Ask the Pilot

Airline pilot Patrick Smith has a great description of how much human skill is required, even while using autopilot: (skip down to the section that begins "Here, let me give you a quick demonstration:") http://www.askthepilot.com/pilotless-planes/

I refer to Patrick Smith as my source[1] The captain of the doomed flight ET302, Yared Getachew, was a graduate of the highly competitive Ethiopian Airlines Aviation Academy, and had more than 8,000 flight hours — a respectable total. “Yared was a great person and a great pilot. Well prepared,” a former Ethiopian Airlines training captain told me. Doesn't sound as if he acquired his 8000 + hours on a crop duster. In addition: Your statement that he was 28 doesn't quite jibe with what the NYT has to say about him[2] By the time he was 29, Yared Getachew was the youngest captain at Ethiopian Airlines. Despite his relative youth, he had spent a decade with the carrier, eventually piloting wide-body jets that crossed continents and oceans. [1] http://www.askthepilot.com/ethiopian-737max-crash/ [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/business/ethiopian-airline-crash-sc…

Downvoted. Your data is terrible and should be cited. The 737Max has only been flying for 2-3 years. Southwest is irrelevant (I say as I sit on a SWA flight on the tarmac in SAN waiting for a replacement crew member). I made damn sure it wasn’t a Max (which I flew on Aeromexico twice back in September). I have no idea where your Ethiopian stats come from because I’ve heard nothing but great things about them. Feel free to rebut. “Or how about Ethiopian Airlines? Here is another impoverished country surrounded by rugged terrain. Yet the record of its national carrier — three fatal events, one of them a hijacking, in over seventy years of operation — is exceptional. Ethiopian is one of the proudest and arguably one of the safest airlines in the world.” http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/foreign-airline-safety/

Patrick Smith, the author and eponymous "pilot" in the title, has been writing interesting articles about flying and a pilot's life for years. He is as much a traveler as he is a pilot and loves what he does. If you have any interest in flying or travel but have somehow not come across Patrick Smith before, check out his archive [1] and his book [2] Pilot Confidential, an update of his earlier book, Ask The Pilot, named for his now-defunct column at Salon.com iirc. [1] http://www.askthepilot.com/archives/ [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16235130-cockpit-confidential

Patrick Smith wrote the "Ask the Pilot" column for Salon.com for 10 years, ending last year. His writing was always very insightful and very entertaining at the same time. One of my favorites: http://www.askthepilot.com/essaysandstories/the-exploding-toilet/ It seems he came back to slate.com as a one-time thing, but you can read his archived work at Salon and at www.askthepilot.com. He seems to have a book as well now.

Try standing next to one even at low rpm. Rotor noise becomes a factor at high rpm, but then the engine still is noisy itself. As a private pilot, small-aircraft engines are noisy as f... Among the reasons: No development at all for about two decades when the small-aircraft market was down (which is why you see so many built decades ago, then a big gap, and only in the late 1990s new developments started to come to market). Other reason, but it's part of the first one (due to the costs involved): being conservative. If you only have one engine and you have a very reliable one, that's what you keep using. Especially when the costs of developing something new and getting it approved - and you have to repeat that in different regions with different government agencies - are very high. It is true though, when a propeller airplane flies overhead you get significantly more noise when it is directly perpendicular, when you get the most noise from the propellers. Jet engines had a significant positive development in this area. On the small Livermore (CA) airport I had the chance to compare two small jets, an old one and a new one. The old one made me cover my ears. The new one - less noise than a Cessna, quite amazing. In this context, an anecdote, but about noise on the inside: I always thought sitting in a glider would be quiet. It is - if you keep the little window shut. But then the cabin heats up too much (at least flying in California). I was very disappointed about my 1…

Could have been a good article promoting awareness about horrendous quality of life for most air crew but the editor just couldn't resist the horrible title and cliches about dangerous humans interfering with autopilot systems. Automated flying isn't as cut and dry as is commonly thought, or as some of the other comments might indicate. Human error is definitely a problem and it's compounded by the realities of pilot working conditions which, unless you're a senior pilot at a major airline, means long hours and low pay. Pay (and most hours counted by regulations) is usually only counted from push-back to the gate and doesn't count hours pilots have to spend commuting, briefing, etc. This is difficult to change with the weight airlines have with the FAA and an industry where an unlimited supply of people who will suffer through anything to fly for a meager living, or in some cases even pay to work (see: "Shiny Jet Syndrome"). Autopilots fly and land extremely accurately [in the US at least, in visual conditions most landings are hand flown, and 'autolands' are done just enough as to keep up with periodic test regulation], but aren't feasible for a complete airline flight. I'm not convinced there is an automated flight management system with sufficient robustness to handle all the contingencies that have to be accounted for on a passenger flight. Drones are a completely different story. They're expendable, and get performance savings from not having life support. An…

No - planes cannot "land themselves with zero human intervention" (...). A CAT III autoland on commercial airliners requires a ton of manual setting of systems and certificated aircraft and runways in order to "land themselves" [0][1]. I'm not fully up to speed on the Autonomi / Garmin Autoland implementation found today on Cirrus and other aircraft -- but it's not for "everyday" use for landings. [0] https://pilotinstitute.com/can-an-airplane-land-itself/ [1] https://askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/

"Damn it Jim, Barry on floor 88 killed the server again.." Makes me think of one of the pilots' first reaction when 2 planes collided on the runway in Tenerife, from https://askthepilot.com/essaysandstories/tenerife-we-gaan/ : > Knowing they’d been hit, Bragg instinctively reached upward in an effort to pull the “fire handles” — a set of four overhead-mounted levers that cut off the supply of fuel, air, electricity, and hydraulics running to and from the engines. His arm groped helplessly. When he looked up, the roof was gone.

