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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 09 2017, @01:33PM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 09 2017, @05:55PM (6 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday August 09 2017, @05:55PM (#551219)

    True, and some day there will be people who put their actual wealth and freedom on the line by putting products into the marketplace that may jeopardize others (see: the Chinese industrialist who committed suicide after realizing what he had done by putting lead into children's toy paint)

    However, until that time what we have is the free market, caveat emptor, regulations strangle progress so just get rid of them all. It's this dysfunctional model that TFA indicates is costing us an additional $35 per passenger per trip for the costs of training, paying, and carrying airline pilots.

    We _could_ trust a group of engineers to get autopilots and automated air traffic control right, if we _would_ make their employers (and, by proxy, themselves) liable for damages caused by screwups - not just $10K/death settlements, but actual damages for loss caused by deaths and injuries attributable to design, implementation and maintenance flaws. The processes for development and validation of reliable systems exist, they're more costly than "ship it, ship it, ship it yesterday," but at today's level of technology, an automated system _could_ be safer.

    Instead, we put our faith and trust into the hands of a couple of aging, alcoholic philanderers (no, doesn't apply to all or even most pilots, but the stereotypes aren't based on nothing...); because we figure they want to live as much as we do. Unfortunately, that's not always the case: http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=82910&page=1 [go.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 09 2017, @08:43PM (5 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 09 2017, @08:43PM (#551288)

    Instead, we put our faith and trust into the hands of a couple of aging, alcoholic philanderers

    You talking about pilots, electrical engineers, programmers, priests, politicians, business execs, soylent news posters, or all of the above?

    Just sayin you might end up with the "same people" merely took slightly different life paths. You're not gonna get superman merely because you fire all the ATP cert holders...

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:10PM (4 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:10PM (#551299)

      I (meaning, my prejudices) would say that airline pilots have more alcoholics and philanderers per-capita than all the other groups, far more than engineers, programmers, and by extension of those: soylent news posters. However, it's far more important for the role of airline pilot to be mentally sharp and un-distracted. Sully took something like 30 seconds to make his decision and ditch in the river, and he did that by short-cutting the trained procedures and making some snap judgements. The monday morning quarterbacks landed his plane at a couple of airports, but only by making absolute snap judgements that would have been considered rash and reckless had anything gone wrong, things they would never have had time to think through or foresee.

      My point being: engineers, programmers, business execs, and anyone else involved in the development of an auto-pilot, auto-ATC system (priests?) can have fuzzier thinking, slower reaction times, bigger distractions, and still make a solid, more reliable than humans, system because they can use processes to check, recheck, and constantly monitor the end product performance.

      The trick is in getting the business execs to sign up for the liability of truly getting it right, and they're all too drunk and distracted with their affairs to bother with that noise: business as usual is good, why change it?

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      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:51AM (1 child)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 10 2017, @11:51AM (#551571)

        can have fuzzier thinking, slower reaction times, bigger distractions, and still make a solid

        There are scalability issues in that what you're asking for is pretty common, look at combat infantrymen who live thru a war... and you only need 1 in 100K or so to become pilots so it shouldn't be hard to find them. There's a lot of dangerous "instant reaction" blue collar jobs where its amazing anyone lives thru it, but they certainly do.

        would say that airline pilots have more alcoholics and philanderers per-capita than all the other groups,

        Eh I donno about that, but assuming thats correct, there is a minor detail that you're talking about functional, not-unemployed former airline pilots, so there's also the unique skillset of being a functioning addict which is much harder than being a non-functioning addict, so they have a certain skill at keeping just barely out of trouble which might translate surprisingly well to flying. Flying being throwing yourself at the ground while avoiding hitting it, or whatever.

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 10 2017, @12:42PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday August 10 2017, @12:42PM (#551596)

          Scalability is what corrective and preventative action loops and all that other design control quality crap is about.

          I call crap because regulations are forcing it on classes of systems which contain small simple products that don't significantly benefit from the processes. As you scale up the complexity and level of concern, those processes ensure high reliability - at a cost, but it's an up-front design time cost instead of a post-accident litigation and reparations cost.

          Yes, it's more efficient to pull ex-military pilots into commercial service and hope for the best, up to a point. We probably passed that point in the mid 1990s.

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      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday August 10 2017, @02:08PM (1 child)

        by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday August 10 2017, @02:08PM (#551628) Journal

        I (meaning, my prejudices) would say that airline pilots have more alcoholics and philanderers per-capita than all the other groups, far more than engineers, programmers, and by extension of those: soylent news posters.

        ...because if you want to travel around the world meeting strange women in exotic bars, and you aren't interested in spending time at home with the family, airline pilot seems like a pretty good fit for that lifestyle. If we replace the pilots with sysadmins, do you really think we won't end up with sysadmins doing the same things?

        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 10 2017, @03:59PM

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday August 10 2017, @03:59PM (#551690)

          If we replace the pilots with sysadmins, do you really think we won't end up with sysadmins doing the same things?

          Nope, except that if we replace pilots with sysadmins, the sysadmins won't be spending all their time in airport lounges and travelling the world - they'll be running things from home.

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