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adgjlsfhk1 3 days ago

landing is easy. the hard part is landing with 20mph cross winds and one engine out (or other mechanical failures). we've had auto-land that is 99% reliable for a while now, but you need to get to 6 9s before you have a system safe enough to replace pilots

SR2Z 3 days ago | parent [-]

I think that as long as the autopilot is able to fly in a crosswind or with an engine failure, it can probably land with one. Autopilots are already able to do these things.

I doubt anyone has tested this in depth, but I'm not sure there are too many configurations of airplane these days where a human can safely land it and a computer can't. Maybe if a big chunk of wing or control surfaces were totally gone, but even a human pilot isn't getting 99% reliability in a situation like that.

In any case, I don't think that the first candidates for automation are gonna be passenger flights. It will probably be small cargo planes first - Cessna Caravans and other turboprop aircraft where the cost of paying pilots is roughly similar to the price of fuel.