Would Anyone Trust A Pilotless Airliner If The Option Was Made Avaliable In 2009?
Written by admin on June 13, 2009 – 9:57 pm
There are military forces around the world that use unmanned ‘drones’ for reconnaissance missions, but would you sit on a holiday flight with 200+ other passengers with no human being at the controls?
NO THANK YOU. If I am going to spiral into the ground at 700 MPH I want the person responsible to be able to hear my screams.
Do you want the people that designed Windows Vista flying your plane? I think not.
No. I’m an embedded systems engineer, I have written software for munitions, which is as dangerous as it gets. The problem is that as the complexity of the system increases the likelihood of an error increases geometrically. The best software folks in the world, at least the ones who are most public about their fault rates, are the space shuttle flight control software engineers. They average less than one system fault per software release. But the regular aerospace community just aren’t that good. So I’d rather have someone with some imagination to second guess the software guys when everything is going south in a hurry.
Having said that, the autonomous vehicles that are landing on carriers these days do very good landings. But I just don’t trust my fellow engineers to keep me safe.
But never is a very long time, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see robot cargo aircraft. Globalhawk is big and flies itself most of the time.
I wonder how many in this forum actually fly airplanes. There will never be a commercial aircraft that does not have a pilot. As a private rated pilot, you learn very early in your flight training that flying the plane is easy. In fact, it’s easier than driving a car. But, when things go wrong, aircraft are downright a pain in the butt to fly. Computers lack the ability to reason. They execute tasks quite effectively, but they cannot “think”. They are given a set of instructions and they follow them the same way every single time. Airbus tried to incorporate some features into an aircraft that takes the pilot out of the game somewhat, and the results were disastrous. The aircraft crashed and killed all aboard, but thankfully it was only a display flight and there were few casualties. Since then, Airbus has limited the authority their electronic pilot has, and Boeing has actually given human pilots the ability to disable whatever artificial intelligence may be assisting them with flying the plane. It takes a skilled human being to build these machines, and only a skilled person can really be trusted to fly them. Sure, people make mistakes and computers never do. But when your on a flight someday and something goes wrong would you rather hear the reassuring voice of the captain, or some recorded message that a computer plays over and over? I think people are more comfortable trusting another human being with their lives than a computer. Let’s face it, a computer cares not if it is destroyed. The pilot want to live as much as you do. Here’s the video of the ill fated Airbus test fly-by.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EM0hDchV…
A pilot will never intentionally fly an aircraft into the ground, but a computer will.
I am a mechanic on an aircraft that requires no pilot to fly, and they do great most of the time but have more problems than planes that are manned. The fact is that a computer is never going to take the place of a real person behind the controls. No I wouldn’t trust them if it was an option though.
No. Computers have certainly come a long way, but we’re not nearly at the point where the pilots can permanently step out of the cockpit. Right now, there needs to be at least one human up there (pref. 2 to keep each other in check) to handle the situations that software programmers don’t think of.
I’ve had just about everything on an airliner break on me. Some of them, I’m not sure how a computer would have handled them.
Maybe one day, but probably not in our lifetimes.
A lot of people are saying that “computers can not reason” and “never trust them” etc. etc.
Well, to that I say: putting a man on the moon is not possible, it’s too far away and too complicated. We will never be able to do this.
‘Can’t', ‘never’, ‘won’t', ‘no need’… these words all have expiry dates attached to them. 2009? Too soon… but years from now a pilotless airplane will be a frivolous part of life. I’m sure we will trust them then.
no way. unless they built roads in the sky, i wouldnt go ten feet off the ground with a machine flying the plane.
people think about this a lot but its not going to happen at least not for another 5000 years.
the only thing that is starting to take the place of human control is the flight engineer area…but that is really nothing to worry about.
I wonder if people who think planes are easier to fly than cars are to drive have ever flown a plane. I can’t imagine ever saying that. Oh well. I would never go with less than two engines and two pilots. If they were remotely piloted, people would hack in and crash them from remote. You know someone is that crazy. I’ll stick with human pilots on board, thank you.
No way.
The software would probably be based on Microsoft product.
When it crashes, we all do too!
Seriously, despite most accidents being due to some form of pilot error, I would not want to trust some programmer who possibly failed to account for variables.
Believe it or not the airplanes you fly in now could be pilot less. The pilot only has to punch in the destination numbers and the aircraft does the rest. Including take off and landings. Would I fly without some there to take over in case of a malfunction? Not a chance.
I’ve seen too many movies where technology messes up and things go wrong. I wouldn’t travel. However i think it would be an intresting invention if the pilo(human) was in control but if he made an error the computer would fix it.
No. Maybe in like 2090 when a computer can think on its feet like a human, but now, no, because if something unexpected happened, a computer could not deal with it.
No I would not.
And they are not all drones, they are all UAVs, with the Global hawk being the most sophisticated, since it flies autonomously.
Pilot error is the cause of most accidents but if they do give the option I would be out of a job and would never do air travel again.
no, nothing can be substituted for a pilot’s intuition in a tight situation
Hey I have trouble sitting in the back with someone else at the controls period. No way would I fly with no one at the controls
Never would I go on a plane controlled entirely by a computer.
Never
I prefer a drunk pilot to no pilot.
No.
No, but then I don’t like to fly when I’m not doing it.
I don’t think so.