The cockpit of the future will have one pilot and a dog. The pilot is there to watch the systems and make sure everything is operating correctly. The dog is there to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything.
Much of the speculation about the MH370 disappearance is about the role of the pilots in whatever transpired. But whether they were heroes or villains or under duress or on a suicide trip, they achieved the changes in the flight path by reprogramming the on-board, flight computer.
For a commercial flight all the pre-flight instrument checks and the programming and the reprogramming where necessary, can be accomplished in advance or remotely. The role of the pilot nowadays seems most intense during taxiing on the ground and at take-off. Thereafter he does not need to play much part. He is still – it is thought – indispensable if an emergency situation were to arise. But even that perception is only true for unforeseen emergencies. For all situations which can be foreseen and then are pre-defined emergencies, the automatic controls would react faster and with more certainty than any human intervention. I am not sure if control systems are already sufficiently sophisticated to cope with all situations on the ground. But even here it is human error which is the main cause of incidents. Collisions on the ground are usually due to some incompetence on the part of pilots or of the ground traffic control.
But it is just a matter of time and we are getting close to the point where the risks of having a pilot will outweigh the risks of not having a pilot!
For military attacks and even for surveillance we are already at the point where pilotless craft pose less risk – for the attacker – than manned aircraft. Drones for military and civil applications are proliferating. In modern fighter jets, the pilot’s survival now limits some of the design and performance parameters of the aircraft. Altitude, speed, maneuverability, rate of climb, g-forces are all constrained by what the pilot can survive. Of course some new risks would be introduced with pilotless, commercial aircraft. With aircraft under remote control, hijacking would become a matter of hacking into the flight computer. On the other hand, the possibility of in-flight hijacking by a passenger would be eliminated. Drunken or suicidal pilots would pose no risk – but computers “drunk” on contaminated code might constitute a new risk. The risk with unmanned cargo aircraft would then be just the possibility of crashing into inhabited areas. Unforeseen emergencies remain an unknown unknown. But even here, the solution will lie with how “smart” the control computers can be made. My car can already correct for a skid faster than I can. It can park in a tight spot neater than I can. Some more “smartness” and automation will also be required in the air traffic control systems. The security and integrity of communications to on-board computers and how and when over-rides will be permitted will pose their challenges.
Driverless cars are coming. I would guess that in 20 years the road infrastructure will allow the majority of cars being sold to be driverless. There are developments in the infrastructure of airports and air traffic control systems which will be necessary and there will be a psychological barrier to overcome, but pilotless commercial aircraft will also – I think – start flying within 20 years. Cargo planes probably first – before passengers are ready to take the plunge.
Airbus future
Related: Future by Airbus
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