6 ms·

But would that pilot have to be in the plane to fly it? We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now.

simonsarris 4y ago
> More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001 Quote from 2014: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/20/when-drones-fall-from-the-sky/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/20/w... I think with planes carrying humans we don't want that track record, especially if you calculate crashes per mile flown.
WalterBright 4y ago
I am not a pilot. But given my experience driving cars in video games, and driving them in 3D land, there's no comparison. A remote operator cannot pick up a fire extinguisher, go into the cabin and look out the window, smell the smoke, feel the weird vibration, relieve the pilot who is pulling on the controls with all his might, fend off intruders with the fire axe, etc. Remote control is always going to have a lag in it. I doubt one could land an airplane remotely even with just a 1 second lag. Having your butt in the seat of the airplane is a strong motivator to keep it flying. The pilot always arrives first at the scene of the crash.
- cuteboy19 4y ago
  Now imagine what happens if the connection gets hacked
- bombcar 4y ago
  We’re getting really close to the old joke - planes will have a computer, a pilot, and a dog. The computer is there to fly the plane, the pilot is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything.
NBJack 4y ago
"Attention passengers, I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Captain Ovarwurked has, sadly, passed away while flying the plane. The good news is that a remote backup pilot is now going to fly us to the nearest landing field! Please sit back and relax, and try not to think about the person sitting in the comfort of their home with an Xbox 360 controller who hopefully has a stable internet connection. [1] On that note, we'd like to ask everyone to please stop using anything wireless, as it runs a small risk of interfering with the delicate connection to satellites overhead, which is currently all that is keeping our remote pilot connected." [1] https://www.pyrosoft.co.uk/blog/2007/11/04/army-fly-uav-spy-plane-with-xbox-360-controller/ https://www.pyrosoft.co.uk/blog/2007/11/04/army-fly-uav-spy-...
josefx 4y ago
Just look at the MCAS disaster. The only override that wasn't under its control required someone present in the cockpit to basically physically lift the plane using a normally automated control. This illustrates two things: First the design of the software used in commercial airplanes is bat shit insane and second, the fallbacks require that a trained person is physically present on the plane. > We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now. While Boeing has shown some talent at killing people the goal of commercial airplanes is usually to get their passengers to their destination alive.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I know a bit about the MCAS disaster. Very few people know that there were *three* incidences of MCAS runaway trim. What happened with the third one (which was actually the first incident)? It didn't crash. The pilot just turned off the stab trim system. The override was there, it was always there. The thumb switches on the control column overrode it. Turning it off with the STAB TRIM CUTOFF switch turned it off. This procedure was detailed in an Emergency Airworthiness Directive issued to all 737MAX pilots after the first crash. The pilots in the second crash did not follow that procedure. The pilots of all three incidents used the thumb switches to override MCAS and restore normal trim. The first crew then turned off the trim and landed safely. The second crew never did turn off the trim and crashed. The third turned off the trim when the airplane was in a dive and could not recover.
  - kozak 4y ago
    It is also interesting that in that third incident it was the presence of a THIRD pilot in the cockpit that helped to diagnose the problem.
  - bobkazamakis 4y ago
    Huh, if only there could have been some kind of training that would be required to use this new system, but that would require recertification!
    - 4y ago
WalterBright 4y ago
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/uploads/default/original/3X/9/3/93a535bc0919cae50f1d7199fc236a2910a44255.jpeg https://forums.flightsimulator.com/uploads/default/original/...
zweifuss 4y ago
Yes, we can do it, but have a look at the data: https://www.dronetechuav.com/post/causes-of-uav-loss https://www.dronetechuav.com/post/causes-of-uav-loss I don't think that argument flies.
varjag 4y ago
Political cost of losing an UAV is extremely low.
zarzavat 4y ago
If the pilot goes all Germanwings and decides to fly the plane into a mountain, what is the pilot on the ground going to do about it? If your answer is “the pilot on the ground takes control”, what happens when that system gets hacked?
- bombcar 4y ago
  You could theorize a simple remote override that is simply “deviate to nearest appropriate airport and land” but that requires substantial support AND doesn’t handle all sorts of abnormal situations beyond “pilot died”.
onetokeoverthe 4y ago
PaulRobinson 4y ago
If the civil aviation sector suffered hull losses at the same rate as remote control war drone flying does[0] - even excluding those shot down - the entire industry would be bankrupted within a few years. Also, this is an attempt to reduce labor costs. They aren't going to put a pilot on the ground as primary or backup - they just want to remove the second pilot from the loop entirely. We have a list of airliner crashes[1], that once we figure out absolute numbers of total flights likely shows that airliners are much, much safer than remote controlled drones (after excluding shoot downs for latter), but what we don't have is data on how many aircraft landed safely but only because the second pilot was there. I'd want to know: 1. How many times did a pilot immediately intervene for a developing safety issue while the other pilot was asleep, in the toilet, or suffering from a medical incapacitation? A huge amount of work has been done to ensure redundancy of human control in such situations, because many crashes have occurred where this process failed. 2. How many times did a pilot make a mistake that was corrected by a second pilot, and if that correction hadn't been made a safety issue would have developed? There are numerous crashes attributed to pilot error and the second pilot failing to correct that error - a huge amount of work has been done to make sure that can't happen again, because everyone knows pilots regularly make mistakes, often a critical time of the flight from a safety perspective: landing. 3. How many times has an automated system shown better error correction performance that saved an aircraft vs a human being? Until we have this data, the data we have suggests remote controlled aircraft or removing a pilot has the potential to be one of the most dangerous decisions to happen to civil aviation in the history of the industry. [0] - https://dronewars.net/drone-crash-database/ https://dronewars.net/drone-crash-database/ [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The ones where the second pilot corrected the mistake are not shown on episodes of Aviation Disasters, because they are boring. The first 737MAX MCAS incident you never hear about because there were 3 pilots in the cockpit, and one of them reached over and turned off the stab trim system.
  - 4y ago
djtango 4y ago
As a thought experiment, what would it be like to drive a car with: 10/50/100/200 ms of visual and input latency?
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
"Skin in the game" from Taleb argues that yes, it's because the pilot is in plane that the plane is safer. Because the pilot will pay the same price as the passengers for a mistake, it will increase the likelihood of success.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  That’s a great point I hadn’t thought of
  - Y_Y 4y ago
    What if we just throw the remote pilot from a tall building in the event of a plane crash?
samwillis 4y ago
Killer drones main job is killing people, an airlines main job is keeping them alive... I don't think the comparison to a drone that doesn't need a pilot on board applies to an airline. If there are humans on board, one or ideally more of them should be capable of controlling the aircraft.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Worst case scenario is if the drone crashes no one dies.
SnowHill9902 4y ago
It’s skin in the game. A pilot in the cockpit will make sure all safety procedures are followed and correct because his life is literally at play. A pilot at land, not necessarily.
hackerman123469 4y ago
Drones fail all the time, so I wouldn't classify that as a success example. The difference here is that if the drone fails then nothing really happens, the targets might even be spared lol, but if a commercial airplane fails then hundreds of lives could possibly be lost. I don't think the airline industry is ready for that massive risk. It's already risky enough for them now.

