A cargo plane flew 50 miles with no pilot onboard using a semi-automated system. An aviation expert says the technology could address the pilot shortage.
The flight system allows a plane to be remote operated by a pilot on the ground, which could streamline pilot airline operations in the future.
A cargo plane flew 50 miles with no pilot onboard using a semi-automated system. An aviation expert says the technology could address the pilot shortage.::The flight system allows a plane to be remote operated by a pilot on the ground, which could streamline pilot airline operations in the future.
This will be done more and more until the first crash. Then everyone will freak out and everything will be grounded. The engineers will point out that statistically the flights done this way were safer ( 1 million miles were flown by AI in the last 3 years with only one incident. The same done by commercial pilots would have caused 3.5 incidents!)
Then other incidents will be dredged up. Some won't be actual incidents, some won't be the fault of the AI, and some will be because a human overrid AI control. However, the public will firmly be on the side of only humans should fly planes. Laws will be drafted. Then loopholes for "drones" will be made. A decade later these loopholes will be large enough to fly a 737 through.
No one will remember why they were put in place in the first place, but one political party will be firmly against removing the laws. It will take another generation for them to finally be removed, and by that point computers will be so far integrated with humans that biological humans might be banned from flying under the law if things didn't change.
Hopefully, people will look back on this and say, lol, no, that post was edited in 2035, but good try.
However, the public will firmly be on the side of only humans should fly planes. Laws will be drafted. Then loopholes for “drones” will be made.
That part could just as well go another way:
The transportation and large sellers of packages, like Amazon, strongly lobbied the government. Now any victim of a crash with automated planes gets a standard payout from the insurance. A class action lawsuits from family members of the victims was eventually decided in favor of the corporations.
I have nothing to back that up, but if anyone finds the source of that quote, I'd be interested.
Yea, no thanks on automation. In the end I'm still dead by another human's mistake. So I'd rather have a pilot on board.
I've seen how bad aircraft automation is already. Much of it shouldn't even be in the air currently. It's already overridden pilot commands łor at least ignored inputs as outside parameters), crashing planes.
How about we just make being a commercial pilot worth people's while instead of replacing them with robots?
Why can't the parasites in the executive board room ever just pay their employees more? "nO bOdY wAnTs tO wOrK aNyMoRe!" No, nobody wants to work in an abusive workspace for shitty pay just to get fired once the time for a raise comes around.
According to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, the median salary for airline captains, first-officers, second-officers, and flight engineers in the United States is $203,010 as of 2021.
The big problem is actually in certifying people qualified to take those jobs, which takes additional time and money, mostly to pay for flight time for training. It can take a few grand for just a personal pilot license, but to fly an airline, you need instrument, commercial, and Airline Transport Pilot License (ATPL) certifications, plus increasingly expensive type ratings for the various aircraft you will be flying, a minimum of 1500 hours of flight time, and multiple years at the bottom working your way through smaller regional airlines and courier services.
You can get through the commercial licensing in 12-18 months and about $40k in flight time and insurance, but that is barely enough to get your foot in the door making $50k a year, and even then, you’re still not allowed to fly parcels or passengers for money. Getting those licenses will take another 18 months and another $40-80k, again, mostly in flight time.
That said, once you have ATPL, the company will start paying for your flight time, and you will be earning a 6 figure salary. After 5 years or so and about $100k investing in your training, you should be making over $200k, and can begin to recoup those costs.
the median salary for airline captains, first-officers, second-officers, and flight engineers in the United States is $203,010 as of 2021.
That's not enough to support yourself in many places. People's rent isn't getting any lower. And being an airline pilot is an extremely stressful job. Being a flight attendant is also extremely stressful. Look up some Karen stories on reddit and youtube and even if you want to say that 80% of those stories are made up, which many of them are true, I know narcissists that are worse than that, that's still a huge number of entitled people demanding first class for free and then lying about being assaulted when the person in first class declines their offer to trade seats.
Actually, this seems like a really good path towards that.
Some people like spending 40 something weeks out of the year on the road. Others will enjoy "having a home" and remotely landing a hundred planes a day from the comfort of an office building
No there really isn't. The Navy and Air Force are full of people who love flying. Even people who can fly but don't qualify to be fighter pilots. They work on planes, design them, or fly transport planes.
Usually the jobs outside the military pay better (cybersecurity, IT, etc.). Flying commercial isn't that much better because of the hours. Imagine having better hours in the military and a better retirement package after 20 years. That's why there's not enough pilots.
And we currently see issues even with current (relatively) modest automation systems that are designed to prevent pilot error.
There's way too many failures with current systems to even talk about full automation yet, in my opinion.
Let's get current automation subsystems to much lower error rates first.
I've never seen a fuel injection system on a car suddenly stop delivering fuel for no apparent reason, then startup again. The computers for such systems in cars are tremendously over-engineered.
I can't understand why we accept less for aircraft systems today. This didn't used to be the case.
To address the pilot pay, in my own opinion I think that flying is reasonably paid. Most entry level jobs (in my area) range between 70-90k. This is comfortable for the most part and above all common jobs.
The main issue for me is the training costs. I would still be headed towards the aviation industry if I wasn't held back by the financial debt that I would incur.
Pilots are paid bank BECAUSE the training is so expensive. If you make the training cheaper the compensation will drop with it. Of course lowering the barrier to entry is a good thing, but don't expect the compensation to remain high.
You right. But like, ironically, I can't do the training with a family to care for.
When I asked around to the other flight students on how they are paying for it, it was 45% GI Bill, 50% daddy/grandparents paying for it, and the rest were paying bit by bit or finally making enough money to afford it.
Wait are you in support or against AI airplanes? Because mentioning an event where terrorists successfully overpowered human pilots doesn't seem to be a great argument against AI pilots. More like an argument against human pilots.
Sorry my comment was confusing and maybe my idea wasn't that clear either. 911, which was an attack on the United States using airplanes, happed in part, I think, because there wasn't enough protections. Also I feel that computer systems are much more vulnerable to attacks than physical systems where pilots and other people can protect critical infrastructures. With this in mind, I was trying to hint that automating airplanes this way could lead to more catastrophs.
Wait are you in support or against AI airplanes? Because mentioning an event where terrorists successfully overpowered human pilots doesn't seem to be a great argument against AI pilots. More like an argument against human pilots.