Will Airbus “Project Dragonfly” spell the END for Pilots?!

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Sadly what you don't hear about is all the times pilots SAVE an aircraft, or take action that results in no one ever knowing anything was wrong. It's like many things, negative outcomes always draw the biggest attention.

Decades ago, I read a science fiction story where an airplane was about to crash killing everyone on board. The pilot was on the cabin radio explaining what happened and how the plane was doomed. At the end he told the passengers how sorry he was for what was about to happen to them, signed off then left the control room and went home.

I was hoping project dragonfly meant that Airbus is building a plane which can instantly stop, reverse, make 90 degree turns and hover in crazy ways like the actual dragonfly.

The big problem with single-pilot ops is creating the single-pilot. Right now, we take new pilots and make them first officers. In that role, they gain experience and eventually are able to upgrade to captain, where they now mentor and help train first officers. How do you build that experience for the single pilot if the aircraft only operates with one pilot?

As a programmer the idea to use voice recognition on ATC radio instead of just using a text based transmission system seems completely insane. That introduces so much needless complexity and sources for errors.

The whole "one pilot in the flight deck assisted by AI" thing got me thinking about what will happen if a suicidal pilot decides to intentionally crash the plane, like with the Germanwings crash in 2015. Will the AI be able to recognize that?

As an aircraft mechanic, I love seeing the cutting edge tech going into aircraft, but it definitely increases the amount of systems that we as mechanics would have to learn as well as how they interact with other systems. There will always be a learning curve, but more safety, is never a bad thing. The only issue that I can see, is what we're seeing in vehicles with this type of technology on the roads. It is making less aware, more distracted drivers. We have adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, lane departure assist, etc, etc, but it has made drives less and less involved with actually driving and paying attention to their surroundings.

Computer scientist here. Typical AI doesn't actually think. It's based on the training data, and the "reasoning" is usually opaque. When faced with a new situation, AI can get confused in stupid ways and do ridiculous things -- like flying straight into the ground! I vote for keeping pilots in the cockpit or at least keep a pilot monitoring remotely who can seize control if the robot flying gets into trouble. Remember "Hal"!

Single jet fighter pilots crossing oceans sometimes endure trance like microsleeps, which are terrifying. At least with another pilot, you are monitoring each other & chatting etc to keep both pilots mentally stimulated.

Another factor: after an incident, if you only have a single pilot, you lose all the context you get from the cockpit voice recorder. There's nobody for them to talk to, so you have less information about the pilot's mental state and stress level (Unless the cameras and sensors can augment this by some means).

Back in the 1970s, IBM had a presentation that included the quote, "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision." Who will take responsibility should an AI "pilot" make a decision that results in tragedy?

This is what writers/doctors/etc have been saying about generative AI too, like chatbots. If it augments a professional, that's fantastic. If it's seen as a replacement, we're in big trouble.

i want more mentour wisdom like the "pissing in your pants when it's cold" line. Don't think I've ever laughed so hard watching an aviation video!

I don't know about the other viewers, but In believe that I am not alone in saying this: When bad stuff goes down, I was always to think: Wow! I am glad that experienced, human pilots would be on the sticks doing their best to keep me alive and safe. These men and women doing a superb work, usually unnoticed, to protect and support us. Thank you, all. PS : another great video, sir! Thank you.

Don’t forget the Hawker Siddeley Trident back in the sixties, which was able to complete a landing, flare and throttle back automatically in zero vis. I can’t remember if it was coupled to an ILS system, but it was the first, and it worked.

Thank you so much for this video. You talked in great detail about this subject from so many points of view, many of which I didn't think of when reading the news in the first place. I am particularly interested in what you said at the end of the video about the benefit that this system could provide for fuel consumption. We've already seen in history that airliners strive to update also older models even for "little" percentages of better fuel efficiency (this happened for example when winglets were developed). The visual help in navigating the airplane during taxing can also be a profound improvement, helping (together with A-SMGCS) both TWR and the pilots with taxing even in lower visibility conditions. I'm not a pilot, but I studied some of these things at university, and I'm super excited and curious about the future of technologies like this one

I fly the 320, just as a bit of background and i literally CAN'T imagine doing eMCO. Imagine you're on a night-flight, 9 hours (which will be possible with the XLR), having to sit on the flight deck all alone, just monitoring the systems without anybody to talk to. Nobody, absolutely nobody, can tell me that fatigue isn't a factor in this scenario, even if it's only for like 2-3 hours. If this project ever comes to fruition, we'll hear a lot more about "pilots falling asleep on the flight deck", I assure you.

I think the ideal outcome would be all these systems to improve operational capability on a two pilot crew . Using them to switch to one pilot is a double edged sword, you add to the safety with the great technology and simultaneously take away safety by removing the second pilot . Interesting debate for sure. As someone working on their atpl I don't think it will have an immediate impact but only time will tell.

on top of the safety concerns I'd hazard a guess that having a person to talk to takes off the edge of those long flights, so a single pilot cockpit would feel pretty lonely and isolating in those massive aircraft