Tomorrow is Today

Who Pilots the Plane of the Future: Computers or Humans?

One day “intelligent” passenger aircraft will cruise across oceans in low-drag, energy-saving formations, like flocks of geese. So said European plane-maker Airbus at its annual technology look-ahead conference last night. It’s a striking idea that media outlets lapped up.

Warming to its theme, Airbus added that emissions could be cut by using a superfast ground vehicle to catapult future aircraft into the air, so that it reaches cruising speed and altitude faster. And it could land with the engines switched off, in a long, controlled “free glide” to the runway.

But how will this stuff actually work? With computers, of course. “Highly intelligent aircraft would be able to self organise and select the most efficient and environmentally friendly routes,” says Airbus.

This cosy picture of aviation circa 2050 glosses over the degree to which computers will have to assume control of the finer manoeuvres of such planes, rather than pilots. Close-quarters formation flying involves navigating with very little vertical separation. When a decade ago aircraft began flying across the Atlantic with only 1000 feet (305 metres) of vertical separation, rather than the previous 2000 feet, there was an outcry over the safety implications. The room for error is minimal at subsonic cruising speeds.

Such formation flying might be fine if software were perfectly designed and infallible - but it is not. So I asked Charles Champion, executive vice-president of engineering at Airbus in Toulouse, France, if the company’s vision for 2050 includes handing more control to computers to allow the formation flying, high-angle fast take-offs and extended, unpowered glides they foresee.

Despite the company’s line that an “intelligent” aircraft will do the work, he says that’s not the full story.

(via One Per Cent: Will computers or humans fly airliners in formation?)