I’m not a pilot, but I just flew a helicopter over California
I have 15 hours as a trainee helicopter pilot (non-solo).<p>The key quote is this: &quot;You still need someone with training in communications protocols, what speed and elevation to fly and where the system is <i>unsafe to operate</i>.&quot;<p>Flying a helicopter is, by its nature, unsafe to operate. At any moment, you could have an emergency. If you have someone at the controls who only knows joystick flight when any such emergency occurs, good luck to them.<p>Helicopters are not like airplanes; they are not a &quot;set and forget&quot; experience. You have to actually <i>fly</i> the helicopter from point A to point B. You have to be ready to make that helicopter drop at a moment&#x27;s notice because if the engine dies, you need air blowing <i>up</i> through the rotor to keep it spinning. If it slows down enough, that is automatically &quot;Game Over&quot;. (Search &quot;rotor stall&quot;.) In the helicopter I flew, you had two seconds to get the collective down, and that was only the beginning.<p>Watch [1]. At 1:24, the engine dies, and you hear a horn almost immediately. That&#x27;s the low rotor speed horn. The horn goes off after about a second; that&#x27;s because the pilot slammed the collective full down.<p>Then the pilot turns left and crash lands. Why? Because there were wires in front of him. The wires could have flipped the helicopter. Would a bot have flown into those wires? Almost certainly, and everyone would be dead.<p>Oh, and did you notice that the low rotor speed horn was sounding a lot during the crash sequence? That&#x27;s because during such an event, you have to maintain the rotor speed in balance <i>while trying to pick a spot and bring the helicopter in</i>. He had a full helicopter, so he actually couldn&#x27;t force the rotor speed much higher. And yet he couldn&#x27;t go full down either because that would not slow them down near the ground.<p>In other words, those guys are lucky that their pilot is awesome. And even though he was, they still landed hard.<p>On top of that, as dmitrygr says [2], flying the helicopter is a fraction of what you have to do.<p>I would <i>never</i> fly in a helicopter where the &quot;pilot&quot; was anything but.<p>And the same goes for airplanes. They may be able to fly themselves, but that is only true in non-emergencies. And even in some non-emergencies.<p>Pilots are expensive because they train for the worst, and most of the time, when it does happen, they handle it with aplomb.<p>Bots will not. When it comes down to it, bots will never replace humans where life-threatening emergencies can happen.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uYBf3XPwvaU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uYBf3XPwvaU</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28995347" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28995347</a>