simonsarris 4y ago

> More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001 Quote from 2014: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/20/when-drones-fall-from-the-sky/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/20/w... I think with planes carrying humans we don't want that track record, especially if you calculate crashes per mile flown.

WalterBright 4y ago

I am not a pilot. But given my experience driving cars in video games, and driving them in 3D land, there's no comparison. A remote operator cannot pick up a fire extinguisher, go into the cabin and look out the window, smell the smoke, feel the weird vibration, relieve the pilot who is pulling on the controls with all his might, fend off intruders with the fire axe, etc. Remote control is always going to have a lag in it. I doubt one could land an airplane remotely even with just a 1 second lag. Having your butt in the seat of the airplane is a strong motivator to keep it flying. The pilot always arrives first at the scene of the crash.

cuteboy19 4y ago
Now imagine what happens if the connection gets hacked
bombcar 4y ago
We’re getting really close to the old joke - planes will have a computer, a pilot, and a dog. The computer is there to fly the plane, the pilot is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything.

NBJack 4y ago

"Attention passengers, I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Captain Ovarwurked has, sadly, passed away while flying the plane. The good news is that a remote backup pilot is now going to fly us to the nearest landing field! Please sit back and relax, and try not to think about the person sitting in the comfort of their home with an Xbox 360 controller who hopefully has a stable internet connection. [1] On that note, we'd like to ask everyone to please stop using anything wireless, as it runs a small risk of interfering with the delicate connection to satellites overhead, which is currently all that is keeping our remote pilot connected." [1] https://www.pyrosoft.co.uk/blog/2007/11/04/army-fly-uav-spy-plane-with-xbox-360-controller/ https://www.pyrosoft.co.uk/blog/2007/11/04/army-fly-uav-spy-...

josefx 4y ago

Just look at the MCAS disaster. The only override that wasn't under its control required someone present in the cockpit to basically physically lift the plane using a normally automated control. This illustrates two things: First the design of the software used in commercial airplanes is bat shit insane and second, the fallbacks require that a trained person is physically present on the plane. > We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now. While Boeing has shown some talent at killing people the goal of commercial airplanes is usually to get their passengers to their destination alive.

