Not to say that we don’t need pilots anymore, but that pretty much all the mechanics to fly a plane can be automated now, no? Also, with drone technology you can technically fly a plane remotely and it’s two lives saved in the event of a rare disaster and it would enable the FAA to better investigate if it was caused by human error vs. technical difficulties.
In: Engineering
Autopilots are very good, but only at predictable things. In certain bad weather situations, with unexpected failures, in quite a few airports… the pilots have to be at the controls because the autopilot can’t handle the situation. If an airport is fogged up to the point where planes need to make fully automatic landings they also need to keep more distance, with lower airport capacity and delays as a consequence.
The reason why they’re not flown remotely is because fitting it with 2 extra seats is probably a lot easier than relaying the instrument information and pilot inputs continuously. Also there can be no communication between ground and airplane over oceans.
In case of problems, having someone inside the plane able to look around in all directions quickly, not rely on a network connection that might drop, and being able to move physical switches/levers is absolutely vital. Computers are good, but they’re not very good when getting inconsistent reading if a sensor breaks.
Even if an airplane is fly-by-wire (the “steering wheel” doesn’t directly move anything, it’s just input to the computer) there are some physical overrides. Usually making the landing gear (wheels) drop in case they won’t come down on their own involves operating some crank. So you want someone to do that.
As for investigations, modern airplanes are already streaming information in realtime about their operation. With trained humans on board we also have recordings of what they say in the event of an… incident… which can help immensely, and we can feel a bit better that they’re watching over things when that signal goes down because they plane is half way across the Atlantic ocean.
They aren’t flown by pilots is the simple answer. they have pilots sitting in th cockpit to make people feel safe and for just in cases. sometimes theybwill land the plan manually if they are bored, but that is the simple asnwer. comercial flights are flown by autopilot. the pilot just switches on and adjust the autopilot.
Computer tend to be good at repeatably handling relatively normal, simple situations, even better than humans can. They don’t get distracted or bored and they can respond much quicker and more precisely. But they are much worse than humans at handling unusual or unexpected situations, and computers are basically incapable of dealing with problems that arise from the computer itself.
A human pilot in the cockpit can handle a wide variety of problematic situations better than an autopilot could and the human can also take over if there are issues with the autopilot itself. As a simple example, a human pilot is able to physically look outside to judge things like the altitude or location of the airplane in a way that even the most sophisticated autopilot can’t. It’s relatively easy to make an autopilot that can fly a plane in normal conditions, but it’s much harder to make an autopilot able to compensate for a broken sensor that makes it think the plane is higher than it actually is.
Remote technology has a similar problem. It’s fine in normal situations, but what if there is a signal interruption or other issue with the plane itself? When it’s an unmanned vehicle it’s maybe worth the trade off, but when there are a couple hundred humans on board, you want the pilot in the loop to have as many options as possible. Basically, having an actual human in the plane able to fly it on their own opens up a lot of options for dealing with emergency situations that an autopilot or remote pilot wouldn’t have.
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