Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, and landing tests

Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by mehrdadn on Monday July 27, 2020 @04:57PM (#23969288)

Dumb question but what is the benefit? I imagine pilots will still need to be there to take over during an emergency, so it won't save on pilot costs, right? And they can already lay back and relax during most of the flight so it won't really help with fatigue. Is the idea that autopilot can somehow take off with less risk than a human pilot? Can a human pilot take over sufficiently quickly if something goes wrong? Is pilot error during phases where such autopilot could've been running a source of accidents in practice?

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by Robotbeat on Monday July 27, 2020 @04:59PM (#23969311)

I think the idea is you might be able to reduce the required number of pilots from 2 to 1 for some flights.

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by numpad0 on Monday July 27, 2020 @09:39PM (#23971417)

Germanwings Flight 9525

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by Robotbeat on Monday July 27, 2020 @11:22PM (#23971971)

...might have been prevented with self-flying...

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by benhurmarcel on Tuesday July 28, 2020 @03:25AM (#23973231)

had 2 pilots

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by numpad0 on Tuesday July 28, 2020 @12:19PM (#23977334)

Happened when pilot was alone

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by kylec on Monday July 27, 2020 @05:26PM (#23969575)

Or 0, eventually

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by Robotbeat on Monday July 27, 2020 @05:44PM (#23969758)

Sure, but you get a huge amount of the labor cost reduction just by going from 2 to 1 and probably have a much easier time justifying it. Labor costs are already a pretty small part of air freight costs, for instance, so proportionally, the improvement in total costs (in both absolute and relative-to-total terms) from going to 1 from 2 pilots is about the same as going to 0 from 1.

EDIT: Just to illustrate... a 777 Freighter can fly a 5000 mile route at like 500 miles per hour carrying about 100tons of freight, I think in one shift so you only need a pilot and copilot. That’s 50,000 ton-miles per hour. Air freight revenue is about $1.40 per ton-mile, so in terms of revenue, you’re talking $70,000 per hour. Pilot and co-pilot wages are much lower per flight hour than you’d imagine, around $20-50/hour, so combined, they both contribute about $70 in direct labor costs per hour, so already just on thousandth, or 0.1%, of the revenue from the freight they’re carrying. Even eliminating the pilots doesn’t reduce costs much!

Much bigger difference for smaller and slower regional air freight routes.

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by aqme28 on Monday July 27, 2020 @05:14PM (#23969475)

In addition to that-- is the pilot's salary a significant fraction of the cost of a flight?

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by justaguy88 on Monday July 27, 2020 @05:00PM (#23969319)

Cargo flights could fly without pilots, or use remote-control like a UAV

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Re:Airbus' self-flying plane just completed taxi, take-off, ... by kandeel4411 on Monday July 27, 2020 @05:26PM (#23969566)

Probably one benefit is having flights available and running 24/7, human pilots can only fly so many a day

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