Proposals are being looked at to automate aircraft over our skies. Personally, I think the time has come to look at more automation and the circumstances surrounding our airspace use is a nice tightly regulated environment which could very well be the ideal place to implement this.
With a few caveats of course.
After all we have had automated landing systems for a while now and most modern aircraft can take off, fly to their destination and land all while the pilots are chatting up the cabin staff. Pilots like to take control for takeoff and landing but they do not have to and in reality they are only there if something goes wrong that the simplistic controls cannot handle. I don’t see that changing because, unlike some people, I can’t see our IT developers becoming omnipotent any time soon.
When I started in competers [abo £&3% ears ][Corrupted sector] ago I remember reading an article by a guy in the US. In it he was told that next time he was on a plane a message would come over the tannoy saying that this was to be the worlds first fully automated flight and there was no human pilot on board. Knowing what he knew about software, how would he feel?. His reply was that he wouldn’t be bothered at all because if his pupils had written the software it wouldn’t even manage to start the engines. I can’t remember the guys name but he wrote articles that made me think. This one made me think that it is amazing how many people write software that require others to risk their lives but the software writer themselves don’t have any risk beyond a reprimand if it goes wrong. Buggy programs are a norm not an exception regardless of the development methods and many man hours go into testing, code reading and tweaking methodologies to reduce the number of bugs. Very complex programs always have bugs in them. Just look at how many fixes we get for even basic things like word processing.
So, bearing in mind we cannot envisage everything that could happen to flights I don’t see how we would completely automate flights that required no pilots at all. However, having the comms bandwidth we have now and the improvement in software development methodologies we should be able to write software to fully automate aircraft from taxi and takeoff to landing and taxi based on instructions transmitted to the aircraft from Air Traffic Control. We can automate the aircraft to keep certain distances away from other aircraft and fly within clearly defined parameters setting alarms if these are exceeded. Plus we can have a group of pilots sitting at a ATC somewhere who can take control of the aircraft remotely at key moments and in the event of an issue occuring outside the softwares capabilities. This would also enable the software to be simpler and thus tighter and less buggy.
In reality this would mean a plane would be fully automated with human supervision at all stages and with air travel so heavily controlled anyway by remote controllers we could roll it out easily in stages, test aircraft, small carriers, all cargo and, when everyone was happy, phase it into passenger aircraft. Countries without automated landing gear could use the remote pilots.
Sounds good, but why is it being looked at now in the middle of our finanicial woes?
As suspected, it isn’t all sweetness and light. Air travel is already stricly controlled from the ground due to rules and regulations. The only real benefits from replacing the pilots is that they will reduce the costs for the airlines, why would the FAA care about that? and that it will stop nutter pilots and hijacked planes going amok. Now that I can understand. The plan is to control the skies. All under the guise of stopping terrorism I would guess.
Only problem with that though is that there are a million and one private aircraft and smaller transports that fly the skies every day under Visual Flight Rules and with no ATC or government employee knowing anything about them. As well as terrorists we have drug dealers, people smugglers, general smugglers such as tobacco and even people just having fun, the b4$4rd$. All these need to be controlled and this is the best way to do it. Under the guise cloak of terrorism they can automate the skies and then insist every aircraft be fitted with control software and join the ATC group or at the minimum a transponder. Taxes and fees to be paid as required and flying isn’t even a right but a privilege us plebs have if we can afford it.
Oh Joy. Another step towards a Russian utopia.
No humans required
Proposals are being looked at to automate aircraft over our skies. Personally, I think the time has come to look at more automation and the circumstances surrounding our airspace use is a nice tightly regulated environment which could very well be the ideal place to implement this.
With a few caveats of course.
After all we have had automated landing systems for a while now and most modern aircraft can take off, fly to their destination and land all while the pilots are chatting up the cabin staff. Pilots like to take control for takeoff and landing but they do not have to and in reality they are only there if something goes wrong that the simplistic controls cannot handle. I don’t see that changing because, unlike some people, I can’t see our IT developers becoming omnipotent any time soon.
When I started in competers [abo £&3% ears ][Corrupted sector] ago I remember reading an article by a guy in the US. In it he was told that next time he was on a plane a message would come over the tannoy saying that this was to be the worlds first fully automated flight and there was no human pilot on board. Knowing what he knew about software, how would he feel?. His reply was that he wouldn’t be bothered at all because if his pupils had written the software it wouldn’t even manage to start the engines. I can’t remember the guys name but he wrote articles that made me think. This one made me think that it is amazing how many people write software that require others to risk their lives but the software writer themselves don’t have any risk beyond a reprimand if it goes wrong. Buggy programs are a norm not an exception regardless of the development methods and many man hours go into testing, code reading and tweaking methodologies to reduce the number of bugs. Very complex programs always have bugs in them. Just look at how many fixes we get for even basic things like word processing.
So, bearing in mind we cannot envisage everything that could happen to flights I don’t see how we would completely automate flights that required no pilots at all. However, having the comms bandwidth we have now and the improvement in software development methodologies we should be able to write software to fully automate aircraft from taxi and takeoff to landing and taxi based on instructions transmitted to the aircraft from Air Traffic Control. We can automate the aircraft to keep certain distances away from other aircraft and fly within clearly defined parameters setting alarms if these are exceeded. Plus we can have a group of pilots sitting at a ATC somewhere who can take control of the aircraft remotely at key moments and in the event of an issue occuring outside the softwares capabilities. This would also enable the software to be simpler and thus tighter and less buggy.
In reality this would mean a plane would be fully automated with human supervision at all stages and with air travel so heavily controlled anyway by remote controllers we could roll it out easily in stages, test aircraft, small carriers, all cargo and, when everyone was happy, phase it into passenger aircraft. Countries without automated landing gear could use the remote pilots.
Sounds good, but why is it being looked at now in the middle of our finanicial woes?
As suspected, it isn’t all sweetness and light. Air travel is already stricly controlled from the ground due to rules and regulations. The only real benefits from replacing the pilots is that they will reduce the costs for the airlines, why would the FAA care about that? and that it will stop nutter pilots and hijacked planes going amok. Now that I can understand. The plan is to control the skies. All under the guise of stopping terrorism I would guess.
Only problem with that though is that there are a million and one private aircraft and smaller transports that fly the skies every day under Visual Flight Rules and with no ATC or government employee knowing anything about them. As well as terrorists we have drug dealers, people smugglers, general smugglers such as tobacco and even people just having fun, the b4$4rd$. All these need to be controlled and this is the best way to do it. Under the
guisecloak of terrorism they can automate the skies and then insist every aircraft be fitted with control software and join the ATC group or at the minimum a transponder. Taxes and fees to be paid as required and flying isn’t even a right but a privilege us plebs have if we can afford it.Oh Joy. Another step towards a Russian utopia.