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Pilotless Cockpit?

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Skyline said:
Automation,

Even now airliners are mostly flown via automation. On a 5.5 hour flight my hands were on the controls for about 6 minutes. A hand flown ILS is almost an emergency procedure. Soon the pilots will be there only as a back up system. I can't understand Burt Rutans view of the future. The way it stands now two pilots are redundant. One half awake pilot can handle most of it. I would like to see ATC instructions come into the plane via an email like system. The plane alerts the crew to an instruction from ATC and makes the changes through the flight computer and all the crew has to do is give a one word verification to the computer to accept the change. Even emergencies could be handled by the computer. It is almost that way now.

Skyline

"You've Got Mail!!" DOH
 
Skyline said:
Automation,

Even now airliners are mostly flown via automation. On a 5.5 hour flight my hands were on the controls for about 6 minutes. A hand flown ILS is almost an emergency procedure. Soon the pilots will be there only as a back up system. I can't understand Burt Rutans view of the future. The way it stands now two pilots are redundant. One half awake pilot can handle most of it. I would like to see ATC instructions come into the plane via an email like system. The plane alerts the crew to an instruction from ATC and makes the changes through the flight computer and all the crew has to do is give a one word verification to the computer to accept the change. Even emergencies could be handled by the computer. It is almost that way now.

Skyline

Don't take this the wrong way but...

If a hand flown ILS is "almost an emergency procedure" for you then you have no business being PIC of any aircraft under IFR, commercial or otherwise. I truly hope that comment was tounge-in-cheek, but judging from the tenor of the rest of your post it was probably not. As far as one half awake pilot being able to handle most of it, that is absolutely rediculous. I have made plenty of "tired" mistakes when all of the automation aboard my aircraft was engaged. Like any computer, it is SISO... Sh*t in, Sh*t out.

As far as a ground instructions being automatically implemented by a controller on the ground, I hope we do not soon see that come to pass. There is not yet any, nor is there planned to my knowledge, any system that will integrate all of the cues and pieces of information that a pilot uses to make decisions. Many of the cues are extremely subjective and based upon the prior experience of the pilot in question. Some cues border on the sub-concious, such as that little voice that serves as your distant early warning of trouble to come or that seat of the pants feel that the aircraft may or may not be flying quite right. No computer will be able to take all this in. Flying is not a purly mathematical exercise and never will be.

Besides, having instructions issued by someone on the ground makes aircraft operations a video game, not an act of self preservation. The old maxim currently holds true: If my ass gets there, so will the passengers'. Do you really want that to go away?
 
LowlyPropCapt said:
Some cues border on the sub-concious, such as that little voice that serves as your distant early warning of trouble to come or that seat of the pants feel that the aircraft may or may not be flying quite right. No computer will be able to take all this in. Flying is not a purly mathematical exercise and never will be.

Well said! This is what I think the flying public has the misconceptions about. Computers can have trouble shooting and problem solving programs, but nothing can beat a human mind when it comes to uncommon situations/events.
 
One Person Cockpits Will Be Next

Think before we go to "pilotless" cockpits we'll have one person cockpits will be next. It has been brought up before. Even this month's ATW mag has an article talking about Boeing's (probably Airbus too) effort to go to one person "crews". Get the sequencing down to a science and the ability to deviate the one person cockpit will be the place to catch up on some reading. The mystique is almost gone.
 
Skyline said:
I would like to see ATC instructions come into the plane via an email like system. The plane alerts the crew to an instruction from ATC and makes the changes through the flight computer and all the crew has to do is give a one word verification to the computer to accept the change. Even emergencies could be handled by the computer. It is almost that way now.

There is such a system in place... jumpseating across the pacific, noticed that 100 mile out the pilots did an HF radio check (for backup purposes only), took of their earpieces, and from then on all communications were through the FMS. Punch in "request FL350" and the FMS comes back with "350 approved, report reaching". Then the FMS automatically sends the report at 350... this system is already in place. I believe it's a satellite link. I've heard a similar system exists for the Atlantic, but I'm not positive.

As for a single-pilot cockpit... we MAY see that in our lifetime. But right now the level of advanced automation required for that is actually much more expensive than paying another pilot. The military is going with unmanned aerial vehicles, but they have much different reasoning than civilian flights. An unmanned military plane can be build cheaper, since it's not carrying live humans and therefore doesn't need as much redundancy. An unmanned or "one-manned" airliner needs more redundancy, not less.

But the technology certainly does exist. A little birdy told me that a B-2 (for example) can be brought down without crew intervention. The technology is expensive, but worth it to save a two billion dollar aircraft. If you put that technology on a Boeing, I suppose it would be safe to fly it single-pilot.
 
Lowlypropcapt

Lowlypropcapt,

I don't know where you have been lately, but these wonder kids who start with a regional with only a few hundred hours mostly can't fly basic attitude instrument. I worked for a few airlines and the younger ones were great at the automation but take away the flight directer and you were a few minutes away from crashing. This current generation is bypassing all of the jobs where they would have gotten a baseline of hardball instrument skills. Management doesnt care. They want you using the automation, in fact it was required at one of the companies I worked for. I went to a group interview a few years back where 10 of us worked our way through three simulators. These guys were all regional captains on dash 8's and RJ's and by the end only three of us passed. Most of the rest crashed. I was in the sim with a dash 8 captain and an RJ guy. The RJ guy was totally lost and crashed a few miles short of the runway on a simple ILS. And that is why I say that even today hand flying an ILS is an emergency procedure at most airlines.

Skyline
 
Skyline said:
Lowlypropcapt,

I don't know where you have been lately, but these wonder kids who start with a regional with only a few hundred hours mostly can't fly basic attitude instrument. I worked for a few airlines and the younger ones were great at the automation but take away the flight directer and you were a few minutes away from crashing. This current generation is bypassing all of the jobs where they would have gotten a baseline of hardball instrument skills. Management doesnt care. They want you using the automation, in fact it was required at one of the companies I worked for. I went to a group interview a few years back where 10 of us worked our way through three simulators. These guys were all regional captains on dash 8's and RJ's and by the end only three of us passed. Most of the rest crashed. I was in the sim with a dash 8 captain and an RJ guy. The RJ guy was totally lost and crashed a few miles short of the runway on a simple ILS. And that is why I say that even today hand flying an ILS is an emergency procedure at most airlines.

Skyline

We agree on one thing... The instrument skills of the folks in the entry level regional jobs is, by and large, atrocious. I will say however that many of the UND, Perdue and Riddle "Wunderkinder" that I have flown with have caught on rather fast, but it is a very steep learning curve. In the interest if full disclosure, I too am one of them, being an ERAU grad. However, If the what I am seeing on the line is any judge at all there are some serious omissions in all of the collegiate flight programs. I feel I was better prepared, although I did a couple thousand hours of instructing and other flying before anyone let me near an airliner. Even then, it ate my lunch for a while.

I guess I am old fashioned, but the death of basic stick and rudder skills, along with good old common sense is going to get someone killed. Unfortunately I think it will be sooner rather than later. I hope I am wrong.
 
I think it will still be awhile before we see single pilot crews on airliners. I'll start thinking it's closer to reality when I can take a nap, read etc. with a fed in the jumpseat while the other guy flies. I remember being told in college 10 years ago that NDBs would be completely gone soon and that VORs would be gone by the turn of the century. Funny, I just did an approach last week that (gasp) said ADF required. As for pilotless airliners, I don't see it happening in my lifetime. Somebody has to be there to pull and reset breakers when the computer locks up.
 

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