The solution to pilot shortage?

[Rockie]

No really, if me or any other pilot is already obsolete we're not needed right? We are just getting in the way and of no use. More specifically the judgement we bring to the job is not needed since that's what we're discussing here.

You said I was already obsolete, I disagree. Prove I'm obsolete...

Air Canada 759

Are you suggesting a pilotless airplane wouldn't have done that...or much worse? Personally I doubt a pilotless airplane would have made it to the takeoff runway to begin with without causing some kind of incident, and certainly wouldn't have made it all the way to San Francisco without causing a catastrophe without everybody else getting out of the way.

[confusedalot]

Bullet trains and ships still have crews. Just say'n. But hey, airplanes are far simpler than these objects.

[JeppsOnFire]

No really, if me or any other pilot is already obsolete we're not needed right? We are just getting in the way and of no use. More specifically the judgement we bring to the job is not needed since that's what we're discussing here.

You said I was already obsolete, I disagree. Prove I'm obsolete...

Air Canada 759

Are you suggesting a pilotless airplane wouldn't have done that...or much worse? Personally I doubt a pilotless airplane would have made it to the takeoff runway to begin with without causing some kind of incident, and certainly wouldn't have made it all the way to San Francisco without causing a catastrophe without everybody else getting out of the way.

Are you suggesting a pilotless airplane would have flown the Bridge Visual for 28R?

Think bigger. Our contemporary air traffic system would be incompatible with a pilotless airplane. No visuals, increased spacing, more aircraft and airport system redundancies. Pilotless just means no asses in the front seats - it doesn't disqualify remote intervention during flight by a breathing human. The whole system would need an upgrade - so a target of 2025 is ridiculous. Thankfully, not likely while I'm a working pilot and probably not even after I retire and I'm just riding in the back.

Remember when we all cried foul when the first fly by wire came down the line? It's coming. Baby steps.

[Panama Jack]

It seems like many people assume that technology develops in a linear fashion (i.e. looking back at the last 20 years to project the next 20). However, it seems that technological development has followed somewhat of an exponential curve since the last 100 years. This makes it difficult to accurately predict the future but I never thought even 10 years ago that I would be corresponding with you folks for free using my phone.

[Rockie]

What people are claiming is that a time will come when either judgement will no longer be required in aviation, or human judgement will be replaced by artificial judgement. The former will never happen because there will never be a time when all the variables can be controlled. The latter will require true artificial intelligence, and that opens up a can of worms so big aviation will be way down the list of ethical and practical concerns.

[B208]

I can see this happening for scheduled airline service, (i.e. aircraft flying to a controlled airport with runways served by ILS's or LPV). I don't see it happening in smaller bush operators or charter flights to remote airports. The human judgement will still be required, but could be supplied from the ground either in the form of ATC or remotely piloted aircraft.

The down fall to this system is that it is not robust. A couple of dudes with GPS jammers could toast the whole system.

[Mach1]

Let's start with this:

http://mothership.sg/2017/01/5-white-co ... to-robots/

And this:

https://www.top500.org/news/watson-prov ... ng-cancer/

This:

https://qz.com/875491/japanese-white-co ... elligence/

Or this:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/automat ... -1.3982466

This:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ollar-jobs

Or this:

http://time.com/4742543/robots-jobs-machines-work/

The world is undergoing a rapid change and it's not just blue collar labour jobs on the chopping block anymore. AI's are currently better at diagnosing patients than doctors, helping people with legal problems, have all but eliminated stock brokers and financial advisers. People are increasingly more comfortable dealing with machines than people.

The real issue will become, what happens when the working class becomes the useless class? Society is going to undergo some major changes in the next 50 years.

[Mr. North]

I remember posting a bout this ten years ago when the majority of pilots were in denial. Interesting to see the evolution of perception here.

It is only a matter of time of course and change won't come all at once, it will be small but methodical. The military of course is constantly expanding it's drone program. Who's next? Aerial survey. It's already happening on a small scale. Soon regulations will be in place to allow for large drone, long range surveys. Crop dusting, fire suppression.. high risk, specialised (expensive) sectors of aviation will be next. After that it will be air cargo. Think FedEx, UPS, CargoJet, all stand to gain from pilotless aircraft, especially since there are no passengers to object. While this is occurring I can see airlines going down to one pilot. Eventually the airlines will be pilotless (starting with the budget carriers), although they will most likely be the last segment in aviation to do so.

