Like crewless, zero crew. There isn’t even any flight attendants.
Pilots are just an AI Autopilot and flight attendants are all just robots.
Absolutely not. The semblance of authority from the crew prevents the worst people from showing their true selves. I would just expect the worse from my fellow travelers and would rather not have to deal with them.
I trust autopilot more than a human pilot. This shit has been around and perfected over several decades. It’s not “AI.” Though I may want to take over for landing. I trust myself to be able to land a plane. All those years playing flight sims has to account for something, right?
Autopilot is great, auto landing is great. Humans are needed for decisions and planning, adaptability, handling unexpected circumstances, and are worth every penny
My hot take is that we get full automated commercial plane before single pilot.
Single pilot means that there is no way to avoid an air Berlin like mass murder (and being locked alone in a cockpit doesn’t sounds great for mental health). No pilot means less risk to have such a scenario
Sure we need risk analysis (accident caused by humans versus humans preventing accident) and most likely newer ATC protocols, and some upgrade in equipments, but I doubt there it a major obstacle.
Damn that is hot.
This is going to be an unpopular take but as someone who went to school to fix jets and now deals with primarily UAV tech this is going to happen whether you like it or not. I’m not going to say it would be safer with our current tech but it is going to be safer. I totally understand why people are hesitant but we aren’t as far away from this as most people think.
If there’s no crew there’s nobody to stop me from assuming manual control so yes I would.
HELL NO
Ha, fuck no. Airlines already treat pilots like shit and overwork the younger less experienced pilots that fly most of our regional smaller flights. Given their maintenance issues lately, how do you think this pans out? No way in hell am I going to let a machine have 100% control. It would never be able to handle the quick thinking, problem solving, and gut decisions that pilots leverage to bring things in safely when there are problems. Planes already are largely automated, but I’m not sure a regulatory agency would ever be comfortable removing pilots from the cockpit. The day they do is the end of my flying days.
It’s coming. You won’t be able to stop it.
The thing is they aren’t going to jump to this quickly. The first thing you’ll see are single pilot ops, largely augmented with automation.
Once that is proven they will reduce responsibilities for the single crew until the plane is fully automated.
Once the fully automated flight is trusted and proven they will remove the single pilot.
This will take decades.
Then they’ll have a robot in the cockpit with googly eyes so kids like it, just like those robots at the grocery store.
Once that is proven they will reduce responsibilities for the single crew until the plane is fully automated.
Once the fully automated flight is trusted and proven they will remove the single pilot.
There’s a middle step isn’t there? Where there are real human pilots that are sitting at a remote location on the ground somewhere doing the actual flying. We have this with military drone pilots already. I have to imagine it would be far easier to implement this than full AI. You still get 70% of the benefit of “pilotless” flights because you don’t have to get the human geographically to the place the plane is flying.
Wouldn’t lag be an issue, given electronic attenuation, even at speed-of-light? Maybe not since drone pilots manage? Damned interesting thought you have.
Yes to speed-of-light limitations for latency, but again, the military is already doing things while also firing precision weapons from the same platform halfway around the world. My guess is that the systems are mostly autonomous except the humans issue short term commands. Like:
- plane, turn left bearing 180.
- turning left bearing 180, my bearing is 180
[Pedantry Incoming!]
- heading.
“Bearing” is a direction from one specified position (i.e. the airplane) to a specified object. You would tell a pilot that there is an airport bearing 180, or traffic bearing 090. “Bearing” just tells the pilot which way something is.
“Heading” is the direction the nose of the aircraft is pointed. If you want a pilot to fly due south, you will tell them to fly a heading of 180.
(Heading is not necessarily the actual direction of flight: it does not take crosswinds into account. “Course” is the word used to describe the direction the plane is actually going.)
[Pedantry Complete!]
That isn’t pedantry. This is valuable information! Thanks for the correction.
At my age at least I won’t live to see it.
Just don’t crash on my grave.
no
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the quality of some planes are very sus, i.e., budget designs like those dreamliner/ max series, parts falling out either due to bad maint or they just built super cheapo
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freedom land has shown that liberating air traffic controllers from their jobs got so much air things bumping into each other. “like crewless, zero crew” would also mean zero land crew. i guess this also means tend to your own baggage
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there’s those dramas where people get sick on board and someone asks if there’s a doctor. now those dramas would just have a bunch of onlookers maybe posting on sns, praying, or just plain shouting for help. this scenario can be adjusted for the need of an air marshal as well
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i doubt all 300 people would orderly get the food they ordered and/or sit on the seat they were assigned. and/or not smoke. and/or not place their feet somewhere the body parts (maybe feet) shouldn’t be on
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on the personal side, some ai voice telling me to calm down when the plane hits some turbulence feels like it won’t work. for an extra free, you can choose your ai captain’s voice! for more friendly lines, get the warm ai voice pack dlc
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You can’t get me in to a crewed plane right now. Ain’t trusting no Tesla plane!
No. Because in a fully automated flight like that, now you have to worry about the other passengers.
Bring duct tape and a few very friends.
Article 31 of the UN Declaration of human rights says: If any aircraft passenser should become a Karen, it is the right and duty of other passengers to duct tape them to their seats.
(Okay that doesn’t exist, but should be)
It’s natural law. It need not be written. We all know that’s true and valid without writing it down. It’s an offshoot of the ancient doctrine of fuck around and find out.
When the service is mature enough to have decent stats on miles flown / crashes and that ratio is better than manned planes then sure, why not?
Remember, kids, aircraft are still the sfest way to fly!
aircraft are still the sfest way to fly
So there are non-aircrafts that can fly? 🤔
Transatlantic flights by Montgolfier ballon - travel in style for the next six weeks.
Balloons are aircraft
That was the joke dot jay peg.
Is it built by Tesla, Meta, Boeing, or some other American corp?
Nope, nope, nope.
No, self driving will not be safe within my lifetime
Nope.
Crew know a lot of override and emergency stuff for when systems go wrong and are always the reason planes don’t go down when they otherwise would’ve
In a perfect world where stuff never breaks?
Yep.
But we clearly doesn’t live in that world, so no.
Dude, I don’t even want to fly on a fully-manned flight with the way these planes are dropping out of the sky these days.
Stop living in fear from the media.
Your chances of dying in a car accident is exponentially higher than flying yet you have no issue getting into your car.
