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The hard sell here will be convincing passengers it's safe enough. Not sure if I'd be willing to fly on a pilot-less flight even if the airline passed the cost

by jb775 6y ago

The hard sell here will be convincing passengers it's safe enough. Not sure if I'd be willing to fly on a pilot-less flight even if the airline passed the cost savings onto me.

parsimo2010 6y ago
> convincing passengers it's safe enough This is a pretty tough problem, different than self-driving cars because people see driving as something easy, but flying is seen as hard (just look at the difference in training and salary between a bus driver and a commercial pilot). Trained pilots/meat-computers will soon be worse than an automated system 99.99% of the time, but in those strange 0.01% corner cases the meat-computer really shines. There are several cases like Flight 214 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214) that computers would have helped, but there's still a few "Miracle on the Hudson" that any computer short of a general AI would have botched (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549). It will take a lot of work to get to where people will accept an automated flight without a safety pilot on board, and if you have to pay a safety pilot to ride along, you aren't saving as much money. > even if the airline passed the cost savings onto me HA! Like that will happen. The only time that airlines "pass on cost savings" to the customer is when a low cost carrier starts offering service for the same route.
l0b0 6y ago
There will probably be something like hundreds of flights in unpopulated areas, then overseas freight, then inland freight, then passengers.
wuunderbar 6y ago
$250,000 pilot cost per year (including their benefits and training, correct me if I'm too low) 261 working days 1 long-haul flight a day 300 seats in a 777 (disregarding class) Comes out to ~$7 cost savings for two pilots per flight. Doesn't seem that impressive for a long-haul unless I'm missing something.
hobofan 6y ago
Just introduce it on a low cost airline, where the passengers literally don't care about a single other thing than price.

by jb775 6y ago

The hard sell here will be convincing passengers it's safe enough. Not sure if I'd be willing to fly on a pilot-less flight even if the airline passed the cost savings onto me.

parsimo2010 6y ago

> convincing passengers it's safe enough This is a pretty tough problem, different than self-driving cars because people see driving as something easy, but flying is seen as hard (just look at the difference in training and salary between a bus driver and a commercial pilot). Trained pilots/meat-computers will soon be worse than an automated system 99.99% of the time, but in those strange 0.01% corner cases the meat-computer really shines. There are several cases like Flight 214 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214) that computers would have helped, but there's still a few "Miracle on the Hudson" that any computer short of a general AI would have botched (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549). It will take a lot of work to get to where people will accept an automated flight without a safety pilot on board, and if you have to pay a safety pilot to ride along, you aren't saving as much money. > even if the airline passed the cost savings onto me HA! Like that will happen. The only time that airlines "pass on cost savings" to the customer is when a low cost carrier starts offering service for the same route.

l0b0 6y ago

There will probably be something like hundreds of flights in unpopulated areas, then overseas freight, then inland freight, then passengers.

wuunderbar 6y ago

$250,000 pilot cost per year (including their benefits and training, correct me if I'm too low) 261 working days 1 long-haul flight a day 300 seats in a 777 (disregarding class) Comes out to ~$7 cost savings for two pilots per flight. Doesn't seem that impressive for a long-haul unless I'm missing something.

hobofan 6y ago

Just introduce it on a low cost airline, where the passengers literally don't care about a single other thing than price.