Pilotless Passenger Planes Might Soon Become A Reality.

[Cult]

Humans are becoming obsolete very fast.

[blumangroup]

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

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

[username18333]

[Biological sentient beings] are becoming obsolete very fast.

Your conclusion cannot be meaningfully substantiated until an abiological agency can both intelligently “discuss” ontology and “know that it knows . . . that it knows that it is doing so.”

[vrm86]

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

[Aggressor66]

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

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.

[Webnet]

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

[--Encrypted--]

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

This sad story doesn't mean we are closer to introducing such planes. It's enough to introduce some safety measures: not allow one of the pilots to stay alone in the cockpit, add a safety mechanism that doesn't allow to override the lock from the inside and make the doctors send all reports to the airline at once.

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).

[Spendulus]

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

This sad story doesn't mean we are closer to introducing such planes. It's enough to introduce some safety measures: not allow one of the pilots to stay alone in the cockpit, add a safety mechanism that doesn't allow to override the lock from the inside and make the doctors send all reports to the airline at once.

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.

[Publicx]

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. 

[Spendulus]

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.

[Wilikon]

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

[Snail2]

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

[carlosiness]

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)

[ObscureBean]

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. 

[thejaytiesto]

source: 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?

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.

[Wilikon]

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)

[Krantle]

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 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 ...

[Artemis3]

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.

[squatz1]

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.

[Smartvirus]

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.