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source: http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/27/news/companies/pilotless-passenger-planes/index.html (http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/27/news/companies/pilotless-passenger-planes/index.html)

Would you be willing to fly on a plane with no pilot?

The technology exists, even if no airline is currently thinking about trying it.

The tragic Germanwings crash in the Alps this week -- which allegedly was caused deliberately by the copilot -- raises the question: Would it make sense to fly planes without pilots?

Some experts say the answer is yes.

"Planes can already fly themselves," said Mary "Missy" Cummings, a former Air Force pilot, an engineering professor and director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University.

"Pilots only spend 3 minutes per flight flying a plane anyway, and they don't really need to do that," she said. About 80% of plane crashes are caused by human error, she adds.

The U.S. military already flies Global Hawk drones, which are nearly the size of a the widely-used Boeing 737 passenger jets. And military data shows that drone flights crash less often than piloted flights, Cummings said.

But so far businesses working on drones are looking only at non-passenger uses, like making deliveries or taking aerial pictures.


your thoughts? will air travel truly be safer without a pilot?

They've already proved and autopilot can take off, fly a route and land successfully so I see no reason why not.  It might make sense to have a remote override system should a problem arise.

The good thing with machines is they're not affected by emotion unless programmed that way.  The Alps tragedy wouldn't have happened in a pilotless plane.

It makes sense that things will evolve this way.  Driverless cars etc.  Doubt it will happen for years though.

It could be safer, but travelling by plane is usually very safe. I think self-driving cars have a bigger potential for making our lives safer and it will take years to actually get there.

but the plane's system is susceptible to hacking. so the terrorists wouldn't need to convince themselves to get on a plane and crash it if their demands isn't met.
compared to very rare occurrences where a pilot is a suicidal maniac, cyber attacks on the plane's autopilot system is more dangerous and numerous, don't you think?

As a professional with several years experience in Autonomous platforms (mining trucks, drill rigs, aircraft & rail), I can publicly state that the technology already exists for fully autonomous passenger planes and cars. The issue for lack of adoption is two fold, most of which readers of this site would already understand;

1. Government / institutional inability or unwillingness to adapt to the new technology
2. Social / cultural reluctance to knowingly hand over operational transport control to a computer

The irony is that a large percentage of systems are already heavily automated, if not fully, and it is just kept out of the public spotlight. For example, 80% of Sth Korea has a fully automated metro rail network yet US , Australia and UK passengers reject the very same tech for fear of robot drivers. Yet the Chicago airport shuttle train is fully autonomous and runs for about 1.5miles under the tarmacs shuttling passengers between two terminals. Passenger aircraft take off, landing and transits are fully automatable and land better in adverse weather than manned systems as the follow the digital beacons rather than following their 'guts' when the weather gets bad.

Back to the question, will autonomous passenger planes become a reality soon. I believe the answer is yes and a lot sooner than the public will know about. Simply continue the heavy automation root whilst dumbing down pilot / crew training until they basically become a figure head that makes the public feel like a human is in control. A generation after that, the charades ca cease as the cultural adoption catches up with the technology being implemented.

Planes are already computerized to the point that if a hacker hacked into a plane's operating system, there's nothing anyone would be able to do to stop it from doing whatever the hacker wanted. (If not by controlling it directly, then by disabling it, thereby making it uncontrollable.)


Well said. The technology has been around for many years and is only getting better. Unions (protecting people's jobs) are probably the biggest obstacle to automation.

Hourly checks to make sure that planes are flying smoothly and no bases have been taken would be the best. I also personally think that it could be a bad idea through hacking or possible malfunctions or variables. The best would be the ability to still keep pilots on, but at the same time, keep someone who knows the infrastructure of the software to be able to repair anomalies.

Perhaps in the near future airlines will have 3 IT personnel on board, instead of 3 pilots. Pilots are kind of useless against hackers if the controls are computerized. ::)

I think they won't. IMO they won't be able to completely remove us, humans, from the equation. Computers are still vulnerable to malfunction and if they do somebody will have to take over.
Just a few things to consider:
-a computer virus
-hacking
-physical damage to the computer or one of the systems
There's also a number of minor malfunctions that could be repaired during flight by a human. For example I remember reading about a case when they had an electric failure that prevented them from putting the gear down. The pilot managed to land without the gear and saved the plane.

Although humans are prone to errors they also can adjust to the situation.

With respect to computer virus / hacking, people have to be absolutely sure that systems are secure before implementing something like this. (We do have hacking and viruses in the Bitcoin world, but we also have offline storage. :) )
In case of exceptional problems, maybe somebody could provide "remote" assistance. This again opens up the risk of hacking, but as I said, systems have to be completely secure before something like this is implemented.

I believe that with auto pilot the pilots lives are a lot easier, but removing the pilot altogether would be a big deal for everyone including the pilots who would lose there job. It seems like it will be harder and harder to find jobs computers cannot replace in the future!

Yep, flight is already by far the safest mode of transportation. Ignore the scary news anecdotes and note the data.

