Are Pilot Only Operated planes possible?

[Tim R-T-C]

Operation without two flight deck crew on anything but the smallest flights is also unlikely to ever happen.

On a train if the driver has a medical emergency, the train stops and the systems we have in place, stop other trains around them. Causes chaos, no doubt, but no-one is in any immediate risk.

On a plane, if the pilot has a medical emergency, excepting movie-style good luck of there being a pilot on-board, the plane is going to crash and kill everyone on board as well as there being a high risk of casualties on the ground.

 

[furnessvale]

Given all the talk about Driver Only Operated trains and the fact aeroplanes have co-pilots and air stewards/stewardess', could aeroplanes ever run as POO, pilot only operated?

I wouldn't want to see it happen but what would be stopping i

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Pilotless planes already exist. They regularly drop bombs on Iraq. I fail to see how a scale up in size materially alters the mechanics of the situation.

Public perception is a very different matter. The "driver" on the Victoria line has for years simply pushed a start button. But for union and public opposition, he could have gone years ago.

 

[edwin_m]

Pilotless planes already exist. They regularly drop bombs on Iraq. I fail to see how a scale up in size materially alters the mechanics of the situation.

But there is a pilot, sitting in a shed in Arizona or wherever and no doubt needing a high-bandwidth and high-integrity satellite link. And we don't know (and probably don't want to know) what happens if that link is lost and what that might mean if the plane in question had passengers on board.

 

[GB]

Pilotless planes already exist. They regularly drop bombs on Iraq. I fail to see how a scale up in size materially alters the mechanics of the situation.

Public perception is a very different matter. The "driver" on the Victoria line has for years simply pushed a start button. But for union and public opposition, he could have gone years ago.

Slightly different in the fact drones don't carry people and their much smaller size, weight and fuel quantity reduces risk to those on the ground.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Slightly different in the fact drones don't carry people and their much smaller size, weight and fuel quantity reduces risk to those on the ground.

True, but the technology is there and there's no technological reason why we couldn't have passenger drones.

AF447 shows how messy it gets when there's too much reliance on autopilot and it goes wrong. But still.

 

[edwin_m]

Wasn't AF447 more a case of the pilots becoming fixated on one (wrong) instrument reading when stopping to look at the others and think would have told them what was wrong? An autopilot follows a set of relatively crude algorithms but an automatic flying system would have to be proof against erroneous inputs of this sort.

 

[Dave1987]

Wasn't AF447 more a case of the pilots becoming fixated on one (wrong) instrument reading when stopping to look at the others and think would have told them what was wrong? An autopilot follows a set of relatively crude algorithms but an automatic flying system would have to be proof against erroneous inputs of this sort.

Er no. In the case of AF447 the pitot tubes froze giving the ADIRU spurious data. The auto flight system basically said 'I no longer have the data I need to fly the aircraft' so kicked out the autopilot and gave control back to the pilots. The issue was was that the most inexperienced pilots were at the controls at the time and simply did not believe what was going on. All they needed to do was fly the aircraft, but because they had lost situational awareness because they were so used to the auto flight systems flying the plane they weren't used to keeping themselves situationally aware all the time. The whole point is is that the automation could not fly the aircraft because of the bad data being fed to the ADIRU, and the pilots weren't able to control the situation.

 

[HMS Ark Royal]

Given all the talk about Driver Only Operated trains and the fact aeroplanes have co-pilots and air stewards/stewardess', could aeroplanes ever run as POO, pilot only operated?

Of course they can - ever heard of the Spitfire...?

That was an airplane

And single pilot