In this article, it says that Today, the U.S. military trains twice as many ground operators for its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as pilots for its military jets. Its UAVs started off by flying surveillance missions, then took on ground attack; now they are being readied to move cargo and evacuate wounded soldiers. And for commericial flight, automation has helped airlines; what started out as 5 pilots is now done to a pilot and co-pilot.
Do we even need those two? Many aviation experts think not. "A pilotless airliner is going to come; it's just a question of when," said James Albaugh, the president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airlines...Some problems have to be fixed first, Fully automated planes can't yet visually identify nearby planes, and as for the remotely piloted ones, the civilian variety can't communicate with ground stations, because they haven't got enough bandwidth.
One factor that's often cited for keeping a pilot in charge is what's known as shared fate. That's the reassurance passengers get from knowing that the human in the cockpit wants to live just as much as they do.
So this may be ancient history in a few years.
The idea of riding in an aircraft without a person qualified to fly it when things go wrong is not going to be an easy sell in my opinion. Imagine that your a passenger at 45,000 feet and there is a electronic malfunction that disconnects the aircraft from the control unit and renders the programmed flight plan inoperative? Without qualified personnel to remedy the situation your in bad shape. I think that shared fate will win in that decision.
ReplyDeleteI like automation to an extent. It really does help the pilot and make things easier, but no having a pilot in the cockpit at all is not a good idea. Sure they work great for the military. Even at that the military doesn't use it for areal combat for a reason. They only use them for assaults on ground targets. transition to air to air, or high intense ground targets. I don't think UAVs will make the transition to air to air, or high intense ground targets. Their would need to be a lot of cameras to see what a pilot sees in the cockpit.
ReplyDeleteRyan Air tried to sell the idea of having only one pilot for shorter flights. The one problem with having an aircraft flying without pilots, outside of dealing with emergencies, would be the much higher cost to insure the flights. Although it might become financially and technologically possible in the future, I don't feel people are ready for Otto (Great picture) to fly the plane just yet.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point about insurance, Gabe. And funny picture on this post. Interesting way to update the topic.
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