Agree computers are "intelligent" enough to handle a plane. The problem used to be the sensors. Even the smartest computer turns to clueless rubbish if the sensors providing false data. The good old Byzantine generals problem.

I don't have a problem in general with automated planes and cars, but there must, absolutely be a remote override in them in case something goes wrong, so if there's a hacking as others have said ( Which is extremely likely because there are plans to put all this shit on a huge network which is stupid ) or if there's something in the way etc. that the computers won't be able to see. A basic example is like with sat nav, a route I take had a roundabout but it was recently changed to a traffic junction, so the sat nav was still reading that there was a roundabout there but I could plainly see that the whole system had changed for it. This means that you can't rely on the sat nav anymore obviously for that small portion of the journey and you have to make sure you take the right lanes yourself.

While on a small scale these kind of things aren't a problem, imagine though if you have thousands upon thousands of planes, cars and every other vehicle relying on these systems and suddenly a big portion of road is changed up or a building is put where a road used to be. Unless you can tell me with 100% certainty that these computers can adapt to such situations especially for planes with stuff in the sky then I don't want to hear about "Fully automated" anything.

Like I said, I like the automation, it makes life much easier and when it works, it works very well, but as somebody who deals with computers a lot A.I can't fucking adapt, that's just the honest truth, you put something unexpected in it's way it's completely confounded and that will end up putting peoples' lives in danger.

There's also a variable (and vulnerability in every type of airplane), but I don't want to give anyone ideas as no one really thought of it before.

From the article:


This describes me perfectly. It seems like more of a perception problem, based on the statistics of drone accidents vs. commercial accidents, but I can state unequivocally I will never fly on a pilotless flight. The thought of it just makes me too uncomfortable.

Cummings is an armchair general.  I'm sure she knows it all. 

Personally I'd rather have a pilot discuss issues of flight, one who has perhaps a hundred difficult and dangerous situations they have managed.  Situations in which one error made could lead to a cascade of more serious problems and result in a crash.  A lot of that would be weather related.

In many cases, severe thunderstorms will inhibit or even completely block communication between the aircraft and the ground.  So forget someone on the ground monitoring and ready to take control of the unmanned aircraft.

What about when the pilot catches an error by air traffic control?  For example two airports are close together, and air traffic lines him up for the runway at the wrong airport.  The human would protest, the error would be corrected.  It was previously mentioned that sensor problems can cause computerized systems to go crazy.

Pilots are required to train, over and over, to detect sensor and instrument failures and react correctly.   

The logical error here I think is to assume that because computerized aircraft control systems can operate the plane 98% of the time flawlessly that they can do the other 2%.  That's incorrect, because that other 2% is a thousand times more problematic than the routine.  Think of it as "driverless cars."  Sure you can create a driverless car. 

Let me know when you have a driverless car that you will get in to on on icy winter mountain roads.

Consequently, do you think this was a bad pilot or bad air traffic control?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/13/travel/southwest-plane-wrong-airport/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/13/travel/southwest-plane-wrong-airport/index.html)

I do not know the exact details.  It happens both ways, though.   There is a tendency to think the other guy has taken care of checking something so you don't need to worry about it - in fact the other guy may be thinking you took care of it.

The specific issue here is the pilot's check of the Morse code three or four character identifier of the runway he is lined up on, prior to final approach and touch down.  And that's the "ILS" - those are largely being replaced by the new precision GPS approaches, which do not have the identifier.

Yet there are still issues.   What if an airport has two parallel runways?  Then the instructions would be "12R" or "12L", verbal only.  Repeating back and having confirmation, everything should be okay.  Really?  And it may be at the last moment, say less than a minute before touchdown, that the instruction to switch runway is recieved.

Humans are becoming obsolete very fast.

I would never get on the plane with no pilot how ever good it was or proven to be, the thing that could make me feel safer is if there was a last resort if the plane ever looks like it will be crashing because of lack of pilot then that kicks in a certain altitude. All respect and good luck to anyone that does get on one though :)

Your conclusion cannot be meaningfully substantiated until an abiological agency (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agency#mwEntryData) can both intelligently “discuss” ontology (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ontology#mwEntryData) and “know that it knows . . . that it knows that it is doing so.”

I wonder if anybody would more likely flight pilotless plane after the Lufthansa Airbus story.

Hell no!
Pilots are there to oversee technical errors, nothing matches the human awareness level.
A human pilot onboard would try to prevent a crash just a little harder with his own life at stake.

II don't think I would ever consider boarding a pilotless aircraft. unless its a balloon

the Australians already have a solution to that. the Rule of Two, they call it. when one pilot needs to leave the cockpit, a flight attendant will the jump seat (not the control seats).

Actually, you miss the entire central point, which is essentially a duel between two intelligent adversaries.   Similar to hacking and to virus/combat virus/new virus.

Each attack by the adversary is based on the current rule set.  You would solve yesterday's problem but engender tomorrow's.

