Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by p_l » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #153

p_l wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) the autopilot is actually quite dumb ("keep altitude", "fly on course X", "maintain set speed", "change altitude at rate X / to level Y"), doesn't handle exceptions (in fact, autopilots are designed to disengage in case of exception), and is generally totally blind to environment other than heading, speed, altitude and optionally position (but not, for example, detailed environment on the ground) 2) The latency is…

Modern autopilots can taxi, takeoff, and with a supporting airport, even autoland. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland

Out of those three, the only one actually working anywhere is Autoland, and majority of airports don't support it.

No airport supports autopilot taxi nor takeoff (takeoff is done half-automated at most).

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

#202

Post by philwelch » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

csydas wrote: post #126

TomSwirly wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Automation doesn't need to have The Matrix as the end result; it could be a Star Trek utopia. In some alternate world, perhaps. In the real world, developing AI is costing capitalists a lot of capital, and they fully expect to capitalize on this technology, at the expense of all the rest of us. > That transition is gonna be a hard one though as the habit of personal gain is a tough one to break after living in it f…

I'm not sure why you're taking this as victim blaming. _Everyone_ needs to change, including the corporations and the very society we live in to make it a goal. If it wasn't implicit in my fantasy world, there is no more class difference. Everyone has a very good baseline, like _VERY_ good. Clothing, food, transportation, energy, housing. When this is all taken care of in a great way, what exactly will corporations h…

> If it wasn't implicit in my fantasy world, there is no more class difference.

False. There would only be class difference. Even in Star Trek, some people are starship captains who own French vineyards or luxury apartments in San Francisco while other people can only manage to live in a trailer in the desert, or on marginal planets on the border that are surrendered to the Cardassians, and if those colonists try to declare independence from the Cardassians, Starfleet will literally use weapons of mass destruction to make their homeworlds uninhabitable to human beings.

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

#203

Post by pigtailgirl » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #106

pigtailgirl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-- it will likely still be a human factor - maintenance/mechanical is the second cause after pilot error --

Think it through, get rid of human engineers designing those aircraft, get rid of human mechanics and engineers maintaining them, human pilots flying them and human managers driving all of that. While we are at it, get rid of human passengers, without those there won't be any dead people neither if the machines get it wrong.

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Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

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

#204

Post by CarbonCycles » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #155

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?

As a controls engineer building factory automation, it's about letting humans do human things and robots do robotic things. You don't want to have a human sticking their fingers in a grinder, or handling red-hot castings, or trying to install a washer on a dial table every 2.5 seconds for 8 hours straight, or attending the movement of a sewing machine within 1/8" for literal miles of seams sewn each day... those are…

Adding a bit more context to this good post, the control algorithms are designed and developed around assumptions and an operational envelope deemed to be "normal".

An airplane is much more complicated from a systems perspective (but yet can be more easily automated from an operational POV). To make an airplane fly, there are dozens of control surfaces, very complex mechanical systems, and not to mention a greater degree of danger (i.e., explosions) and loss of life should these systems fail. Yet, when everything "works" within their engineered/designed parameters, we can construct control algorithms around these operational envelopes.

Also, at 10k feet in the air, there are rules that govern flight paths (overseen by controllers); radar and beacons that help keep planes on track; and most importantly much less traffic/congestion (as opposed to a bus or car).

This provides the pilots (and also sailors) the ability to automate their flight at steady-state. This is where it gets interesting. If a plane loses a control surface or a critical system fails, these controls systems will be pushed outside of their operational envelopes, and this is where a human takes over.

It's not a question of "if" but "when" things will fail....

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

#205

Post by closeparen » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #170

closeparen wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason American workers are not exploited is that they can easily get other jobs and would be difficult to replace (but when that’s not the case, they are).

Incorrect, please look up why you have 8 hour work days and other labor laws.

Who is “you”? Software development and most IT related occupations are exempt from overtime. Hardly anyone on HN has an 8 hour workday by law. Ditto for professional, managerial, and administrative - careers that most people would not, in fact, exchange for those with rights.

The law can give a bit of leverage to people who otherwise have none, but I’d wager there are more people who have leverage of their own than whose employers are only restrained from abusing them by law/contract. Especially in a tight labor market like today’s (outside tech).

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

#206

Post by nradov » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 5:03 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #163

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…

You are right that current planes are still pretty dumb. It's an artificial restriction though. Certification in this space is very tough for obvious reasons so there are not a lot of companies working on self flying planes because getting solutions in this space past the certification is going to be a long and expensive process. There are a few though and there have already been unmanned cargo flights. From a techni…

The actual hard part is dealing with emergencies. It's impossible to anticipate and code for every possible failure mode, but an experienced human pilot can sometimes figure out a good solution from first principles. In the famous case of US Airways flight 1549, the pilots intentionally disregarded part of the official checklist and improvised a new procedure on the fly. Would an automated system have performed as well?

The military is willing to accept a certain amount of operational losses in order to accomplish their mission, especially for unmanned aircraft. Tolerance for losses on commercial passenger flights is virtually zero.

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

#207

Post by lern_too_spel » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

soheil wrote: post #191

phkahler wrote: post #164

This makes no sense to me. The cost of having a copilot is one shared by every carrier. Eliminating that does not give one a competitive advantage as all carriers will get a similar cost reduction. It smacks an elitist "fuck employees, we hate having them, it's our money" That's not even considering the safety implications.

