91–100 of 154 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were a lot of reports like these that were complete assumption based on the fact that one witness said the airplane had flipped over. It actually hadn't.
O RLY? http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/07/us/plane-crash-main/index.html...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The fact of the matter is that there are no technological barriers to making aircraft completely autonomous, but pilots want the world to remain in denial about this for as long as possible for the sake of their job security. Two words: anomalous conditions. As we both know, pilots aren't needed in the vast majority of commercial flights. The plane is perfectly capable of taking off, navigating, avoiding collisions…
Devil's-advocate: fine, OK, we still need pilots, for the time being. But do they actually need to be on the planes? In the case of two recent crashes (AF447 and this one, assuming pilot error turns out to be the cause as seems likely), it's safe to say that a computer would've easily done a better job than the pilots. Would be interesting to hear Capt. Sullenberger's take on the question.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't find it likely that pilots hand-fly approaches to make a point. Isn't it more likely that this is codified in airline operation instructions? As for completely autonomous, do you seriously think we have the technology available today to make an autopilot handle any conceivable situation without a human being present and ready to take over? (non-IR PP here)
It isn't "just to make a point". It's also to stay proficient, or to make the job less tedious. But whether to hand-fly an approach is always the pilot's discretion (as far as I know -- I'm a just a private pilot so I could be wrong about that). And no, automation can't handle "every conceivable situation", but neither can humans. Furthermore, humans screw up more often than autopilots. Pilot error is currently the s…
In the meantime, the solution to the human factor isn't to eliminate humans, but to improve training (which is already happening after AF447).
I like having human pilots primarily because I'm a programmer and I know how difficult it is to design robust computer systems. There's been one runway overrun and one serious in flight incident with passenger injury due to software design faults. Now try to design a system that makes sense of audio, video and smell in addition to the existing sensors, and not have it fail in some spectacular unforeseen way..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Devil's-advocate: fine, OK, we still need pilots, for the time being. But do they actually need to be on the planes? In the case of two recent crashes (AF447 and this one, assuming pilot error turns out to be the cause as seems likely), it's safe to say that a computer would've easily done a better job than the pilots. Would be interesting to hear Capt. Sullenberger's take on the question.
I guess latency is why they are on the plane.
That wouldn't do anything for patching in pilots for planes in the middle of the pacific, but I wonder how often that would be necessary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, autoland is pretty good. But there are two factors that cause pilots to land manually most of the time: 1) pilots think they are better at handling last-minute unexpected contingencies like wind sheer or bird strikes (and they may well be right about that) and 2) pilots don't want to give the Powers that Be any additional data to suggest that they aren't actually needed to fly a plane at all. The fact of the matt…
> The fact of the matter is that there are no technological barriers to making aircraft completely autonomous, but pilots want the world to remain in denial about this for as long as possible for the sake of their job security. Two words: anomalous conditions. As we both know, pilots aren't needed in the vast majority of commercial flights. The plane is perfectly capable of taking off, navigating, avoiding collisions…
EDIT: Notice that you had to go back 30 years to find your third example of a human pilot saving the day. And automation technology has improved a lot since then.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't "just to make a point". It's also to stay proficient, or to make the job less tedious. But whether to hand-fly an approach is always the pilot's discretion (as far as I know -- I'm a just a private pilot so I could be wrong about that). And no, automation can't handle "every conceivable situation", but neither can humans. Furthermore, humans screw up more often than autopilots. Pilot error is currently the s…
Neither can humans, but humans can handle a lot more situations. We can take into account a lot of information and come up with creative solutions, while current computers will need a set of humans to come up with and program potential scenarios beforehand. I think we'll have computer level AI that will perform better in accidents eventually (AI is improving and our brains are not) but it a long way into the future,…
I can only think of a single example of a "creative" response to an in-flight emergency that actually helped, and that was UA232 in 1989.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The fact of the matter is that there are no technological barriers to making aircraft completely autonomous, but pilots want the world to remain in denial about this for as long as possible for the sake of their job security. Two words: anomalous conditions. As we both know, pilots aren't needed in the vast majority of commercial flights. The plane is perfectly capable of taking off, navigating, avoiding collisions…
Devil's-advocate: fine, OK, we still need pilots, for the time being. But do they actually need to be on the planes? In the case of two recent crashes (AF447 and this one, assuming pilot error turns out to be the cause as seems likely), it's safe to say that a computer would've easily done a better job than the pilots. Would be interesting to hear Capt. Sullenberger's take on the question.
I just find it fascinating how obsessed people seem with getting rid of pilots. You don't often hear the same discussion about train or bus drivers, or doctors for that matter, even though we are just as close to having automated robotic surgery and expert systems have been around for a long time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The fact of the matter is that there are no technological barriers to making aircraft completely autonomous, but pilots want the world to remain in denial about this for as long as possible for the sake of their job security. Two words: anomalous conditions. As we both know, pilots aren't needed in the vast majority of commercial flights. The plane is perfectly capable of taking off, navigating, avoiding collisions…
Devil's-advocate: fine, OK, we still need pilots, for the time being. But do they actually need to be on the planes? In the case of two recent crashes (AF447 and this one, assuming pilot error turns out to be the cause as seems likely), it's safe to say that a computer would've easily done a better job than the pilots. Would be interesting to hear Capt. Sullenberger's take on the question.
On the other hand, if your onboard autopilot is in control of everything, you run the risk of having autopilot bugs causing an accident - indeed, a software issue in the airbus flight protections (which, unlike the autopilot, are always active unless a very severe system failure occurs, and can override the pilot's inputs) has caused an incident that resulted in passenger injuries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72
While none of this is impossible, it's certain to be expensive, heavy, have its fair share of bugs at the start, and by quite difficult to get past the regulators. Not to mention passengers probably won't be very happy being on an unmanned plane, even if the system really was perfect. So it's easier in the end to just put pilots on the plane.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many of those other services are as highly federally regulated as flying an airplane, though? MUNI may suck, but MUNI doesn't need to answer to the feds.
Rail is federally regulated; it's part of why BART and Caltrain and HSR are so screwed up (passenger rail has to conform to some very very high crash standards to operate on the same network as freight rail, unlike in Europe and Asia -- so instead they built BART as a separate network and used essentially custom gauge, trainsets, etc. for everything.) Admittedly the parts of Muni, BART, etc. which are the most screwe…
In recent times I've read some very strange incidents reports with regard to airline pilots.
One plane crashed on landing while coming in to final approach at twice the recommended speed.
Another was coming in for final approach some 500 feet below the allowable height and off the designated flight path.
These are examples of some very basic flying errors.
In years previous pilots had to do many hours in light aircraft, then move on to bigger aircraft and only after decades of flying experience did they make it onto the big jets.
But in todays cut price flying environment I suspect most pilots don’t do that much flying and as such they don’t know as much about flying as they should.
This one is going to be pilot error.