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Why it's probably safer if your pilot is asleep than awake
- josephagoss 13y agoI thought this was going to be about how awake pilots interfere too much with the controls and just leaving the autopilot on is safer. Not yet anyway... I wonder how long until an autopilot landing will be safer than human pilots.
- bdonlan 13y agoAutoland is already quite safe. However it requires special procedures on the ground to ensure the ILS signals are of sufficient quality, and so it is normally only used either in inclement weather where visibility is to low to trust human reaction times, or as a monthly system test with a pilot ready to take over in conditions suitable for a fully manual landing (in which accuracy of the ILS radio signals cannot be assured as ATC is not making sure other planes stay sufficiently far away from the path of the radio signals).
- wehadfun 13y agoI made a comment a few days ago basically saying that the reasons that pilots don't do dumb things as opposed to surgeons is because their life is on the line if they mess up. I take it back.
- masklinn 13y agoAs the article notes, taking a nap while flying on autopilot is extremely safe, and definitely much safer than ending up completely blown during landing.
- mikeash 13y agoPlenty of pilots of smaller planes do dumb things. They usually get filtered out of the system if they try to become airline pilots, but there's plenty of room for dumbness in small single-engined aircraft too, and their life is just as much on the line, if not more so, than in an airliner. A lot of dumb pilot stuff comes from overconfidence or a feeling of "it can't happen to me".
- adestefan 13y agoI like to refer to that as the "Hold my beer" mentality.
- masklinn 13y ago> It argues that in certain circumstances, under the proposed new rules, pilots could be expected to land planes after 24 hours without sleep. Holy...
- forktheif 13y agoI've often thought they should get rid of pilots from Aircraft, and fly them by autopilot. The number of accidents caused by human error is terrifying. But also have a multiply redundant remote control system for emergencies the autopilot can't handle. So if something crops up, a crew of pilots trained to deal with nothing but emergencies can take over remotely.
- vowelless 13y agoAs someone working in this domain, I absolutely agree. Piloting an aircraft is also one of the riskiest jobs in the US [1]. Significant progress was recently made in fully autonomous flight [2]. [1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-of-the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-u-s--191643548.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-of-the-most-dangerous-jobs-... [2] http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/aerial-robots/robocopters-to-the-rescue http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/aerial-robots/robocopters-...
- mertd 13y ago> The number of accidents caused by human error is terrifying. Problem is that we don't know about the number of accidents avoided thanks to human interventions. Also, remote pilots will never be sure about the reliability of information transmitted from a failing aircraft.
- SEJeff 13y agoI wonder if an autopilot would have landed the plane into the Hudson river, thereby saving everyone's lives? Something tells me no. If you have humans on the plane, you will need to have humans flying the plane. Yes! We should automate more to enhance the human's cognitive abilities, but no, we should not remove the human element. The human mind is still the biggest supercomputer we have when it comes to improvisation.
- hnriot 13y agoHumans could have remotely landed that plane, just like they do with drones every day.
- MattRogish 13y agoA couple of points: 1) Flying is incredibly safe 2) Tired, fatigued pilots crash planes 3) Airlines are low-margin businesses 4) There is no economic incentive to have pilots fly less and sleep more Since there will always be a tension in allowing pilots to sleep more and work less (thus costing airlines more money) we have to conclude that pilots are going to fly without sufficient sleep. To make the system more resilient to failure, we should take the ad-hoc napping that pilots do now (which is undeniably adding some safety via fatigue reduction) and add a blame-free procedure around it to ensure safety (e.g. when one pilot goes to the bathroom the other one puts on their oxygen mask in case of explosive decompression; something similar should be done for the awake pilot.)
- squidi 13y agoDoes anyone know if the latest airplanes detect pilot drowsiness, as various cars have been implementing that for a while (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver_drowsiness_detection)
- eterm 13y agoThe car keep the driver awake long enough so the driver can pull over and stop driving. What's the plane going to do in that situation? If the autopilot is detecting the pilot is drowsy I'd rather it let the pilot sleep than prod the pilot awake into further drowsiness.
- squidi 13y agoYou seem to think that keeping the pilot awake is the only option (based on your car example and rhetorical question) but actually there are several options but it's important to be tracking pilot drowsiness as a datapoint first.
- rflrob 13y agoWhile Toyota's apparently monitors the driver herself, it seems most of the others on that list monitor driver input. Especially on a long haul flight where autopilot is on, they aren't likely to have any direct input, but should be monitoring the radio, engines, destination, and other key systems. The real concern with sleeping pilots is something like this happening [1], for which I never found a explanation other than sleeping pilots as particularly likely. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/26/airliner.flyby/ http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/26/airliner.flyby/
- krstck 13y agoWhenever I get into an argument with someone about the merits of self-driving cars, I point out that we're pretty much there already with flying.
- daigoba66 13y agoExcept for the traffic control part: for flight that's still done by human operators.
- vital_sol 13y agoExcept for saving human lives in emergency situations. I doubt the self-flying plane would land in the Hudson river and saved all the passengers.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoI've seen this referenced a few times in this article. Did the pilot consciously attempt to "land" in the Hudson River, or was the plane simply going down in the Hudson and the pilot was able to correct its pitch enough to land? If its the latter, I would say the autopilot could have done it better.
- WalterBright 13y agoThe pilot was directed to a nearby airport, but realized he could not make it. He then looked out the window and evaluated his options on where to land, and selected the Hudson. There's nothing 'simple' about landing an airplane in water that is not designed for it, especially a glider.
