Flight Attendant As A Back Up Pilot?

Burkhard · Tue Apr 03, 2012 9:10 am

What I see comig first is that the non flying pilot has to service the passengers during calm flight situations and only is in the cockpit if needed...

planemaker · Tue Apr 03, 2012 6:24 pm

Quoting HAL (Reply 96):
Discussion is great here, but little movement happens.

Little movement happens for SP detractors because, as I pointed out, detractors on here do not comprehend the exponential growth of IT. Unless one grasps that fact they will remain wedded to the past.

As I pointed out, by the end of the decade IT will be over 65,500 times more powerful, and by the mid-2020's it will be over 340,282,366,920,936,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more powerful than today.

aeroflop · Tue Apr 03, 2012 9:04 pm

Quoting planemaker (Reply 101):
Little movement happens for SP detractors because

The so called "detractors" are just worried for their jobs. How would you feel that in 10 years there would be half the jobs available? No one wants to end up out of the job.
IT magicians think that computing is the answer to anything. Lets face it writing code is not hard. I have learned several languages myself, in my spare time.

The world population is growing and what the western society is trying to do is get rid of jobs. Where the logic in that is I don't see. The governments should be stopping any advances like that dead in its tracks. Unless they want to be giving out more welfare payments.

planemaker · Tue Apr 03, 2012 9:57 pm

Quoting aeroflop (Reply 102):
The so called "detractors" are just worried for their jobs. How would you feel that in 10 years there would be half the jobs available? No one wants to end up out of the job.

It won't be 10 years because there are so many "legacy" aircraft that are designed for two crew. It will start with the next gen of aircraft. However, I agree with you... no one wants to lose their jobs but it has already happened in many sectors of industry... and it is accelerating. It is not well known that in the US information technology has reduced many more jobs than outsourcing has.

Quoting aeroflop (Reply 102):
IT magicians think that computing is the answer to anything. Lets face it writing code is not hard. I have learned several languages myself, in my spare time.

While more and more people are learning to write code (even NY Mayor Bloomberg is learning!!) it is really the AI algorithms that are critical. Stanford now has several online IT /AI courses that are free (though they don't count for credit). There was an article in Wired about it. The Stanford AI Prof who started this was the one who won the DARPA Challenge. Other universities, such as MIT, also offer many courses online for free.

Quoting aeroflop (Reply 102):
The world population is growing and what the western society is trying to do is get rid of jobs. Where the logic in that is I don't see. The governments should be stopping any advances like that dead in its tracks. Unless they want to be giving out more welfare payments.

You point out a valid point of concern for many people... and there is a lot of change coming... fast. But it is a trend that has been ongoing since the industrial revolution... and is accelerating. Just look at the huge shift in employment numbers in agriculture and manufacturing in the past 50 years. Look at how containerization killed 100's of thousand of longshoreman jobs. Recently I read that in Australia that they are starting to use robotic ore carriers and have plans for robotic ore trains...

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...hines/story-e6frg6z6-1226291014017

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nati...-jobs/story-fn59noo3-1226275195943

I could go on and on with examples of technology killing jobs. That is why I am really surprised at the number of people on here that are quite oblivious to what is coming... how the exponential growth of IT power/performance is going to impact society in very substantial ways.

DarkSnowyNight · Wed Apr 04, 2012 6:54 am

Quoting larspl (Reply 98):

You might be a hell of an aviator. Your no use to me when my colleague is down. Because in that circumstance I am trained to do it on my own. I am not trained to fly with an untrained hobby pilot or flight attendant next to me.

Well Put. I think the crux of this that people are missing completely here is that for the FAs out there, a non-mandatory half day class on how to open windows in no way qualifies one to assist in such a situation. If it were me as an FO trying to operate a flight as a one man show during an emergency, I really am just better off on my own, than trying to teach someone what to do when, or telling them what to say to ATC when, or what systems and gauges to watch. All that accomplishes is to create more work, and this is precisely a time when that is needed least.

We won't even go there where the flight-simmers are concerned...

If airlines really believed that training (and paying) non-flight qualled personnel for these situations was a good idea, they would use mx personnel anyway. They're at least knowledgable with the actual systems involved (though hardly cheaper than pilots these days). That they won't even do that says all we need to know about this idea, IMHO...