WalterBright 4y ago
I know a bit about the MCAS disaster. Very few people know that there were *three* incidences of MCAS runaway trim. What happened with the third one (which was actually the first incident)? It didn't crash. The pilot just turned off the stab trim system. The override was there, it was always there. The thumb switches on the control column overrode it. Turning it off with the STAB TRIM CUTOFF switch turned it off. This procedure was detailed in an Emergency Airworthiness Directive issued to all 737MAX pilots after the first crash. The pilots in the second crash did not follow that procedure. The pilots of all three incidents used the thumb switches to override MCAS and restore normal trim. The first crew then turned off the trim and landed safely. The second crew never did turn off the trim and crashed. The third turned off the trim when the airplane was in a dive and could not recover.
- kozak 4y ago
  It is also interesting that in that third incident it was the presence of a THIRD pilot in the cockpit that helped to diagnose the problem.
- bobkazamakis 4y ago
  Huh, if only there could have been some kind of training that would be required to use this new system, but that would require recertification!
  - 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/uploads/default/original/3X/9/3/93a535bc0919cae50f1d7199fc236a2910a44255.jpeg https://forums.flightsimulator.com/uploads/default/original/...

zweifuss 4y ago

Yes, we can do it, but have a look at the data: https://www.dronetechuav.com/post/causes-of-uav-loss https://www.dronetechuav.com/post/causes-of-uav-loss I don't think that argument flies.

varjag 4y ago

Political cost of losing an UAV is extremely low.

zarzavat 4y ago

If the pilot goes all Germanwings and decides to fly the plane into a mountain, what is the pilot on the ground going to do about it? If your answer is “the pilot on the ground takes control”, what happens when that system gets hacked?

bombcar 4y ago
You could theorize a simple remote override that is simply “deviate to nearest appropriate airport and land” but that requires substantial support AND doesn’t handle all sorts of abnormal situations beyond “pilot died”.

onetokeoverthe 4y ago

PaulRobinson 4y ago

If the civil aviation sector suffered hull losses at the same rate as remote control war drone flying does[0] - even excluding those shot down - the entire industry would be bankrupted within a few years. Also, this is an attempt to reduce labor costs. They aren't going to put a pilot on the ground as primary or backup - they just want to remove the second pilot from the loop entirely. We have a list of airliner crashes[1], that once we figure out absolute numbers of total flights likely shows that airliners are much, much safer than remote controlled drones (after excluding shoot downs for latter), but what we don't have is data on how many aircraft landed safely but only because the second pilot was there. I'd want to know: 1. How many times did a pilot immediately intervene for a developing safety issue while the other pilot was asleep, in the toilet, or suffering from a medical incapacitation? A huge amount of work has been done to ensure redundancy of human control in such situations, because many crashes have occurred where this process failed. 2. How many times did a pilot make a mistake that was corrected by a second pilot, and if that correction hadn't been made a safety issue would have developed? There are numerous crashes attributed to pilot error and the second pilot failing to correct that error - a huge amount of work has been done to make sure that can't happen again, because everyone knows pilots regularly make mistakes, often a critical time of the flight from a safety perspective: landing. 3. How many times has an automated system shown better error correction performance that saved an aircraft vs a human being? Until we have this data, the data we have suggests remote controlled aircraft or removing a pilot has the potential to be one of the most dangerous decisions to happen to civil aviation in the history of the industry. [0] - https://dronewars.net/drone-crash-database/ https://dronewars.net/drone-crash-database/ [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

WalterBright 4y ago
The ones where the second pilot corrected the mistake are not shown on episodes of Aviation Disasters, because they are boring. The first 737MAX MCAS incident you never hear about because there were 3 pilots in the cockpit, and one of them reached over and turned off the stab trim system.
- 4y ago

djtango 4y ago

As a thought experiment, what would it be like to drive a car with: 10/50/100/200 ms of visual and input latency?

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

"Skin in the game" from Taleb argues that yes, it's because the pilot is in plane that the plane is safer. Because the pilot will pay the same price as the passengers for a mistake, it will increase the likelihood of success.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
That’s a great point I hadn’t thought of
- Y_Y 4y ago
  What if we just throw the remote pilot from a tall building in the event of a plane crash?

samwillis 4y ago

Killer drones main job is killing people, an airlines main job is keeping them alive... I don't think the comparison to a drone that doesn't need a pilot on board applies to an airline. If there are humans on board, one or ideally more of them should be capable of controlling the aircraft.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

Worst case scenario is if the drone crashes no one dies.

SnowHill9902 4y ago

It’s skin in the game. A pilot in the cockpit will make sure all safety procedures are followed and correct because his life is literally at play. A pilot at land, not necessarily.

hackerman123469 4y ago

Drones fail all the time, so I wouldn't classify that as a success example. The difference here is that if the drone fails then nothing really happens, the targets might even be spared lol, but if a commercial airplane fails then hundreds of lives could possibly be lost. I don't think the airline industry is ready for that massive risk. It's already risky enough for them now.