Zero-pilot ops

There have been a few crashes now attributed to pilots trying to make things more "exciting" for passengers, so here's the inevitable question that's already been brought up in the Electric Aircraft thread:

Do you think zero-pilot ops for skydiving lifts is feasible? Meaning, remotely piloted from the ground or completely autonomous aircraft. There are a few things about skydiving ops that make it different:

• all passengers can have parachutes
• the aircraft only goes a few miles (a few dozen at most) from the takeoff/landing area so if it's radio controlled, there can be fewer issues with control signals
• DZ operators might jump at the potential cost reduction
• FAA/CAA will of course hold the legal stick, but they're mostly concerned with passengers going from point A to B rather than skydiving, and they're also pretty busy with UAVs and autonomous aircraft coming into the scene

Completely autonomous flights have even been done by one of the most popular skydiving aircraft, the C208 Caravan: https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2020/08/25/xwing-debuts-worlds-first-fully-autonomous-air-cargo-flight-using-classic-planes/35548/

Not in the near future.

I think the technical issues will be secondary to the legal issues.

The liablilty issues for self-piloted aircraft carrying passengers is the big one.
I can't see the companies that will be making the systems that fly the planes certifying them for passenger capability for a while.

I know that a plane crash can easily kill folks on the ground, but a 'good' crash with passeners on board is virtually guaranteed to kill someone.

The redundancies and testing/certifying protocols that would have to be in place before the FAA would allow passengers on board would make the costs really high. 

Not 'never', but not soon.
I think we'll see autonomous cars quite a while before autonomous passenger carrying airplanes. 

that would be the best way to get me to stop jumping.

2 hours ago, olofscience said:

There have been a few crashes now attributed to pilots trying to make things more "exciting" for passengers, so here's the inevitable question that's already been brought up in the Electric Aircraft thread:

Do you think zero-pilot ops for skydiving lifts is feasible? Meaning, remotely piloted from the ground or completely autonomous aircraft. There are a few things about skydiving ops that make it different:

• all passengers can have parachutes
• the aircraft only goes a few miles (a few dozen at most) from the takeoff/landing area so if it's radio controlled, there can be fewer issues with control signals
• DZ operators might jump at the potential cost reduction
• FAA/CAA will of course hold the legal stick, but they're mostly concerned with passengers going from point A to B rather than skydiving, and they're also pretty busy with UAVs and autonomous aircraft coming into the scene

Completely autonomous flights have even been done by one of the most popular skydiving aircraft, the C208 Caravan: https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2020/08/25/xwing-debuts-worlds-first-fully-autonomous-air-cargo-flight-using-classic-planes/35548/

Do you think zero-pilot ops for skydiving lifts (remotely piloted from the ground) would stop "pilots" trying to make things more "exciting" for passengers?

Airlines are actually pushing hard for single-pilot ops in commercial aircraft.

But aircraft like A320s and 737s can actually be flown by a single pilot, the co-pilot is there for redundancy.

So single-pilot ops will actually be zero-pilot ops since the single pilot will be there for redundancy. And Airbus is heading down that route, by actually developing and demonstrating autonomous take-off and landing in an A350: https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2020/01/airbus-demonstrates-first-fully-automatic-visionbased-takeoff.html

5 minutes ago, Baksteen said:

Do you think zero-pilot ops for skydiving lifts (remotely piloted from the ground) would stop "pilots" trying to make things more "exciting" for passengers?

Not remotely piloted ones (but not being physically present might change the social 'vibe' or rapport with passengers) but fully autonomous ones would have no interest in such manoeuvres.

The future of aviation is autonomous. Marc Piette, CEO and founder of Xwing, told us last year. "We believe the path to full autonomy begins with the air cargo market, and involves remote operators supervising fleets of unmanned aircraft."

I don’t believe the economics will be there for skydiving operations anytime soon. Pilots looking to build turbine time are willing to work too inexpensively to justify expensive conversions of autonomous software and hardware required for remote flight. Maybe - and this is even a stretch - a multi-plane DZ could possibly fly a fleet remotely with one pilot. However, I’m not confident many DZs will have the capital required to do such a thing. And, if they did, they probably would be better off spending it on something else.

9 hours ago, olofscience said:

There have been a few crashes now attributed to pilots trying to make things more "exciting" for passengers, so here's the inevitable question that's already been brought up in the Electric Aircraft thread:

Do you think zero-pilot ops for skydiving lifts is feasible? Meaning, remotely piloted from the ground or completely autonomous aircraft. There are a few things about skydiving ops that make it different:

• all passengers can have parachutes
• the aircraft only goes a few miles (a few dozen at most) from the takeoff/landing area so if it's radio controlled, there can be fewer issues with control signals
• DZ operators might jump at the potential cost reduction
• FAA/CAA will of course hold the legal stick, but they're mostly concerned with passengers going from point A to B rather than skydiving, and they're also pretty busy with UAVs and autonomous aircraft coming into the scene

Completely autonomous flights have even been done by one of the most popular skydiving aircraft, the C208 Caravan: https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2020/08/25/xwing-debuts-worlds-first-fully-autonomous-air-cargo-flight-using-classic-planes/35548/

I hope so and the sooner the better. Barring that I'm ready to start doing it from tall trees. Tandems might need to do their own hand cams, I guess.