FedEx quietly begin single-pilot tests - ATR 42

[Rockie]

Every time we use our judgement and decide on a course of action during normal operations we are anticipating and avoiding potentially unsafe situations that could unfold in many different unpleasant ways. We assess, and re-assess constantly before and during a flight. We have two brains working together to arrive at solutions big and small, yet independently to capture errors and provide back up.

Those two brains are the best and most versatile equipment you could put in any aircraft.

[pilotguy53]

Oh boy, you two are out of touch with reality. Let's chat in 20 years.

[Redneck_pilot86]

Let me expand on that. Pilots now are not significantly better than pilots 20 or 30 years ago were. Technology, on the other hand, is vastly more advanced. There is no reason to think that technology won't continue to improve, and there is no reason to think that pilot abilities will improve any more than they have in the past 50 years.
Long haul airliners will be replaced with low earth orbit rockets - the concept already exists to move between any 2 points on the planet in a few hours. Technology WILL replace us, and it will get to the point that it is acting too fast for real time human input to have any bearing.

[Blowin' In The Wind]

Long haul airliners will be replaced with low earth orbit rockets - the concept already exists to move between any 2 points on the planet in a few hours.

I very much doubt that. It takes an incredible amount of energy to get to LEO - aircraft are much more efficient. Also, space junk in LEO is becoming a huge issue, and has the very real possibility of making space less accessible in the next few decades.

[Rockie]

Oh boy, you two are out of touch with reality. Let's chat in 20 years.

Not out of touch, knowledgeable about what it takes to safely get these aircraft from A to B. In 20 years however they may actually develop not only a true AI that can replace a pilot’s brain, but the public confidence in it to not kill them. Tall order on both but we’ll see.

[complexintentions]

Oh boy, you two are out of touch with reality. Let's chat in 20 years.

Actually I'm just quoting NASA PhD's. Perhaps you're more knowledgeable than them, but I kinda doubt that. "Let's chat in 20 years" is a lame cop-out, trying to sound wise predicting that things will be different sometime in the future. Well, no shit. Just one year ago the world looked a little different than now, hmm?

I've never said aviation or technology won't continue to evolve, of course they will. I was addressing this idea that "pilots are the weakest link". The reality at present is that the most powerful, safest way to operate an aircraft - or pretty much do anything - is the combination of a human brain, or brains, interfacing with the "best" possible technology for that task. And technology is still conceived by human brains: new technology itself may facilitate and accelerate progress, but that doesn't mean it's not an extension of human ingenuity.

Small illustration: everyone moaned when Deep Blue defeated a human grandmaster in chess. That was ages ago. "The end of humanity" people said, machines are "smarter".

Except, no. Now the top chess players in the world are "cyborgs": people or teams of people who combine human intelligence, experience and intuition with an algo's massive computational power as a tool to beat any singular human OR machine.

That combination of human/tech sounds a lot like a modern airline crew to me.

The problem is we have two separate arguments here. If the argument is that piloting aircraft as we know it will change, or even go away, I agree. Whether radical changes in the man/machine interface, more use of predictive AI, removal of one or both from the machine itself, whatever. Of course things will progress.

But the thesis that humans are a net detriment to aviation safety is not borne out by facts whatsoever. Precisely the opposite. And the tech cheerleaders never seem to fill in the missing steps between the current state of tech that doesn't work even close to 100% reliably, and fully autonomous flight, with anything more than vague promises and false equivalencies to smartphones and driverless trains and the like. Perhaps produce an autopilot that doesn't cut out or wander off at random intervals and we may find it easier to believe that vastly more complex pilotless aircraft are the solution and just around the corner.

It's not out of touch to observe that the current eager "cult of tech" seems to blind people to the fact that artificial intelligence is just that - artificial. Technological progress does not extrapolate linearly and it's not an either/or argument. Barriers to adoption of new tech go far beyond the technical limitations. I'm still waiting for the flying car in my driveway we were promised in the 50's.

The biggest difference from human from machine is the machine's lack of self-awareness. But that's not exactly an incremental change, it's a quantum leap and if machines ever do obtain human consciousness, there are bigger things to worry about than losing pilot jobs.

Besides, I think we've depleted natural resources and damaged the planet to the point where the debate is academic anyway.

Anyway I'm going back to ignoring AvCanada, was just bored enough to play this tune one more time. It all reminds me of the joke about hydrogen power - "It's the energy platform of the future - and always will be!"

[ayseven]

I want to clarify that what I think about whether or not two or three, or four pilots is better than one, is not part of this discussion. It is what the freight companies think can work, and still make them money.