Jetstream Retrofit Illustrates How Close Modern Planes Are To UAVs

cylonlover writes with this Gizmag excerpt: "In April of this year, a BAE Systems Jetstream research aircraft flew from Preston in Lancashire, England, to Inverness, Scotland and back. This 500-mile (805 km) journey wouldn't be worth noting if it weren't for the small detail that its pilot was not on board, but sitting on the ground in Warton, Lancashire and that the plane did most of the flying itself. Even this alteration of a standard commercial prop plane into an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) seems a back page item until you realize that this may herald the biggest revolution in civil aviation since Wilbur Wright won the coin toss at Kitty Hawk in 1903."

Re:Would you ride in one?

[GrumpySteen]

At this point? No. In the future? Probably.

If you fly commercial air flights, you already trust your life to most of the technologies involved. As the article mentions, "larger aircraft have autopilot systems that can control takeoff, ascent, cruising, descent, approach, and landing." An unmanned flight was the logical next step in the progression.

I don't think we'll see passenger flights without pilots anytime soon, but you might begin seeing flights where you have only a co-pilot on board. It would be a long time before there would be enough evidence that the pilots weren't needed and the majority of the public would trust the systems enough to be willing to fly.

Re:Would you ride in one?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If it ever gets approved to civilian passenger use, the flight deck would be impregnable from the passenger cabin. All controls will be locked and so even if a terrorist gains access he/she would not be able to direct the plane to high value target. At this point all you they can do would be to crash the plane, which can be done without trying to get to the flight deck. But destroying a passenger airliner in flight would get them big headlines and attention. That is basically what the terrorists want.

Destroying two towers and damaging one building is nothing for a country the size and might of USA. Compared to devastation of WW-II Dresden, Berlin, Stalingrad, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima etc, 9/11/2001 does not even qualify as a flea bite. But 9/11 made more headlines and more news than all the impact made by WW-II news in its day in the prized demographics of the terrorists.

The reaction of the media, and hence the public, is like an auto-immune reaction or allergy reaction. Some harmless pollen grains are detected in the bronchia and the body responds as though it is being invaded by the Ebola virus. So even after we deny the ability of terrorists to fly fully fueled planes into buildings, the media reaction for an attempted terrorist attack, no matter how successful, no matter how far fetched, would ensure the terrorists get their oxygen: publicity.

What we really need to prevent terrorist attacks is large doses of anti-histamine. Just ignore the terrorists, their attempts, their successes, their failures. Only when develop the collective ability to deny them publicity we will win the war on terrorism.

Fuck No

[Anonymous Coward]

That is cool, but would you? Is it more safe if the pilot can't be reached?

There is no greater motivator to avoid crashes than having the driver up front and first to die.

There is no way I'm getting on a plane that is controlled by somebody in a ground based armchair, sucking on Slurm, and not facing any personal risk. If the driver doesn't have skin in the game, I'm not riding.

Pilots are a must for passenger aircraft. I'm not sure about cargo, but I'm leaning toward requiring pilots there too. Especially if they are to share airspace with passenger aircraft.

Re:Fuck No

[RevWaldo]

One thing I wondered after 9/11 and the addition of 'reinforced cockpit doors' is whether pilots actually need access to the cabin at all. Imagine they have a separate entrance onto the plane, and are completely sealed off from the cabin once in flight. (They get all the other basic necessities of life - food, coffee, restroom, etc. - already with them up front.) Additionally, unless officials on the ground feel they need to know, the pilots have no clue what's going on in the cabin - no CCTV feed, no intercom, no cell phones, no nothing. Terrorists could be threatening to slaughter the passengers like sheep, but the pilots aren't informed. So despite the risk to the passengers, the terrorist could never get control of the plane, making an attack on a plane pointless in the first place.

Good idea? Bad idea?

.

Re:Would you ride in one?

[jbwolfe]

With the current retirement age already at 65, and efforts to raise it again to 67, I think we are already where you suggest- old guys in ice cream suits. When I got hired at age 32, I was excited, but soon realized I would have to do this for a long time (age 60) before I retired. I wondered if my body or mind would give out before then- radiation exposure, embolisms, poor diet, working during WOCL, physical inactivity. As if it hasn't already...

Every pilot starts out with two buckets. One is filled with luck, the other empty of experience. Fill the experience bucket before the luck bucket runs out.

Re:Would you ride in one?

[jbwolfe]

The autopilot was flying the plane. At least until it lost needed data to do so. Then as programed, it relinquished control to the only known entity that could cope- human pilots. The error was in flying into the storm in the first place. Thereafter, with conflicting data, the pilots made numerous further errors which aggravated their distress to the point of stall. In large swept wing aircraft, stall recovery is a long process and requires patience and often thousands of feet of altitude loss, while operating in alternate or direct flight control laws (not particularly easy). The rapid descent and threat of impact with the ground did not foster patience and the flight crew was inadequately trained in stall recovery, making the outcome more certain.

As a result, and to my dismay as an Airbus pilot, Airbus have modified their stall recovery procedure to retard thrust to idle- contrary to every thing pilots are taught from the very first stall.

The final mishap report makes very interesting reading (as do most reports): http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/f-cp090601.en.pdf [bea.aero]