I think my career is safe for at least the next 20 years. The only wildcard I see on the horizon is the acceptance of autonomous cars. It's interesting how people fear flying without a pilot but they have no problem getting into an autonomous car (which I find to be much more dangerous, at least right now). With the wide scale adoption of autonomous cars comes widespread acceptance of AI in other fields like aviation. So if in 5 years everyone is letting their car drive them to work, well I'd argue autonomous airliners won't be far behind.

We are far from the only profession threatened by AI. Everyone from truckers and retail sales to nurses and accountants will feel be impacted. The future of employment in general is going to undergo a radical shift over the next several years. And as some people mentioned here, exactly how does someone coming out of high school plan for their future? Good question. If you were 20 today with a fresh CPL, can you honestly say that you'll retire as a 777 skipper at 65? Hard to picture where any of us would be at that point.

[digits_]

The only thing you'll always need will be instructors to get people their PPLs.

Instructors have the best job security.

That being said, companies are still operating 1944 airplanes commercially. Taking that logic into account, it is going to be at least another 74 years untill the last "airplane-with-pilot" is going to disappear if we all switch to pilot less airplanes tomorrow.

[trey kule]

The real issue will become, what happens when the working class becomes the useless class? Society is going to undergo some major changes in the nex

Lets see. The govt will have to figure out how to tax robots

They will have to change the charter to ensure terrorist robots have their rights protected

They will have to prepare for an influx of criminal refugee robots entering the country illegally

The pilots unions will demand longer rest periods for robots to recharge

Yes there will be changes

[mato]

Automation will happen. wont be long. We need to rethink wealth distribution. How will people make money? We wont need to work for a living, we will just live for a living... Sounds fantastic to me! Biggest issue with automation (as we know it will be more reliable than the human) is that its not ever going to be 100% perfect. We will need to program it with the logic that it will use when it has not choice but to "fail".

Take a car for example, if the automated car is put in a situation where it must crash either into the car in front of it or swerve to the side-walk and hit a person. What logic will we program the automation, hit the car or hit the person walking? We can't always make it fool proof. Fact is, why do we care to have pilots up front? Its all about blame. Us humans like to point the finger and always blame someone. That is easy to do when we have people at work. We need that liability and ability to point the finger and assign fault. With automation when we crash, it's no ones fault. The car, the plane, the train did as the logic was programmed. It will always have to be an "act of god". I think that is the one big hurdle to the revolution.

[confusedalot]

Well....better get those pilotless planes up and running in a big hurry. Now that the cat is out of the bag, who in their right young mind will train as a pilot?

Bad moon rising, this is going to be fun to see.

[FighterPilot]

Full automation is going to happen, no question about it. I think it's foolish for us pilots to deny it. We don't want to get caught like Sears or Blockbuster being fine with the status quo. That being said, I feel the trucking, train and shipping industry will come first and with what is learned there applied to aviation. I envision the airline industry will be the first to adopt pilot less aircraft, they've got the best infrastructure set up for it and one could argue it's already heavily automated. I could see them going down to just single pilot airlines first before fully removing someone up front. Like the Second Officer, the First Officer will soon be a thing of the past. However, when you look at how dated the infrastructure is in Canada's north, NDBs for example, some of the northern/bush flying will be the last to be automated. I can't see all the northern operators running out and replacing their aircraft with shiny new robot planes, there might be an excess of pilots again driving down wages and making the older "dumb" planes cheaper to operate.

It will be interesting to see how this will all pan out. Someday all us young pilots will be sitting around telling stories of the "good old days" of how we actually had to fly the aircraft in the past.

[confusedalot]

Seems to me that GPS driven equipment would easily solve the Northern issue; the question of course is whether the operators could actually afford the shiny new pilotless planes. Fancy updated super precise GPS with an autoland=lots of dollars. One thing that can be kicked down the priority list up North is traffic avoidance, easier to manage than high density airspace, so maybe a cheaper form of the serious top shelf avoidance wares?

I can actually see all of this happening in tame airspace before it hits Atlanta.

[timel]

No more pilots, no more avcanada
Damn.

[av8ts]

The bots will still be on here

[complexintentions]

This again. *sigh*

I agree with Panama Jack. I find the attempts to extrapolate past advances to future ones, absurd. I also think Rockie nails it a few posts earlier. To believe that autonomous aircraft are just around the corner is to display ignorance as to the sheer amount of human judgement required on each and every flight.