Before anyone else posts on this wall I urge you to educate yourself on how an airplane actually works by reading this article.  http://www.askthepilot.com/germanwings-crash/

1. Miss Cummings is wrong.  Airplanes do not fly themselves the pilot's fly the plane. 

2. The pilots want to get home as bad as you do, so do you want a hacked computer or a crazy man in a bunker in colorado springs flying your plane from JFK?  I'd rather have two highly trained individuals.

3. Stop listening to MSNBC or CNN and ask a real pilot about what really goes on up there. 

Good advice but we've had routine robotic aircraft since the 1980s, yes in military applications, not civil. 

But the difference is that we really don't care that much if they crash or wander off, it's just money.  If there are people involved, then a thousand times more reliability and safety is required.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/07/science/planes-without-pilots.html

If I see pilotless cargo planes operating (at least) for a decade without issues then I'd try.

not a big novelty, but yeah, it could be a reality, but a backup pilot should always be in the cockpit (so the same like now - they use autopilot system)

I don't think it would be a good idea to have pilotless passenger planes just yet. Machines are better than humans for the most part but without an AI capable of lateral thinking, I believe humans would still have an edge in some critical situations. 

Google already got fully functional pilotless cars... technology shouldn't never make mistakes, but it doesn't guarantee anything. You remove the human factor prone to mistake, to the tech factor prone to malfunction.

It sounds really cool, but I think there should still be at least one person in case the system crashes. Perhaps due to the fact that the staff of the plane is reduced, then the tickets will become cheaper. It would be cool, then travel would be more accessible. It would also be possible to increase the number of flights per year carried out by the airline company. Perhaps it will be so in the future. It remains only to transfer transfers like Breckenridge airport transportation (https://blueskylimovail.com/breckenridge-airport-shuttle/) to self-driving cars and then it would be ideal. Only now I don't remember that there were SUVs with autopilot, except for the one that Musk introduced. But so far it is not profitable to use it, since it has a relatively small trunk volume and fewer people fit there than in a large SUV. But I can assure you that in the near future this problem will be solved. The main thing is that these machines do not become too smart and do not begin to exterminate people ...

And those that don't fly themselves can also be remote controlled. Or how do you think UAVs work?

The main problem is making sure the sensors don't feed the wrong data. Many accidents have occurred due to this problem, as much as you think a human is nice, certain planes override the human when it thinks the human is in error, when in reality its the other way around.

So after this sensor issue is solved, AI can simply fly the things better. In a way, its similar to autonomous driving of vehicles. Yes, you can have a car drive itself with a single camera, but its so much better and safer when it has several cameras, lidar, etc. Same with planes, in a higher order of magnitude, of course.

The German wings wasn't the only case, there is also that plane in Asia months in mystery, the debt ridden pilot having decided to "suicide". So yeah, humans are great when they don't go crazy. And computers are great when they get good redundant sensors.

If all cars drove themselves, car accidents could be a thing of the past. In fact, traffic lights would no longer be required. A perfect human driving a bus, can suddenly get a heart stroke and make everyone die. I lost a friend that exact way. If the bus drove by itself, such would have never happened.

Of course getting there isn't easy, but not impossible. Human driving and piloting could be a thing of the past, especially for passengers. Even space rockets move by themselves for the most part, humans relegated to mere system operators in case something happens.

To be honest with you, if the co captain was the person that handled all that microphone stuff before takeoff and all that, I doubt many people would even know if the planes they are flying in are pioltless (I guess having a copilot present there doesn't make this so)

I still do think that most regulatory authorities, and REGULAR PEOPLE are going to want a human there with the knowledge of flying a plane in the scenario where something fails. No one is usually a big fan of falling out of the sky in a large box of metal. Just saying.

In my opinion, I don't see a reason why I should fly in a plane without a human pilot. Plans today are very much controlled and monitored from the airport and by the human personnel pilot yet, we still experience some crashes. Most plans has the autopilot feature which is almost same or could be related to the flying planes without pilots being talked about but, it's just not totally reliable be and doesn't seem to make sense, placing human life's totally in the hands of a machine.
No matter how prepared an emergency response might have been programmed on the system, their is a better chance or response in case of emergency with a human brain right behind. Some cases calls for improvising and only the human personnel pilot can better do that.

What must be known is, the biggest obstacle is actually convincing passengers that a pilotless aircraft is truly safe and comfortable for passengers.

innovations that should be developed if one day the aircraft will be controlled without a pilot, but I think it is more suitable for transportation of goods or other purposes and not for transporting passengers. more risks if the aircraft is controlled without a pilot, because it could endanger many lives if there is a system error or bad weather that is able to become a flight obstacle when in the air

Humans make more error than a system does and I guess the system will be used only after they analyse for all the bugs in it so it will be err free system.Maybe now people are not ready to accept it but for sure in future they will be going on it because future is going to be taken over by AI so the use of human power will become less on many sectors which also going to increase the unemployment rate but for company it is going to bring more profits.