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It's notable though that airlines have been probing trying to reduce flight crew sizes - if this incident occurred on a single pilot flight, the outcome could h

by dv_dt 2y ago

It's notable though that airlines have been probing trying to reduce flight crew sizes - if this incident occurred on a single pilot flight, the outcome could have been catastrophic. https://www.thedrive.com/news/airlines-are-pushing-to-legalize-one-pilot-cockpits https://www.thedrive.com/news/airlines-are-pushing-to-legali...

etse 2y ago
I can imagine. An AI "copilot" could mean quick error correction... or maybe a snowballing of tiny errors into something catastrophic.
- doodlebugging 2y ago
  Yes, this is an issue. It hasn't been that long ago that DARPA ran the challenges that led to the proof of concept for self-driving, autonomously navigating robot vehicles. Some of the technology became the selling point for various automobiles with some of the promises still lacking in deliverable results. You have to test all this to know whether it will work and eventually some of the tests need to shift from a workstation to the real world. Like the Air Force and their recent conversion of some fighters to unpiloted planes, this will all happen and one day it will be the norm. If we're all lucky all the test failures will happen on a server somewhere instead of out here in real life.
- cpncrunch 2y ago
  The flight path for the missed approach is already in the flight management system, and the autopilot will fly it much more accurately than a human pilot. In this case it seems that either the missed approach was being flown by hand, or else the pilot's inadvertant push on the control column overrided the autopilot. Anyway, the point is that if "the computers" had been flying, this would never have happened in the first place. Perhaps we just need one pilot to take over in case there is some emergency that can't be handled by the autopilot.
doodlebugging 2y ago
Pretty funny that the railroads have also been trying for years to cut crew sizes to one. All this while building extremely long trains which require a lot more finesse to manage over complex terrain and in and out of railyards, many of which are not designed to accomodate trains of that length. Place all that responsibility on a single point of failure. Luckily the union was able to stifle that effort in their recent agreements. There is a real danger when bean-counters with no practical experience run a company and look at every component, including the employees, as a cost center that can be trimmed as needed to tailor results for quarterly reports that guarantee that investors will remain engaged.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  > Luckily the union was able to stifle that effort in their recent agreements. While most extreme of the measures were cut, railroads are still far away from operating safely. There is a John Oliver episode on Freight trains. You know things are bad, when he has an episode.
  - doodlebugging 2y ago
    This is true but the conditions won in the recent bargaining made a huge quality of life difference for train crew members. My family has been railroading for 4 generations and I currently have a close relative working on the train crew for a huge US railroad. Before the agreement, when it looked to all the trainmen like they were gonna get fucked again, there was a lot of anger and frustration with their near total absence of control of important things in their lives. They were literally meat to be shuffled like rolling stock up and down the tracks at the whim of their employer. As the terms of the agreements became more clear they realized that the railroads had to back off on their most destructive terms such that trainmen can now have a predictable work schedule, a higher rate of pay, better benefits, etc so it is definitely true that a lot of shit on railroads was broken and contributed to unsafe rolling stock and working conditions, some of that has been corrected simply by insuring that crews have sufficient manpower to manage the longer trains that are running and that the crews are more likely to be rested before they get on the trains. There has been a total attitude adjustment about employment conditions such that there are fewer trainmen looking to change jobs. This whole collective bargaining exercise began with a majority of trainmen feeling like they had no opportunity to change anything and has resulted in a new-found respect for union leadership in effecting changes that benefit the people doing the work. The railroads, the FRA, the unions, and the administration sat down and worked through problems in a way that gave the employees tangible concessions and that was one thing that most employees would never have counted on happening since the unions had been nearly neutered since the previous collective bargaining agreements were signed around 20 years earlier.

by dv_dt 2y ago

etse 2y ago

I can imagine. An AI "copilot" could mean quick error correction... or maybe a snowballing of tiny errors into something catastrophic.

doodlebugging 2y ago
Yes, this is an issue. It hasn't been that long ago that DARPA ran the challenges that led to the proof of concept for self-driving, autonomously navigating robot vehicles. Some of the technology became the selling point for various automobiles with some of the promises still lacking in deliverable results. You have to test all this to know whether it will work and eventually some of the tests need to shift from a workstation to the real world. Like the Air Force and their recent conversion of some fighters to unpiloted planes, this will all happen and one day it will be the norm. If we're all lucky all the test failures will happen on a server somewhere instead of out here in real life.
cpncrunch 2y ago
The flight path for the missed approach is already in the flight management system, and the autopilot will fly it much more accurately than a human pilot. In this case it seems that either the missed approach was being flown by hand, or else the pilot's inadvertant push on the control column overrided the autopilot. Anyway, the point is that if "the computers" had been flying, this would never have happened in the first place. Perhaps we just need one pilot to take over in case there is some emergency that can't be handled by the autopilot.

doodlebugging 2y ago

Pretty funny that the railroads have also been trying for years to cut crew sizes to one. All this while building extremely long trains which require a lot more finesse to manage over complex terrain and in and out of railyards, many of which are not designed to accomodate trains of that length. Place all that responsibility on a single point of failure. Luckily the union was able to stifle that effort in their recent agreements. There is a real danger when bean-counters with no practical experience run a company and look at every component, including the employees, as a cost center that can be trimmed as needed to tailor results for quarterly reports that guarantee that investors will remain engaged.

darth_avocado 2y ago
> Luckily the union was able to stifle that effort in their recent agreements. While most extreme of the measures were cut, railroads are still far away from operating safely. There is a John Oliver episode on Freight trains. You know things are bad, when he has an episode.
- doodlebugging 2y ago
  This is true but the conditions won in the recent bargaining made a huge quality of life difference for train crew members. My family has been railroading for 4 generations and I currently have a close relative working on the train crew for a huge US railroad. Before the agreement, when it looked to all the trainmen like they were gonna get fucked again, there was a lot of anger and frustration with their near total absence of control of important things in their lives. They were literally meat to be shuffled like rolling stock up and down the tracks at the whim of their employer. As the terms of the agreements became more clear they realized that the railroads had to back off on their most destructive terms such that trainmen can now have a predictable work schedule, a higher rate of pay, better benefits, etc so it is definitely true that a lot of shit on railroads was broken and contributed to unsafe rolling stock and working conditions, some of that has been corrected simply by insuring that crews have sufficient manpower to manage the longer trains that are running and that the crews are more likely to be rested before they get on the trains. There has been a total attitude adjustment about employment conditions such that there are fewer trainmen looking to change jobs. This whole collective bargaining exercise began with a majority of trainmen feeling like they had no opportunity to change anything and has resulted in a new-found respect for union leadership in effecting changes that benefit the people doing the work. The railroads, the FRA, the unions, and the administration sat down and worked through problems in a way that gave the employees tangible concessions and that was one thing that most employees would never have counted on happening since the unions had been nearly neutered since the previous collective bargaining agreements were signed around 20 years earlier.