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Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

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Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#131

Post by defrost »

TomSwirly wrote: post #124
defrost wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of the discussion this isn't an entirely ridiculous notion. Here in W.Australia Rio Tinto manage and remote co-pilot otherwise fully automated 100 tonne Haulpak dump trucks (that can easily run over and crush a car or pickup truck) from 1,000 km away. I'm fully in favour of a human pilot and a co-pilot (an advanced trainee even) for short haul flights that don't require shift work for the pilot (eg: long…

Absolutely it's an entirely ridiculous notion. > Here in W.Australia Rio Tinto manage and remote co-pilot otherwise fully automated 100 tonne Haulpak dump trucks (that can easily run over and crush a car or pickup truck) from 1,000 km away. Comparing a truck that goes slowly back and forth on a single, unvarying track which never changes to an airplane is not reasonable. And do you know what happens when those trucks…

You're forgeting, or perhaps unaware, of the many years of remote UAV operation and autopiloting.

Modern aircraft are capable of autonomous flight and large armed drones are able to fly with light supervision switching to tight control as required already (and for some time).

Emergencies such as three way redundant altitude control failing, bird strikes, engine failure, et al are best handled by humans at the controls, sure.

None the less it's both possible and desirable for emergencies such as the humans at the helm having heart attacks or food poisoning to dealt with by remote supervision.

Again, that desirability must be balanced against other security factors.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#132

Post by constantcrying »

josefx wrote: post #82
rysertio wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But would that pilot have to be in the plane to fly it? We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now.

Just look at the MCAS disaster. The only override that wasn't under its control required someone present in the cockpit to basically physically lift the plane using a normally automated control. This illustrates two things: First the design of the software used in commercial airplanes is bat shit insane and second, the fallbacks require that a trained person is physically present on the plane. > We have been using re…

>First the design of the software used in commercial airplanes is bat shit insane

At least in that case. But it isn't normal that you blindly trust a sensor, not even Level D (failure is unimportant and easy to deal with) Software would/should do that. It actually takes a significant effort to put Software into a plane, which only increases with safety requirements.

The chain of failure which needed to happen in this case is enormous. Dozens of people need to have looked at the documentation and nobody cared/figured out this blatant security issue. How can a company like Boeing even operate like that?

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#133

Post by onetokeoverthe »

rysertio wrote: post #68
WalterBright wrote: post #31

All you gotta do is watch a few episodes of "Aviation Disasters" to conclude that the pilot needs a backup - the copilot. After all, when the pilot goes to the potty, who is flying the airplane? The computer? LOL. When something unanticipated goes wrong, the computers are COMPLETELY USELESS because it wasn't programmed to deal with unanticipated problems. Me, I'll pay a bit extra for my flight to have 2 pilots. Pilot…

But would that pilot have to be in the plane to fly it? We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now.

No post body was provided.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#134

Post by blueslurpee »

bobsomers wrote: post #92
noahtallen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing about GA is that it’s just so cost prohibitive. You’re talking tens of thousands of dollars just to get the basic license, and even then it’s not that practically useful (you can’t even fly at night or in weather without an instrument rating). I would love to get my PP, but even in a well-paying field it’s just inaccessible without dedicating a lot more than I’m ready to give.

> you can’t even fly at night or in weather without an instrument rating Minor nit: You can fly at night with a Private Pilot's certificate, but it must be under VFR like all your daytime flying.

This differs in Europe, where some NAA's view night flying as equivalent to IFR.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#135

Post by PaulRobinson »

rysertio wrote: post #68
WalterBright wrote: post #31

All you gotta do is watch a few episodes of "Aviation Disasters" to conclude that the pilot needs a backup - the copilot. After all, when the pilot goes to the potty, who is flying the airplane? The computer? LOL. When something unanticipated goes wrong, the computers are COMPLETELY USELESS because it wasn't programmed to deal with unanticipated problems. Me, I'll pay a bit extra for my flight to have 2 pilots. Pilot…

But would that pilot have to be in the plane to fly it? We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now.

If the civil aviation sector suffered hull losses at the same rate as remote control war drone flying does[0] - even excluding those shot down - the entire industry would be bankrupted within a few years.

Also, this is an attempt to reduce labor costs. They aren't going to put a pilot on the ground as primary or backup - they just want to remove the second pilot from the loop entirely.