This is your scheduled reminder that there were 37 million scheduled passenger flights in 2023, of which one (1), a turboprop crash in Nepal, resulted in fatalities. There were zero (0) fatalities in commercial jet aviation, not just in the US but the entire world: https://askthepilot.com/safest-year-2023/ In computing terms, that's 99.99999%, or over 7 9s of reliability, for ginormous machines flying through the sky in all sorts of crazy weather conditions. So, yeah, we've engineered things pretty damn well.

This is not a rare misconception. Patrick "Ask the Pilot" Smith answers it: https://askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/

"Imagine if the average programmer needs 5 highly specialized laptops to improve their job prospects -- not many will do that even when they have the money." This may also mean that the average programmer will be stuck with a concrete platform, because the cost of migration would be too high. There is a similar situation in a different highly qualified field - airline pilots. If you are a pilot and want to change to another airline, you lose all your seniority and begin at the bottom of the ladder, even if you are an experienced captain with a lot of miles under your belt. [0] [0] https://askthepilot.com/questionanswers/seniority/

There are a lot of extremely common myths about how the air on airplanes is "recycled", stale, full of germs, even so far as "they lower the oxygen level to get people to sleep" and stuff like that. https://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/cabin-air-quality/

I'm glad Mr. Sullenberger spoke up about this. As some people have pointed out in this thread, Langewiesche is indeed a terrific writer, but the tone of the piece in question was off-putting. For those who're interested, Patrick Smith (aka Ask the Pilot) also wrote a critical piece about the article last month: https://www.askthepilot.com/plane-and-pilot/

From Google Image search: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/why-airlines-use-tape-to-fix-their-pl… http://www.askthepilot.com/duct-tape/

Oddly enough, this article is almost word for word the same as one about the Vegas crash it mentions (and links to): http://www.askthepilot.com/emergency-etiquette/

Same author has Ode to 757, http://www.askthepilot.com/757-v-737/, and is not a fan of 737. He talks about how Boeing is working on replacemenT to 757 and suggests upgraded 767.

Nope. Nope nope nope. It can, very theoretically, do each of those things, but it can't switch those modes, must not take off automatically (there's no safe way to do this, and therefore would be very illegal), and requires vigilance that's above manual w/r/t landing. Please stop perpetuating urban legends. http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/

That's neat! A popular online resource about these topics is http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/turbulence/ (which also links to a number of other references).

Ask any pilot for American Eagle how much they make... I now work for the travel industry and so get to see lots of articles on how the pilots are underpaid. I also saw an article here on HN about the seniority pyramid scheme (which I can't find now). http://www.askthepilot.com/pilot-shortage/ Salaries have traditionally started out as low as $20,000 a year (in some cases even lower), and have topped out at under six figures.

Autopilot's role and level of capability is often grossly overstated: (All but the last link are from Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot, author of the "Ask the Pilot" column and my go-to for debunking this particular myth) http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/ http://freakonomics.com/2011/12/12/cockpit-confidential-the-autopilot-… http://blog.expertflyer.com/expertflyer/2011/09/ask-the-pilot-series-p… http://flyingforeveryone.blogspot.com/2012/01/autopilot-myth-what-your… I'm unsure what you mean by route "safety" -- how easily autopilot could be used to automate a flight depends on weather, how busy the airports are, mechanical condition of the aircraft, etc.

And here's the exact source of the businessinsider.com article - http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/turbulence/

It's embarrassing that Boeing is still making 737 variants. The first flight of a 737 was over 50 years ago. Yes, most of the systems have been upgraded, but it still has the same small fuselage diameter. Patrick Smith, who's flown both and writes "Ask the Pilot", complains that Boeing discontinued the 757 and continued the 737 instead of developing something better. [1] From his perspective, the 737 is underpowered, has too-high takeoff and landing speeds, and doesn't fly as well as the more modern aircraft. Boeing says they need to make at least 1500 aircraft of a new model to break even, and don't think they can sell that many of something in 737 size. [1] http://www.askthepilot.com/757-v-737/

It must be defined somewhere in law or regulation. Based on http://www.askthepilot.com/how-to-speak-airline/ it seems like "boarding" means to enter the plane.

Clarification by AskThePilot [1]: For the record, and to correct something that virtually everyone has pointed out: this was a United Express flight, not a United Airlines flight, operated by a contractor company called Republic Airways. The crew members were not United employees at all. That doesn’t mitigate what happened, and I don’t know which employees — Republic crewmembers or mainline United customer service employees in the terminal — were the ones who made the call to have the passenger taken off, but it’s important to note. [1] http://www.askthepilot.com/passenger-forcibly-removed/

Pilots who fly better routes do get paid more. Because seniority. http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/seniority/ (better may not always equate to most profitable though, it might be other things like schedule)

"Autopilot" is understood to mean "the plane flies itself" by the general public. Here's one human pilot who's ticked off by it: http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/

"Co-pilot" is just a colloquial term for the first officer on a flight. Both the captain and first officer are "pilots" and both are fully qualified to operate the plane. http://www.askthepilot.com/copilots-are-pilots-too/

This comment sounds a lot like the writing at http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/.

It makes perfect sense when the top priority is being able to isolate electrical systems in case of an electrical fault or an in-flight fire: http://www.askthepilot.com/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/