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Comment by lovemenot | Hacker News Reader

Also, let's not completely discount remote pilots

Let's completely discount remote pilots. There is no technology on the horizon which would solve the network latency or sensor fidelity problems that prevent remote piloting from being adequate for handling in-flight emergencies.

I don't claim to be knowledgeable. It's just a hypothetical question.

Surely, it depends on the nature of the emergency. As I understand it, in this Qantas example, the pilots did not need to fly the plane with real-time responses, just to make good decisions.

Let's not completely discount remote pilots, while recognising they are not a universal panacea.

They needed to make a lot of real-time responses when coming in to land, as they had a very narrow window of viable speeds and limited control.

That seems to be correct.

A partial mitigation of these issues could be high bandwidth / low latency networks just in take-off / landing corridors?

There are plenty of times the thing that happens and the bits that save the plane are in remote areas of up high.

They may still need help at landing, or by then it could be relatively normal.

But if you can’t provide that level of help everywhere (including over oceans) the design of the system is choosing to lose planes in a trade off for needing fewer human pilots.

There are probably hundreds of ways a plane could fail that would require constant low latency supervision by a pilot. For example, in this specific circumstance, the pilots had to manually maintain speed within a narrow range of 3-4 knots with a bunch of blown control surfaces.

Let's do completely discount remote pilots, please.

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