- marvin 13y agoHehe...the Hudson airplane did not land in the river by default. The default choice in New York would have been to take out a few city blocks. This incident was a textbook example of good decisionmaking under pressure. Most computer guys don't realize this, but you can't save the state of a flight. Most decisions are mostly permanent once made. And some, like for instance all decisions made on an aircraft with no engines, are completely irreversible. So if you don't make the right choice on the first try, you have to live with the wrong choice. At low altitudes under visual flight, a pilot makes multiple such decisions a minute. In an emergency, this number would be a lot higher; on the order of once every few seconds.
- mertd 13y agoThis reminds me of the Northwest flight that overshot the airport 150 miles because the pilots fell asleep. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1222401/Pilots-suspended-falling-asleep-overshooting-airport-150-miles.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1222401/Pilots-suspe...
- 6d0debc071 13y agoI'd potentially trust a well designed autopilot a lot more than I trust the human pilot for routine tasks. As long as there's some sort of alarm for things changing significantly, I don't really see the problem if they want to sleep half the flight - just, you know, wake them up and give them a coffee before landing.
- infinotize 13y agoCould have been a good article promoting awareness about horrendous quality of life for most air crew but the editor just couldn't resist the horrible title and cliches about dangerous humans interfering with autopilot systems. Automated flying isn't as cut and dry as is commonly thought, or as some of the other comments might indicate. Human error is definitely a problem and it's compounded by the realities of pilot working conditions which, unless you're a senior pilot at a major airline, means long hours and low pay. Pay (and most hours counted by regulations) is usually only counted from push-back to the gate and doesn't count hours pilots have to spend commuting, briefing, etc. This is difficult to change with the weight airlines have with the FAA and an industry where an unlimited supply of people who will suffer through anything to fly for a meager living, or in some cases even pay to work (see: "Shiny Jet Syndrome"). Autopilots fly and land extremely accurately [in the US at least, in visual conditions most landings are hand flown, and 'autolands' are done just enough as to keep up with periodic test regulation], but aren't feasible for a complete airline flight. I'm not convinced there is an automated flight management system with sufficient robustness to handle all the contingencies that have to be accounted for on a passenger flight. Drones are a completely different story. They're expendable, and get performance savings from not having life support. An airliner needs a pressurized cabin anyway, so you might as well shove a few pilots inside. And what if the guy remoting into the plane from North Dakota falls asleep? Or the network goes down, for that matter. How long before onboard autopilot figures that out, and has the plane going into survival mode looking for an airport to land (better hope they had great QA), and creates cascading delays throughout the airspace system. Or, hate to say it, another earthquake-tsunami occurs and takes out a couple airports, leaving dozens if not hundreds or airplanes looking for alternates within range. Now you're talking about a total integrated ATC automation. I'm just not convinced we're there yet, or it's coming any time soon. Leave the pilots be and give them some sensible rest/fatigue regulations instead. The best analogy I have seen is that autopilot isn't flying the plane any more than robots in a modern operating room perform surgery while the surgeon sits back and takes a nap. Maybe they'll write an article about how that might be safer for us tomorrow. Disclaimer: pilot. Also, I stole a lot of my information from Patrick Smith, who blogs frequently and crusades against common air travel misconceptions on http://www.askthepilot.com/ http://www.askthepilot.com/
- brianmcconnell 13y agoPilot here (learned to fly at age 16). There really should be a system for allowing air traffic control to remotely control flights en route, so pilots can sleep, read a book, bang their favorite stewardess/steward, etc. The only phases of flight where you really need humans at the controls are takeoff, landing, and uh-oh what the fuck is going on (this being a broad "catch all" category which encompasses everything from an exploded engine and hydraulic failure, see United Airlines / Sioux City, to a medical emergency). I would never fly on a pilotless airliner, but I'm fine with the pilots being asleep at the wheel during the en route phase of flight. There really isn't much to do except look at the GPS moving map and say "yep, we're over Iowa...... yep, we're still over Iowa". Course/altitude adjustments could all be beamed in from ATC. I'd prefer them to be rested up for landing, or in case something unexpected pops up.
- gadders 13y agoHopefully this would also stop pilots interrupting the films every five minutes to tell you what the weather is like and how high the plane is etc etc. YOU'RE A GLORIFIED BUS DRIVER. JUST GET US WHERE IT SAYS ON THE TICKET.
- visakanv 13y agoDo you have a problem with bus drivers?
- gadders 13y agoNo, bus drivers are awesome. But they don't feel the need to disturb 500 people every 20 minutes because they like the sound of their own voice.
- Osmium 13y agoTo any pilots reading this: I, for one, actually like hearing from you from time to time. It's reassuring to hear. Especially in light of this thread!
- blowski 13y ago> The cockpit of the future will contain a pilot and a dog. > The pilot is there to feed the dog. > The dog is there to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything. Not sure who originally said it.
- jedmeyers 13y ago"No aircraft in the history of aviation has crashed because a pilot has gone to sleep at the controls," says David Learmount, a former RAF Hercules pilot and safety editor at trade magazine Flight Global. This is simply not true - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_7425 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_7425
- ksrm 13y agoIt seems that they were very fatigued, causing them to make an error. The crash wasn't caused by the pilots being asleep.
- sokoloff 13y agohttp://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20001206X00805&key=1 http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20001206X... (pilot asleep, non-fatal) http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120922X41332&key=1 http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20120922X... (pilot asleep, fatal) http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20020715X01133&key=1 http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20020715X... (pilot asleep, fatal) http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20110323X62556&key=1 http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20110323X... (ATC-no crash) http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20091223X50505&key=1 http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief.aspx?ev_id=20091223X... (fuel truck driver) I spent 5 minutes looking, which appears to have been more fruitful than the research the original author did.
- EliRivers 13y agoMust be about time the meatbags were removed from the equation. The technology has existed for decades.