Embraer reveals vision for single-pilot airliners

[robbreid]

Click Here story from Flightglobal.

[High Flyin]

viewtopic.php?f=54&t=65607

And that's just one of the many reason we'll never see single pilot airliners. Embraer is wasting their time.

[ktcanuck]

Never say "never".

It will happen. It is just a matter of when someone can rationalize the risk.

Although my bet will be that the next step will be no pilots at all.

[sanjet]

Will happen one day. But 2020 is way to early.

[YCL Boy]

Maybe one day, but hopefully not during my career...
Thank God Airbus has another pilot on board all their plane LOL...
And i hope the F/O recovers quickly.
========================================================

Air Canada A319 near Montreal on Jun 11th 2010, crew incapacitation
By Simon Hradecky, created Tuesday, Jun 15th 2010 19:28Z, last updated Tuesday, Jun 15th 2010 19:28Z

An Air Canada Airbus A319-100, registration C-FYJG performing flight AC-575 from Montreal,QC (Canada) to Las Vegas,NV (USA), had just reached cruise level FL360 when the captain declared emergency because of the first officer's health condition and returned to Montreal. The airplane landed safely about 40 minutes later, emergency services met the aircraft and took care of the first officer.

The airplane reached Las Vegas with a delay of 3 hours.

The Canadian TSB reported that Boston ARTCC advised Montreal control center about the emergency due to the first officer's medical condition, the crew requesting a priority approach to Montreal.

NAV Canada reported, that the crew had reported a bird strike during departure from Montreal's runway 24L, a runway inspection had not found anything however. About 40 minutes later the aircraft turned around because of the crew incapacitation.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/ACA5 ... /CYUL/KLAS

[trey kule]

I think the first step you will see is that planes will fly with one pilot and a remote pilot. Might even see it start by taking the crusise pilot out and being replaced by a remote pilot.

Three things those that dont believe this is coming should give some thought to.

1. The US military, last year, trained more RPV pilots than fighter pilots
2. Fatigue is beoming a serious issue. Remote pilots , have a nicer schedulingto avoid this.
3. The new first officers are being trained without any thought of Command or flying with the new Multi crew license.

It will happen. Despite the ancedotes people like to post showing incapacitatione etc,, computers may just not make some of the really stupid mistakes pilots do that have caused accidents. Interesting that I have never seen anyone posting a stupid pilot decision that caused an accident as a reason to trust computers and remote pilotings. Catastophic decompression...not a computer problem..
Yes there will be accidents..When the 747 came out there was terrible hand wringing contemplating what would happen if two of them collided. It happened. The 747 is still with us today. And I expect there will be accidents caused by computers and the fact an aircraft is remotely piloted. But it will happen.
And 2020 does not sound all that unreasonable to me

[xsbank]

Nor me. Add to the fact that the majority of airline accidents are human error, sets the stage to have them converted to RPVs or just build 'em without cockpits! Think how much you could get for the front seats, with their great views?

[Meatservo]

"We believe it is technically possible" (quoth Embraer). Of course it is! There are lots of single-pilot aeroplanes in the world, including some pretty technically sophisticated ones, like fighters. Just move all the important buttons to where one guy can reach them. The question is, how are they going to talk people into accepting it?

Also, you can bet SOMEONE is going to want to call herself the "first officer" after the second pilot is gone. I can almost picture a flight attendant's union lobbying to have the head FA designated the "captain", while the pilot is sealed up front wearing coveralls and an orange vest. Then they can replace him with a computer too, and no-one will notice as long as they provide canned "announcements" at the beginning and end of every flight.

I think a real problem is the fact that no-one is going to want to be an airline pilot anymore. They suggest that getting rid of the co-pilot (or are they getting rid of the Captain?) will alleviate pilot shortages. I think it might CREATE pilot shortages. Where are all those low-timers gonna go to collect their $24,000 a year shitty paycheques? Hey, they'll be the ones DRIVING! There won't be any high-time experienced guys up there.

I think it would be refreshing if the manufacturer and the airlines were a bit more transparent about the real reason they want to do this. Just say you're trying to save money. There's no safety justification for reducing the crew any further, unless you want to eliminate it altogether. There's no reason a "remote pilot" needs to be less fatigued than a real one. I can't see a safety-based justification for a one-man airliner. They're trying to tell us (the public) that they're trying to "invent" a way to fly a plane with only one pilot, and that up till now airliners have had two pilots because they're just too darn difficult to handle by yourself. Bullshit. This is just more corporate crap, trying to cover a cost-cutting scheme that has dubious safety consequences with a thinly justified and poorly explained "safety" window-dressing.

[JohnnyHotRocks]

Think how much you could get for the front seats, with their great views?

I will pay $1000 per hour....as long as I can log it!

[KAG]

Sure it will happen, but given mechanical breakdowns, Pilot incapacitation, public opinion and the cost savings being far out weighed by the inevitable lawsuits WHEN these things crash, I just can’t see it happening in my career.
And IF it does, there will always be 2 crew older machines around to fly.

[AuxBatOn]

Sure it will happen, but given mechanical breakdowns, Pilot incapacitation, public opinion and the cost savings being far out weighed by the inevitable lawsuits WHEN these things crash, I just can’t see it happening in my career.
And IF it does, there will always be 2 crew older machines around to fly.

ANd I am guessing that remote controlled and autopilot back up are not sufficient?

[x-wind]

Anyone of those systems could cause a problem or a control anomaly. The pilot in the plane could have to deal with the situation himself. That's more difficult to do solo.

It would be refreshing to hear the real story once in awhile.

