5 ms·

The main reason we don't have them is that people don't want them. Autopilots date back to 1912 (yep, you read that right) and the first flight off an aircraft

by Merad 9y ago

The main reason we don't have them is that people don't want them. Autopilots date back to 1912 (yep, you read that right) and the first flight off an aircraft controlled 100% by autopilot happened in 1947. US Navy carriers and aircraft have been capable of automatic landings since the 1960s. IIRC today most larger airliners have autopilots capable of handling the entire flight after take off (they don't bother to include auto takeoff, because no one uses it). Aircraft are downright trivial to automate compared to cars, at least until something goes wrong. The vast majority of the time a car can drop into a fairly reasonable failsafe mode of "steer straight and apply brakes." Aircraft, not so much.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> people don't want them The one thing American travellers are consistent on is choosing the cheapest flight. Autopiloted flights, at a discount, would sell tickets. That said, I don’t think we there yet technologically.
- Merad 9y ago
  Pilots just aren’t that expensive, to be honest. Assuming your flight crew is costing $400 per hour combined (on the high side according to some googling) and you have a 6 hour flight with 300 passengers, eliminating the crew only drops prices by $8 per ticket.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    The most common commercial plane in America is the Boeing 737 [1]. It seats 100 to 200 passengers [2]. Delta officers and first captains make $320 and $200 thousand, respectively, and fly about 1,000 hours a year [3]. So 520 per hour, between the two of them. A main-cabin ticket to New York from San Jose, California about 2 months out costs $146. (Its SJC to MSP leg happens to be on a 737.) Flight time is about 6 hours. Assuming 175 (one-class 737-800 configuration) paying passengers we have about $25,000 in revenues. The captain and first officer’s pay is roughly 12% of that. That’s a lot. [1] http://www.fi-aeroweb.com/US-Commercial-Aircraft-Fleet.html http://www.fi-aeroweb.com/US-Commercial-Aircraft-Fleet.html [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737 [3] http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/12/01/delta-pilot-pay-raise/ http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/12/01/delta-pilo...
    - switch007 9y ago
      Isn't cargo an important revenue stream?
    - Merad 9y ago
      Even that 12% figure only works out to about $17 per ticket. If you offered passengers that discount (clearly communicating that it meant flying totally on autopilot), I'd be absolutely shocked if even 10-20% took the offer. Of course realistically, I feel sure that automated planes would be required to fly with a human backup pilot, so the potential savings are even less. TBH I think it will take the success of self driving cars, trucks, etc. before the public becomes comfortable with the idea of self flying planes. Ironic since cars are overall the more challenging application, but I guess that's human nature.
kalleboo 9y ago
People overestimate what an Autopilot does. Autopilots don't make decisions, they don't look at weather charts, they don't look at other traffic, they don't talk on the radio with towers. They're basic computers that are programmed by the pilots to take off/land/change flightlevel/change heading. You still need the pilots there to decide what to do and program the autopilot with tasks to perform.

by Merad 9y ago

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> people don't want them The one thing American travellers are consistent on is choosing the cheapest flight. Autopiloted flights, at a discount, would sell tickets. That said, I don’t think we there yet technologically.

Merad 9y ago
Pilots just aren’t that expensive, to be honest. Assuming your flight crew is costing $400 per hour combined (on the high side according to some googling) and you have a 6 hour flight with 300 passengers, eliminating the crew only drops prices by $8 per ticket.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  The most common commercial plane in America is the Boeing 737 [1]. It seats 100 to 200 passengers [2]. Delta officers and first captains make $320 and $200 thousand, respectively, and fly about 1,000 hours a year [3]. So 520 per hour, between the two of them. A main-cabin ticket to New York from San Jose, California about 2 months out costs $146. (Its SJC to MSP leg happens to be on a 737.) Flight time is about 6 hours. Assuming 175 (one-class 737-800 configuration) paying passengers we have about $25,000 in revenues. The captain and first officer’s pay is roughly 12% of that. That’s a lot. [1] http://www.fi-aeroweb.com/US-Commercial-Aircraft-Fleet.html http://www.fi-aeroweb.com/US-Commercial-Aircraft-Fleet.html [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737 [3] http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/12/01/delta-pilot-pay-raise/ http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/12/01/delta-pilo...
  - switch007 9y ago
    Isn't cargo an important revenue stream?
  - Merad 9y ago
    Even that 12% figure only works out to about $17 per ticket. If you offered passengers that discount (clearly communicating that it meant flying totally on autopilot), I'd be absolutely shocked if even 10-20% took the offer. Of course realistically, I feel sure that automated planes would be required to fly with a human backup pilot, so the potential savings are even less. TBH I think it will take the success of self driving cars, trucks, etc. before the public becomes comfortable with the idea of self flying planes. Ironic since cars are overall the more challenging application, but I guess that's human nature.

kalleboo 9y ago

People overestimate what an Autopilot does. Autopilots don't make decisions, they don't look at weather charts, they don't look at other traffic, they don't talk on the radio with towers. They're basic computers that are programmed by the pilots to take off/land/change flightlevel/change heading. You still need the pilots there to decide what to do and program the autopilot with tasks to perform.