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from the queue-the-'Airplane!'-references-in-3,2,1 dept.
Pilotless commercial airliners are about to be tested, but potential passengers are wary:
How comfortable would you feel getting on a pilotless plane? That is the question millions of people may have to ask themselves in the future if they want to jet off on holiday around the world.
As we move closer to a world of driverless cars, which have already been on the road in some US cities and have also been tested in London, remotely controlled planes may be the next automated mode of transport. Plane manufacturer Boeing plans to test them in 2018.
A survey by financial services firm UBS suggests that pilotless aircraft not be too popular, however, with 54% of the 8,000 people questioned saying they would be unlikely to take a pilotless flight. The older age groups were the most resistant with more than half of people aged 45 and above shunning the idea.
Only 17% of those questioned said they would board such a plane, with more young people willing to give them a try and the 25 to 34 age group the most likely to step on board.
[...] Steve Landells, the British Airline Pilots Association's (Balpa) flight safety specialist, said: "We have concerns that in the excitement of this futuristic idea, some may be forgetting the reality of pilotless air travel. Automation in the cockpit is not a new thing - it already supports operations. However, every single day pilots have to intervene when the automatics don't do what they're supposed to. Computers can fail, and often do, and someone is still going to be needed to work that computer."
Fnord666: So how about it soylentils? Would you fly on a pilotless plane?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:48PM (18 children)
I want Sully in the Captain's seat so we ditch safely in the Hudson River.
https://www.wired.com/2010/05/ntsb-makes-recommendations-after-miracle-on-the-hudson-investigation/ [wired.com]
It was no miracle, it was an experienced and skilled pilot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:06PM (13 children)
What makes you think that a sufficiently advanced fully autonomous automatic piloting software would not be able to do a similar emergency landing as the mentioned experienced and skilled pilot, with added bonus of improved precision and safety?
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:22PM (12 children)
The sheer amount of bugs and vulnerabilities seen in software all around us.
A software without bugs is as big an utopia as communism and free market.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 09 2017, @02:34PM (10 children)
Live Bugz:
http://news.aviation-safety.net/2015/03/26/list-of-aircraft-accidents-and-incidents-deliberately-caused-by-pilots/ [aviation-safety.net]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:24PM (6 children)
So less than 15 cases in 45 years with less than 1500 victims
To put it in perspective, care to count the pownage campaigns and the victims of ransomware caused by vulns in 2017?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 09 2017, @04:35PM (5 children)
Victims of ransomware? Zero! [theiet.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 09 2017, @10:15PM (4 children)
If you take "victim" as "dead" then it's true.
If you take "victim" as "paid the ransom or had their files gone" then it is no longer true.
Why the second meaning is still relevant: because they are affected in a way the person who spread the ransomware intended.
Now, translate this into the case of a "plane hijacked during flight by malware": it reads "pay the ransom or you'll be dead in the plane crash". And the "pay the ransom" will be available only if the hacker actually allowed the option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:15AM (3 children)
If you take "victim" as "dead" then it's true.
I'm not convinced. When the UK health system was attacked by the NSA's 'Eternal Blue' exploit, hospitals were affected. I don't think anyone can say for certain that nobody who died during that time would not have been saved had the US government not provided the tools for Wannacry's creators to attack the hospitals.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 10 2017, @09:59PM (2 children)
The link takyon provided in the post I answered claims there were zero deaths due to ransomware attack on UK hospitals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday August 11 2017, @07:33AM (1 child)
They can claim that, but I don't believe that it's possible to know.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 11 2017, @08:01AM
Even assuming that his claim is true, I argued his argumentation is not "translatable" into the "attack on software vulnerabilities of pilot-less planes" situation.
(this letting aside that, even assuming that his claim is true now, there's no warranty that next time people will not die in hospitals held for ransom).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:41AM (2 children)
Facinating list. Half a dozen of them aren't a case of 'rogue pilot' though.