Analogue DVD’s to digital streaming is not a valid analogy to pilotless aircraft. Horse-with-rider to car-with-driver, is not analogous to piloted-to-pilotless aircraft. The automation of land-based vehicles, operating in two dimensions with the luxury of braking to a halt, is not remotely the same thing as aircraft, traveling in three dimensions and unable to stop mid-flight (other than in very unfortunate ways). Three pilots to two pilots is not the same as two to one, or removing them altogether, when considering redundancy. "They don't have to be perfect, just better than humans." Not a very high bar to clear with most human car drivers! A little different when examining aviation accident rates versus auto accident rates, or comparing the loss of life in a single aircraft accident versus a single automobile one. The point is these articles are riddled with false analogies and inflated premises. Sheer number of clickbait links does not make them more “true”. A robot that makes (with human help) more precise sutures than a surgeon is proof the surgeon is nearly obsolete? Give me a break.

Who designs, builds, and programs the machines, computers and software that take over from the humans? That's right - other humans. Shifting the weight of "human error" from pilots to software engineers is a lateral move (that's being charitable), not a move forward. And even if one day, how to create something smarter than the creator is somehow resolved, ceding control to such machines poses far bigger issues than worrying about losing pilot jobs. But put me in the camp of being skeptical that imperfect humans can create perfection in machine form. It’s antithetical to both the laws of logic and entropy. Human error is human error, with software it just gets embedded in the code. Silicon Valley hubris aside.

I'm not foolish enough to discount the pace of technological advance. But I've yet to see anything remotely compelling in any of these breathless articles predicting the imminent wide-scale arrival of completely autonomous passenger aircraft. Just saying, if they want to make their point, they'll have to do far better than holding up driverless trains and Google cars and robot arms that throw switches as "proof" of autonomous airliners. None of these operate without human decision-making and oversight SOMEWHERE in the process nor at anything resembling an acceptable level of reliability without it. The article quoted makes vague references to "recent advancements in aeronautics". Since when is the obstacle to autonomous flight a question of aeronautics? The field of artificial intelligence is far more relevant. The aeronautics have been largely solved decades ago. It speaks to the credibility of this popular meme.

Personally I think that rapid technological advances in energy sources, aerodynamics, engines, avionics, materials, man-machine interface, or a whole new yet-unforeseen form of transportation that renders aviation, not just pilots, obsolete, are all far more likely that an as-yet not technically possible, prohibitively expensive conversion of the entire present system for theoretical improvements in safety and highly questionable economics. Hell, the A380 will NEVER turn a profit, and it's one machine, current generation! Hysterical reactions to things like AC 759 (how many people died there, again?) tend to distort the fact that aviation is already an almost absurdly safe way to travel. Entrusting it entirely to software will make it even safer? Does anyone who believes that actually USE computers? The return on investment just isn't there, not for safety gains, not for economics.

In other words...I don't see pilotless, autonomous aircraft any time soon as wholesale replacement to the current system. Sure, niches like military drones already exist, and will continue to expand. And I am not saying "never" to the fanciful scenarios envisioned in some of these articles. But first it has to be technologically possible. Which would require true AI - not sophisticated algorithms and sensors, but true self-aware machines. Not there yet. Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won’t, it's certainly not a foregone conclusion. But then it would also have to be economically advantageous to the point of redesigning the entire infrastructure. An even bigger obstacle. All this must happen in a timeframe that precludes being leapfrogged entirely by any new transportation technology - the pace of technological advance also applies to competing technologies, after all. And lastly it presumes that the whole world is preoccupied with similar goals as ours, when the truth is vast swaths of the planet are still focused on trying to find enough food to survive another day.

Meh. I'm still waiting for the flying cars in every driveway we were promised in the 50's. Completely technically feasible, so where’s mine?

[GATRKGA]

This again. *sigh*

I agree with Panama Jack. I find the attempts to extrapolate past advances to future ones, absurd. I also think Rockie nails it a few posts earlier. To believe that autonomous aircraft are just around the corner is to display ignorance as to the sheer amount of human judgement required on each and every flight.

