It would save airlines millions and millions to get rid of drivers. 

 

 

 

Sure but is it safer?

Or even safe enough?

Your profile has photos of the 787

Perhaps you were lucky enough to operate this aircraft when it first went into service? The public didn’t hear about half the issues we pilots had to deal with and the amount of circulars coming out that pilots have to deal with still is considerable.

 

There’s no way I’d trust any state of the art fully automated aircraft for the foreseeable future anyway. 
 

Not because I’d be worried about my job but because I’ve seen how glitchy automation is and how pilots tend to end up finding out what’s wrong with these new types and discover these issues the programmers missed. 

That’s before we look at all the components now failing due to similar cost saving spreadsheet design thinking.

Boeing have had their fingers burned with the 787 and with the max due to pushing cost saving over safety. Hopefully the industry has learned some lessons from this and isn’t just looking at what’s the cheapest way to make and train for and operate an aircraft. 

 

Edited August 18 by g-liner

[g-liner 247]

15 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

The final statement IS true, but weigh it against the average cost of a fatal accident... Which is Billions, with a B.  For one accident, by the time the lawyers are done.

So the final statement might not be true?

 

It would only save millions and millions if it led to less crashes and if less people didn’t want to fly due to worries about safety. 
 

Thankfully it’s a long way away yet. 
 

The development times of new aircraft types and the limitations with this technology plus the public perception of it mean we won’t see fully automated passenger aircraft for decades. 

[Snuffleupagus 316]

As said before, it’ll only be inevitable if we allow it. Which honestly, it seems to me like the majority of people these days are too lazy to care about anything or at least do anything other than complain. Just sit back and let others dictate how our jobs go, our lives work, etc. while the CEO’s get richer and unemployment stays up. How many thing will everyone let be taken from them just because it’s “inconvenient” to do something? Where do we draw the line? There is a place for AI, but a cockpit is not that place. AI is suppose to HELP us, not replace us.  

[Garys 203]

28 minutes ago, g-liner said:

That’s before we look at all the components now failing due to similar cost saving spreadsheet design thinking.

What components are failing exactly?

[Garys 203]

11 minutes ago, Hatch76 said:

There is a place for AI, but a cockpit is not that place. AI is suppose to HELP us, not replace us.  

I agree. Ai is not the answer. Automated systems designed for pilotless flying is though. The only reason this is a debate is becaue aircraft manuafactures have to design aircraft systems for pilots. If pilots were out of the equasion right from the beginning of aircraft design and manufacturing, not only would it be safer, ( over 90% of fatal accidents are pilot error) it would far cheaper for airlines to operate and consequently for us to travel.

[g-liner 247]

13 minutes ago, Garys said:

What components are failing exactly?

Im not naming them on a public forum but if you operate or work on a 787 you’ll be familiar with them.

[Garys 203]

11 minutes ago, g-liner said:

Im not naming them on a public forum but if you operate or work on a 787 you’ll be familiar with them.

Raising components failures on a public forum but not going into any details has a little bit of unnecessary fear mongering behind it, especially considering the millions of miles flown across the globe since lauch.

Edited August 18 by Garys

[g-liner 247]

5 minutes ago, Garys said:

Raising components failures on a public forum but not going into any details has a little bit of unnessary fear mongering behind it, especially considering the millions of miles flown across the globe since lauch.

No need to be afraid! The pilots and engineers have found (and will continue to find) them mitigated and fixed them.

 

Thats why we’re better and cheaper than automation and thinking where pilots are viewed as a potential cost saving on a spreadsheet. 

Edited August 18 by g-liner