This one:
A FedEx employee was due to be fired and took a jump seat on a flight to San Jose. He was intending to murder the flight crew with hammers and then to use the aircraft for a kamikaze attack on FedEx Headquarters in Memphis. A struggle ensued and two crew members overpowered the man while the first officer maintained control of the plane. (ASN Accident Description)
I wonder that, if that had happened, 9/11 wouldn't have done (as the concept would have actually been known). It also occurs that with fully-automated planes with no onboard controls at all, 9/11 (and any other hijacks) wouldn't have happened. You wouldn't need any security at all either if there's no risk of a plane being used as a weapon.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Thursday August 10 2017, @01:34PM (1 child)
...by someone *inside* the plane, sure.
There was a TV show called The Lone Gunmen years ago -- a spinoff of The X-Files. The pilot episode, which aired in the summer of 2001, was pretty much the reverse of that exact situation. The flight control computers on a commercial airline were hacked remotely (in this case, by rogue government agents intending to blame terrorists and start a war in the middle east), and were being used to override the pilot's controls in an attempt to crash the plane into the World Trade Center. And yes, that aired just a few months before the 9/11 attack...
Which is less likely: someone learning to fly a plane, getting through security, breaking through the cockpit door, and overpowering the flight crew....or someone hacking a computer. Even if these things *aren't* connected to the global Internet (lol, we KNOW someone is gonna do it...) they still have to get the message to the plane, which means radio broadcast, which means it's easily intercepted by anyone nearby. Let's hope the encryption is good (lmao, that contract is going to the lowest bidder...)
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday August 10 2017, @03:06PM
Sure, but it should at least mean an end to the groping to get on a plane.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 09 2017, @03:04PM
+50 insightful
People bitch and moan when their desktop/laptop/phone/whatever shits on them. But - they're willing to trust their lives to software? WTF?!?!?! There's no thinking process taking place here, at all!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 09 2017, @05:37PM (3 children)
Watch the movie - if Sully had been a machine, they could have landed at an airport instead of in the river.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:25PM (2 children)
> Watch the movie - if Sully had been a machine, they could have landed at an airport instead of in the river.
...if Sully had been a machine, *and if the machine knew what the glide performance was with 2-engines out* they could have landed at an airport instead of in the river. But that particular performance spec is not currently available (so would not have been available for programmers either).
No thanks, I'll stick with the NTSB report before I believe anything in a movie.
The Wired article does mention that in simulations the plane could have glided back to an airport, but with no checklist for 2-engine out operation (which should include a table of glide performance), Sully did the right thing. One of the NTSB recommendations is to add this checklist...
"Once the birds and the airplane collided and the accident became inevitable, so many things went right," NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman says in a statement. "This is a great example of the professionalism of the crewmembers, air traffic controllers and emergency responders who all played a role in preserving the safety of everyone aboard."
The report validated Sullenberger's action, saying ditching the plane in the Hudson "provided the highest probability that the accident would be survivable." Several pilots agree.
Schiff and others say there are big differences between dealing with a real emergency and dealing with one recreated in a simulator. Airline pilots regularly train for emergencies in full-motion simulators that do an incredible job recreating the experience of flying a real airliner. But it is difficult to recreate the mental and emotional state pilots experience in an emergency.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday August 10 2017, @08:28AM (1 child)
Why is that data not available? They routinely turn off (or, at least, idle) engines during training flights, surely someone can record the telemetry from those. Engine failure after takeoff is one of the standard test scenarios that you're repeatedly drilled in when you learn to fly.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:19AM
I'm sure the data is available now, and I'm sure that if that exact situation happened next time a computer could have done what Sulley did, possibly better.
However what happens next time there's something that hasn't been dealt with?
But generally for every Sulley there's a Lubitz. In cars it's likely that computers will be safer overall. In planes it's less clear. The obvious thing is to automate cargo only flights in sparse areas to start with.