Analogue DVD’s to digital streaming is not a valid analogy to pilotless aircraft. Horse-with-rider to car-with-driver, is not analogous to piloted-to-pilotless aircraft. The automation of land-based vehicles, operating in two dimensions with the luxury of braking to a halt, is not remotely the same thing as aircraft, traveling in three dimensions and unable to stop mid-flight (other than in very unfortunate ways). Three pilots to two pilots is not the same as two to one, or removing them altogether, when considering redundancy. "They don't have to be perfect, just better than humans." Not a very high bar to clear with most human car drivers! A little different when examining aviation accident rates versus auto accident rates, or comparing the loss of life in a single aircraft accident versus a single automobile one. The point is these articles are riddled with false analogies and inflated premises. Sheer number of clickbait links does not make them more “true”. A robot that makes (with human help) more precise sutures than a surgeon is proof the surgeon is nearly obsolete? Give me a break.

Who designs, builds, and programs the machines, computers and software that take over from the humans? That's right - other humans. Shifting the weight of "human error" from pilots to software engineers is a lateral move (that's being charitable), not a move forward. And even if one day, how to create something smarter than the creator is somehow resolved, ceding control to such machines poses far bigger issues than worrying about losing pilot jobs. But put me in the camp of being skeptical that imperfect humans can create perfection in machine form. It’s antithetical to both the laws of logic and entropy. Human error is human error, with software it just gets embedded in the code. Silicon Valley hubris aside.

I'm not foolish enough to discount the pace of technological advance. But I've yet to see anything remotely compelling in any of these breathless articles predicting the imminent wide-scale arrival of completely autonomous passenger aircraft. Just saying, if they want to make their point, they'll have to do far better than holding up driverless trains and Google cars and robot arms that throw switches as "proof" of autonomous airliners. None of these operate without human decision-making and oversight SOMEWHERE in the process nor at anything resembling an acceptable level of reliability without it. The article quoted makes vague references to "recent advancements in aeronautics". Since when is the obstacle to autonomous flight a question of aeronautics? The field of artificial intelligence is far more relevant. The aeronautics have been largely solved decades ago. It speaks to the credibility of this popular meme.

Personally I think that rapid technological advances in energy sources, aerodynamics, engines, avionics, materials, man-machine interface, or a whole new yet-unforeseen form of transportation that renders aviation, not just pilots, obsolete, are all far more likely that an as-yet not technically possible, prohibitively expensive conversion of the entire present system for theoretical improvements in safety and highly questionable economics. Hell, the A380 will NEVER turn a profit, and it's one machine, current generation! Hysterical reactions to things like AC 759 (how many people died there, again?) tend to distort the fact that aviation is already an almost absurdly safe way to travel. Entrusting it entirely to software will make it even safer? Does anyone who believes that actually USE computers? The return on investment just isn't there, not for safety gains, not for economics.

In other words...I don't see pilotless, autonomous aircraft any time soon as wholesale replacement to the current system. Sure, niches like military drones already exist, and will continue to expand. And I am not saying "never" to the fanciful scenarios envisioned in some of these articles. But first it has to be technologically possible. Which would require true AI - not sophisticated algorithms and sensors, but true self-aware machines. Not there yet. Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won’t, it's certainly not a foregone conclusion. But then it would also have to be economically advantageous to the point of redesigning the entire infrastructure. An even bigger obstacle. All this must happen in a timeframe that precludes being leapfrogged entirely by any new transportation technology - the pace of technological advance also applies to competing technologies, after all. And lastly it presumes that the whole world is preoccupied with similar goals as ours, when the truth is vast swaths of the planet are still focused on trying to find enough food to survive another day.

Meh. I'm still waiting for the flying cars in every driveway we were promised in the 50's. Completely technically feasible, so where’s mine?

That was one phenomenal post. / slow clap.

[av8ts]

+1

[rxl]

But first it has to be technologically possible. Which would require true AI - not sophisticated algorithms and sensors, but true self-aware machines. Not there yet. Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won’t, it's certainly not a foregone conclusion.

Great post Complex! I chose to quote these sentences of yours because it gets to the heart of what worries me the most about the "brave new world" that the AI types are racing all of us headlong towards. Like you said - "Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won't" - but at some tipping point "It" WILL in all likelihood get there and at that point do we really know what the outcome will be? Up to that point, we have been in control and we have been the "creators". After that, all human bets are off. Do we really want self-aware, self-motivated machines?
I think we need to think long and hard about the long term outcome of this.