Safety implications are total bs, the moment a plane that has one pilot goes down congress will pass a law than requires a minimum of 6 pilots for every plane. So that would be idiotic on the part of airlines to lobby for if they suspected significant additional risks. Also keep in mind buses have one driver and it's just as bad if a bus crashes, but I suppose you don't care since you don't take buses much, talk abou…

Several international airlines still allow smoking in the cabin. Passengers transferring from those flights need to be told what to do.

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

#208

Post by nradov » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

defrost wrote: post #131

TomSwirly wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 control…

You're forgetting, or perhaps unaware, of the extremely high mishap rate with remote UAV operation.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2022/01/31...

Communication lags and sensor fidelity are a huge problem.

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

#209

Post by LeifCarrotson » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 5:26 PM UTC

CarbonCycles wrote: post #204

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a controls engineer building factory automation, it's about letting humans do human things and robots do robotic things. You don't want to have a human sticking their fingers in a grinder, or handling red-hot castings, or trying to install a washer on a dial table every 2.5 seconds for 8 hours straight, or attending the movement of a sewing machine within 1/8" for literal miles of seams sewn each day... those are…

Adding a bit more context to this good post, the control algorithms are designed and developed around assumptions and an operational envelope deemed to be "normal". An airplane is much more complicated from a systems perspective (but yet can be more easily automated from an operational POV). To make an airplane fly, there are dozens of control surfaces, very complex mechanical systems, and not to mention a greater de…

The low-hanging fruit of straight and level flight is, I'd argue, appropriate for automation, but they need to get out of the way when the plane goes outside the normal operating envelope.

Whether these tools are just analog trim tabs that allow the stick to be adjusted so that a stable aircraft basically holds itself in straight-and-level flight, or complex fly-by-wire autopilot algorithms that keep an unstable aircraft in straight-and-level flight, taking the mundane, repetitive, mind-numbing workload of closing the loop between the six-pack of instruments and the sticks for hours on end. A pilot who has been watching the VSI and heading for three hours on a cross-country flight, tediously keeping the plane within 300 feet of its assigned flight level and ensuring that the passengers don't even perceive tiny changes in heading and attitude, or a trucker who has been driving their tractor-trailer cross-country for 60 hours in 7 days, holding an 8.5-foot-wide vehicle between a pair of 12-foot-wide lane lines, and adjusting the throttle up and down hills to keep their speed within a couple MPH of the speed limit, is going to be fatigued and when it comes time to deal with an emergency on landing or a sudden, unexpected brake check from a small car pulling in front of the truck, that fatigue has a cost.

There's a point where cruise control and autopilots can make these tasks safer, allowing pilots to keep ahead of the needs of aircraft, and allowing drivers to keep their eyes scanning the other vehicles, their mirrors, and the road ahead, rather than going back-and-forth between the speedometer and the lane lines. I absolutely acknowledge that there's also a point where this automation gets in the way or causes operators to tune out and be unprepared when asked to take over when the envelope is exceeded. Right-sizing that level of automation is critical!

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

#210

Post by csydas » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #202

csydas wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're taking this as victim blaming. _Everyone_ needs to change, including the corporations and the very society we live in to make it a goal. If it wasn't implicit in my fantasy world, there is no more class difference. Everyone has a very good baseline, like _VERY_ good. Clothing, food, transportation, energy, housing. When this is all taken care of in a great way, what exactly will corporations h…

> If it wasn't implicit in my fantasy world, there is no more class difference. False. There would only be class difference. Even in Star Trek, some people are starship captains who own French vineyards or luxury apartments in San Francisco while other people can only manage to live in a trailer in the desert, or on marginal planets on the border that are surrendered to the Cardassians, and if those colonists try to…

You're absolutely missing the point.

This is _my_ fantasy world, not bound by the history of Star Trek; the show itself in later series got ruined by awful writers who couldn't figure out how to make a sci-fi utopia fun to watch and instead made a faux-military/action drama for no reason. I want no part in that future.

Second, I think you actually miss the point of these episodes; the challenge in the Cardassian border wars and issues was "how does a space utopia exist with a (comically) fascist regime?" Debatably, the actions of the Maquis and other border colonies were persons stuck in a land ownership mindset which is exactly what I think we need to avoid. Data even proved this in the episode with the Sheliak to convince the people of Tau Cygni V that a place is just a place.

I have no idea what you're referring to about a trailer in a desert, but in actual Star Trek, everyone had a home, had food, had a place to live.

Regarding luxury apartments and vineyards, I must ask: why would you care? If you have a spacious and great apartment that meets your absolute every need for you and your family, why would you care if someone has more square meters or a higher floor on a high-rise? In a world where transporters and shuttlecraft and replicators exist, why would you care where your home is located except that it meets your personal vision of a perfect home? You can live in the middle of the alps and have every modern convenience at your fingertips and just enjoy the snow.

As for the vineyard, again, I think you're looking at this from a very current perspective; in a world with replicators and synthehol where only a few specific snobs care about real alcohol versus replicated alcohol, owning a vineyard and manually tending to it likely is just something where everyone goes "right, have fun with that." (Also, Picard didn't own the vineyard, his brother did. I guess in the Picard series he controlled it also? But never watched it)

I really cannot take the comment seriously as I think you both miss the point of the episodes regarding property/land and also are not considering how people might view apartment sizes and such in a world when transportation, knowledge, information, energy costs, food, basically everything is already taken care of. Remember, even humble Scotty thought he was being given an admiral's treatment in TNG when he got a _basic_ quarters for his stay.

Try to imagine that's what your normal life looks like, and then ask yourself how much you would care if someone has a few extra square meters.