I think that airbus is aiming at allowing its new planes to be certified to be operated with just one pilot onboard. If the plane advanced autopilot allows the pilot to do the checklist by himself and in case of an emergency takes over the plane safely, it will allow the pilot to concentrate in solving the emergency (engine fire or malfunction) or if the sole pilot is disabled it’s able to safely land the airplane in the nearest airport, it will allow the airplane to be safely flown with one just pilot reducing the crew cost of operating the plane.

On paper, yeah. So, for the beancounters, as usual.

How do you tell the autopilot that there's a crosswind ?

And how does it manage windshear ?

Just rename the Autopilot to "Full Self Driving Beta", to manage expectations...?

You should get in touch with Airbus. I'm sure they haven't thought of those things.

The one thing I'm not sure about is how a single pilot will cope with a major systems fault. It is easy enough to cope with a "simple" failure (such as the loss of a single engine), but it is very easy to get in a "human factors" mess if something unexpected happens (such as a failure that is considered so unlikely it is not taught in a simulator) - and that is where having a second pair of eyes, hands, ... is very useful.

It would not be fun having to run checklists at the same time as having to manually fly a wounded aircraft, especially when near to the ground.

Even engine failure isn't "simple".

There have been several incidents where the overstressed pilot shut down the wrong engine, for example.

I've been binge watching Mentour Pilot on Youtube, and what is VERY apparent is that, under high workloads, pilots panic and do the craziest things, including shutting down the wrong engines. Pretty much nearly every crash is due to operator error rather than equipment.

HOWEVER: There's an astoundingly big caveat to that: Some of the situations are because there's no president: The Air France flight from Brazil, for example: To Have all three speed readings wrong was unheard of, and the pilots had only trained for stalls at low level, not at 35,000 feet.

I misunderstood your comment, and thought that "no president" was some unusual variant of the "best of three" voting system where one could over-rule the other two. Then I realised you meant "precedent".

Is it inflatable?

Only from the Stewardess.

Surely you can't be serious.

I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.

Don't call me Shirley!

(Someone had to say it).

The Cirrus SF50 has an emergency landing system for the event of pilot incapacitation.

https://cirrusaircraft.com/story/cirrus-aircraft-earns-easa-approval-for-vision-jets-safe-return-emergency-autoland-system/

Unfortunately my crappy IT salary doesn’t put me in the market for a personal jet.

All that said, even if heavies are approved to fly with one/no pilot I’m not so sure the market (ie paying passengers) will go for an airline who has robots driving the thing.

It will be seen as a feature.

Also, cheap flights.

also, more profit (yes, I know, it's absolutly NOT the reason it's happening, nosir)

the market WILL go. This argument we've hand many times in the history of the so-called human civilisation. If something can be done, in order to make somebody richer (and to hell with passangers' last moments) - it WILL be done.

Steve McCroskey : They could be miles off course!

Rex Kramer : That's impossible. They're on instruments!

[cuts to the cockpit, where Striker, Elaine, Randy and Rumack are all playing musical instruments]

"The video does not, however, explain how the aircraft communicates with air traffic control for clearance into controlled airspace if the pilot is incapacitated, as that task is completed through human verbal interaction."

I would have thought that as soon as this system is required due to the pilot being incapacitated that ATC would drop everything and clear flights out of the way to allow this aircraft to land as a priority. I don't think ATC are going to be telling the aircraft to go into a holding pattern before entering their airspace.

Exactly.

This is only for a full-blown Mayday. ATC will be keeping everyone else out of the way.

As they already do, because a single pilot landing the aircraft is overworked and so needs the simplest flight path possible.

I think humans pilots incapacitated and computer taking over falls into "Mayday" territory!

> I think humans pilots incapacitated and computer taking over falls into "Mayday" territory!

And what about the other 364 days of the year?

My father used to work in ATC. He said that as soon as an aircraft declared an emergency, the skies would part to get that aircraft on the ground ASAP.

And the accident reports are full of case where anybody reading would go "why didn't they just declare an emergency and get the damn thing down?"

On the tombstones you could write "they didn't want to deal with the paperwork". (stole that from Rod Machado)

I vaguely remember a couple of years ago ryanair had a great, great idea to 'optimise' how much fuel their aircraft hold, both to 'optimise' the cost of each flight, and to avoid (vicious rumour, no doubt) having to wait their turn on approach. I think they did get away with it more than once, declaring an emergency on account of low fuel, but then the story disappeared from media, my gut feeling is that 'somebody' had a _very_ quiet discussion with ryanair behind _very_ tightly closed door about what you can do about improving your bottom line, and about what you won't. But hey, if you don't try, you don't get...

There is already an automated emergency landing system available for light aircraft - Garmin Autoland. When this system is activated (by a guarded switch on the console) it takes full control of the aircraft - notifies ATC - selects the best available airport and lands the aircraft and stops on the runway with no further human input required. This system is intended to cover the pilot becoming incapacitated on an aircraft with a single pilot.

The current high end Autoland (CAT 111c) systems available for big jets require the pilot to select the runway but can safely land the aircraft even in zero visibility.

The first automatic landing of a commercial jet with passengers aboard was on 10 June 1965 - see the Autoland article on Wikipedia for more details.

""A dragonfly has phenomenal vision, the ability to see in 360°, and can recognize landmarks, which in turn help it to define its territorial boundaries," explained Airbus."

Translated: We wanted to call it Dragonfly, and looked for any and every reason to try to make this make sense.

At least they didn't try to manufacture a reverse acronym....

Or ..... "I don't like the look of that weather system" etc etc

Better than an average commercial pilot, certainly. The existing autopilot and autoland is better at keeping the aircraft on the chosen flightpath, wings level, flare at the right moment than most pilots.

It would not be able to choose to do so, though. It'd panic and hand over to the pilot the moment it determined it could not reach a designated runway.

Fortunately it should reach that conclusion within a few seconds of the failure, perhaps giving the pilot more time to make a choice about what to attempt.

Automated guidance for taxiing around a major airport I get.

But would it determine the Hudson a viable alternative or just plough into buildings attempting to reach the nearest runway?

Not remotely useful.

If the pilots are all incapacitated, something which basically doesn't happen unless you have a camera crew in the cockpit or are flying alone, the plane could land itself and if the simple act of taxiing is too much for the computer (it isn't) they can send a fleshbag over to do it.

Once it's on the ground, one way or another all the hard problems are solved.

If the captain had the fish, for example.

There's also the case of [1]pilots fighting each others in the cockpit .

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/29/two-air-france-pilots-suspended-after-fight-in-cockpit-prompts-cabin-crew-to-intervene

The FAA thinks pilots are spending too much time relying on automation, reducing their manual skill and familiarity with their aircraft and increasing the possibility of unchallenged controlled flight into terrain because they trusted the automation. The EASA has taken the reverse position, calling for more automation and less manual control, in order to reduce the possibility of pilot error. Interesting clash up ahead.

to increase airlines' profitability

...

Now, if only there was a way to make passangers bring their own fuel... and seats, and mandatory (bring two, get 5 p off your next flight). And, I dunno, set up crowdfunding before each flight to organize an engine or two? Sharing is caring!

... until that one day, at JFK, where you need a grand wizard like Kennedy Steve to unravel the kitten-mauled ball of yarn. And the "machine" will steer all planes straight into each other. On the active runway.

I mean, sure, a predator and such birds are 'not exactly' a passanger jet, but in the long term...

(hey, anybody free to take over that 767, it's going down... anybody? Oh I don't know, I guess Dave could give it a go, check the canteen... Anyway, gotta go, see you Monday!)