We have a list of airliner crashes[1], that once we figure out absolute numbers of total flights likely shows that airliners are much, much safer than remote controlled drones (after excluding shoot downs for latter), but what we don't have is data on how many aircraft landed safely but only because the second pilot was there. I'd want to know:

1. How many times did a pilot immediately intervene for a developing safety issue while the other pilot was asleep, in the toilet, or suffering from a medical incapacitation? A huge amount of work has been done to ensure redundancy of human control in such situations, because many crashes have occurred where this process failed.

2. How many times did a pilot make a mistake that was corrected by a second pilot, and if that correction hadn't been made a safety issue would have developed? There are numerous crashes attributed to pilot error and the second pilot failing to correct that error - a huge amount of work has been done to make sure that can't happen again, because everyone knows pilots regularly make mistakes, often a critical time of the flight from a safety perspective: landing.

3. How many times has an automated system shown better error correction performance that saved an aircraft vs a human being?

Until we have this data, the data we have suggests remote controlled aircraft or removing a pilot has the potential to be one of the most dangerous decisions to happen to civil aviation in the history of the industry.

[0] - https://dronewars.net/drone-crash-database/

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#136

Post by amelius »

teeray wrote: post #21
teeray wrote: post #16

Since we’re going to be talking about automation quite a bit here, I found Sully’s take on automation in the cockpit to be quite relevant: > “I’VE COME across a number of people over the years who think that modern airplanes, with all their technology and automation, can almost fly themselves. That’s simply not true. Automation can lower the workload in some cases. But in other situations, using automation when it is…

I’m going to pull another quote from that section that I think also supports the idea. There are specific cases cited in the book… I just don’t think copying an entire section of a book will be as helpful at getting the ideas out here: > “Dr. Wiener[0] worried, and I agree, that the paradox of automation is that it often lowers a pilot’s workload when that load is already low. And it sometimes increases the workload…

Playing Devil's advocate: but what if technology makes the number of accidents go down statistically?

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#137

Post by ezconnect »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #109
bmitc wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, I don't understand the push of humans to want to replace everything we do with machines. What's the point? What's the end goal? We just sit in a vat of embalming fluid consuming media with a feeding tube while machines whir about? Why can't enough ever be enough for humanity?

Becase if we didn't, there'd be 95% of us still producing food manually and the other 5% would be blacksmiths and other supporting roles for food production. Now, only a tiny percentage of people produce food, and the rest can be community managers on twitter.

Don't forget the influencers.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#138

Post by Spooky23 »

bmitc wrote: post #97
teeray wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to pull another quote from that section that I think also supports the idea. There are specific cases cited in the book… I just don’t think copying an entire section of a book will be as helpful at getting the ideas out here: > “Dr. Wiener[0] worried, and I agree, that the paradox of automation is that it often lowers a pilot’s workload when that load is already low. And it sometimes increases the workload…

In general, I don't understand the push of humans to want to replace everything we do with machines. What's the point? What's the end goal? We just sit in a vat of embalming fluid consuming media with a feeding tube while machines whir about? Why can't enough ever be enough for humanity?

MBA types would remove the wings if they could. It’s all about greed and money.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#139

Post by djtango »

rysertio wrote: post #68
WalterBright wrote: post #31

All you gotta do is watch a few episodes of "Aviation Disasters" to conclude that the pilot needs a backup - the copilot. After all, when the pilot goes to the potty, who is flying the airplane? The computer? LOL. When something unanticipated goes wrong, the computers are COMPLETELY USELESS because it wasn't programmed to deal with unanticipated problems. Me, I'll pay a bit extra for my flight to have 2 pilots. Pilot…

But would that pilot have to be in the plane to fly it? We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now.

As a thought experiment, what would it be like to drive a car with: 10/50/100/200 ms of visual and input latency?

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#140

Post by theCrowing »

polar8 wrote: post #15
imoverclocked wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… and where exactly would this second pilot be? The flight deck remains locked from the inside during flight post-9/11. There are a lot of concerns regarding two pilots, not just failure of one of the pilots but also mal-intent of a single pilot. Eg: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

The other pilot is working from home.

How? The latency would make him an autopilot operator, but he could never take the yoke...
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