[. ._]

I dunno. With all of them fancy avionics, it's probably still cheaper to pay a kid $20,000 a year to warm the right seat.

[Legacy]

I would be curious in what power unions like ALPA would have on this matter. After all they are protecting their jobs.

[altiplano]

-

[Meatservo]

I'm pretty sure I understand why, in a small combat plane doing either really lengthy or really dangerous missions, it makes sense to have the pilot sitting in a trailer somewhere flying the plane by remote. It makes sense to remove the human operator to a safe distance when operating a dangerous piece of equipment. It might even be cheaper, since he is going to be living/eating in whatever place he lives instead of racking up bills in some other country where the aeroplane is.

I'm NOT sure why anyone thinks it would be cheaper to have the pilot of an airliner full of people sitting in a room somewhere remotely flying the plane to and fro, instead of being on it himself. Well, I suppose you're not paying for hotel rooms for the crew, but surely that must be rather negligible. I sure wouldn't be the "pilot" of one of those things if it ever crashed. Imagine killing all those people while you are perfectly safe in an office somewhere.

Another thing that makes me uncomfortable is this idea that they have "suddenly" thought of a way to operate a plane with only one pilot. Planes have been flying with only one pilot since they were invented. I always thought the reason for having two pilots had nothing to do with whether or not one guy could actually physically drive the thing. Therefore I don't believe there can be a technology that suddenly makes it possible to fly single pilot. It has always been possible to fly single pilot. I think the rationale behind two crew is the same no matter how sophisticated the machine is. Therefore I believe this is another case of corporate people deliberately going for a less safe course of action, and trying to obfuscate their true motives by pretending they just had this great idea that will make everything safer and just co-incidentally make them all kinds of extra money. They are going to keep pushing this agenda until they have eroded people's resistance, and then we will all be less safe whether we believe it or not. Maybe they are thinking of a kind of "onstar" for aeroplanes, when the poor single airliner pilot has some kind of a problem, he can push a button, and some semi-motivated aviation college graduate on the night shift in a call centre in Sri Lanka can pull the appropriate checklist up on his laptop, link to the plane's autopilot via bluetooth through the "captain"'s laptop, and save the day. Or not.

I don't think anyone is going to want to be an airline pilot if this ever happens.

[mbav8r]

I would like to know how they'll pilot these around the globe without satelllites. There are some very smart people theorizing that we may lose GPS and have to go back to ground based navigation. They also think it will become impossible to put new satellites into orbit. So as some start to fail or become obsolete we won't be able to replace them.
Pentagon Warns Congress About Space Debris Threats to Satellites
May 28, 2010 | Satellite Today | Staff Writer
[Satellite TODAY 05-27-10] Potential crashes between satellites and space debris may impact the $250 billion space-services market, according to a U.S. Defense Department Space Posture Review report released to the public May 26.
The report, the second debris report produced by the Pentagon since 2007, warned Congress that space collisions and debris might make some orbits unusable for commercial or military satellites. The report cited the February 2009 crash between a defunct Russian Cosmos satellite and an Iridium satellite. The crash left approximately 1,500 pieces of junk each capable of destroying more satellites as they orbit the Earth at 7.8 kilometers per second. A Chinese missile test, which destroyed a satellite in January 2007, left 150,000 pieces of junk in the atmosphere.
According to the Space Posture Review, there are now more than 370,000 pieces of junk in space compared with 1,100 satellites. The Pentagon forecasts orbital congestion will worsen.
Some interesting reading,
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_space_junk/

[AuxBatOn]

mbaviator,

Most modern planes have an INS on board that is updated automatically by the GPS. If the GPS shits the bed, the INS takes over, with some error obviously, but still precise enough to get you to destination.

[Invertago]

We've been accepting single engine IFR for a while now. Then we'll accept single pilot airlines? They talk of pilotless airplanes in the future, whats next, pilot less engine less airlines?

The way things are going we'll have airlines without flight attendants, people will have to pack their own cookies!!!

[Mr. North]

Legacy wrote:

I would be curious in what power unions like ALPA would have on this matter. After all they are protecting their jobs.

Pilots will eventually share the fate of the candlestick maker. Despite advances in candle making, the candle industry was devastated soon after by the distillation of kerosene and later with the invention of the light bulb. In an effort to protect their businesses, members of the French lighting industry even petitioned the government to ban light bulbs! Obviously it didn't work, and I would suggest any effort by ALPA would have the same result.

We will not see pilot-less passenger planes by 2020 but I do not doubt their predecessors will be in use. We see them today taking on roles for military reconnaissance. The next sector will no doubt be mine, airborne surveys. It's no secret the company I work for has a partnership with several universities to construct a remote survey drone prototype. Here, a pilot-less plane will have a number of advantages. The largest would be that the aircraft would be able to operate in any weather condition, over any terrain, without risk and for greater lengths of time. Not having to accommodate pilots, their salaries, and all the heavy survival equipment would merely be an added bonus.

After dominating the airborne survey industry for some time I believe pilot-less planes will prove themselves reliable enough to branch over to the cargo industry. Think FedEx, UPS, DHL, and how much time and money these companies would save. At that point I think it's just a matter of time before the public warms up to the idea of being flown on a pilot-less aircraft. Sure you will have your nay-sayers re-enforced with some crashes, but as with the advent of budget airlines, you simply won't be able to beat the price.

It won't happen tomorrow but it will be here sooner then later. Just look how much gps and computers changed aviation in the past 10-20 years. If you think computers won't be smart enough to fly an aircraft in another 20, your fooling yourself.