Burkhard · Wed Apr 04, 2012 8:24 am

Quoting planemaker (Reply 101):
As I pointed out, by the end of the decade IT will be over 65,500 times more powerful, and by the mid-2020's it will be over 340,282,366,920,936,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times more powerful than today

Yes, but the advanced of artificial intelligence software technology are - what - 10% per decade? If you have ever whatched a robot trying to mew the grass..

A FA who is able to fly an aircraft in an emergency situation isn't the FA of today. He or she needs a long and expensive extra training - far too expensive for a rare usage situation.

I can see a lot of progress in remote control. If a pilot in the airlines dispatch center can take over the controls sitting in a simulator like environment that gets its data, all feedback from the real aircraft, he can for sure land it safely - as long as there is a good bandwidth of data to the aircraft. So when we speak of SP planes, I can imagine the Copilot to be on ground, in principle able to serve several aircraft as long as there is a capable pilot in each of them.

If now there are some deficated jobs in the cockpit that a FA can do to assist with some special training, this may happen.
But still I see more that the second person in the cockpit takes over some more jobs in the cabin. So I can imagine that a 70-seater has two cockpit crew and only one cabin crew since the Co-Pilot is counted as shared betweeen cabin and cockpit. In any emergency the ground captain will jump in anyways, so the Co-Pilot can coordinate what is going on in the back.

One more thing is the legal responsibility. Now it is clear that the pilots are responsible. If a remote pilot takes over, he is responsible. If software takes over, nobody is responsible.

planemaker · Wed Apr 04, 2012 4:31 pm

Quoting Burkhard (Reply 105):
Yes, but the advanced of artificial intelligence software technology are - what - 10% per decade?

It isn't. According to the various organizations around the world working on general AI and replicating the brain, AI will surpass human intelligence by around 2040. But the facts are, obviously, that we don't need anywhere at all near that level of AI for flying an airliner.

As I have pointed out a few times, people, quite naturally, think in linear terms and have a hard time grasping exponential growth. Even if one isn't very knowledgeable about exponential IT advancement one should still have an appreciation for it by simply looking at their cell (mobile) smart phone... and comparing it in capabilities and cost to...

If you told users of the DynaTAC what today's smart phones are capable of, well, you would have a lot of the same responses of most people on this thread... impossible. They are stuck in a linear paradigm and can't grasp exponential growth. Try to imagine what mobile phones will be like by the end of the decade when IT is over 65,500 times more powerful than today.

One would think that drawing insight from the above example that even if someone was not tech savy that they would still be able to extrapolate that SP is a no brainer.

aeroflop · Thu Apr 05, 2012 8:28 am

Quoting planemaker (Reply 103):
how the exponential growth of IT power/performance is going to impact society in very substantial ways.

Exponentially negative that is. Lets face it. We are stuffed for jobs in the future, in ALL industries thanks to the wonderful advances in IT.

planemaker · Thu Apr 05, 2012 4:02 pm

Quoting aeroflop (Reply 107):
Exponentially negative that is. Lets face it. We are stuffed for jobs in the future, in ALL industries thanks to the wonderful advances in IT.

I wish more people would understand what you posted so that society can start actively discussing it... and then prepare for it.

As you can see from this thread, for whatever reason, people just want to remain in a state of denial. And as you said, "we are all stuffed"... "in ALL industries". When you have companies like Foxconn, the maker of Apple products, installing 1-million robots over the next 3 years to replace cheap Chinese workers you know that is another sign that "we are stuffed".

Almost no one will be spared... (of course politicians will make sure their friends are protected). Already, there is a substantial glut of law school graduates with +$100k degrees because most of the work that they do as interns and junior lawyers has been replaced in the US by computers. And Watson (the IBM computer) recently defeated two teams of 3 cardiologists at the Cleveland Clinic (a leading heart center in the US). As I said, I could literally go on and on and on.

Starting in about ten years time commercial SP will be happening... and if people in the industry don't educate themselves to this reality they are really going to be in for a rude awakening.

[Edited 2012-04-05 09:09:56]

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