早稲田政経 2016 II

1 June 2009: Air France flight 447 is cruising from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it hits a tropical storm in the mid-Atlantic. Minutes later, the Airbus A330 flies into the ocean, killing all 228 people on board. On a sunny July morning four years later, a flight approaching San Francisco airport smashes into the sea wall just ahead of the runway, causing the entire tail section to break off and sending the fractured fuselage cartwheeling across the airstrip. Three people died and dozens were injured. These different incidents appear unrelated, yet they share a tragic similarity: the pilot of each plane believed his flight control systems would automatically prevent the aircraft from stalling or flying too slowly to stay airborne. They were wrong.

It turns out that this type of mix-up is a major contributor to a number of air crashes. And the situation is ( A ). With more things becoming automated, pilots can get confused when something goes seriously wrong, losing track of where the autopilot's responsibility ends and theirs begins. It is a recipe for disaster. So is it time to lose the human pilot altogether? Certainly many in the industry think so. Far better, they argue, for airliners to fly on autopilot, under the remote supervision of human pilots in an office thousands of kilometers away. Safety-wise it seems to make sense ― flight-crew error has been suspected in about half of all fatal airline accidents.

Along with improved safety, pilotless passenger planes could offer dramatic cost savings for airlines and passengers alike. Without pilots, airlines would spend far less on salaries, simulator training, healthcare, layover hotels, and retirement benefits, says Mary Cummings, a researcher at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. That should translate into lower fares, and automated flight should also be more fuel efficient, helping to further reduce costs and cut greenhouse gas emissions. And with the pointy end of the aircraft no longer taken up by crew, spectacular, panoramic views would be on offer to passengers in the front seats ― provided they pay a little extra, of course. There's just one key question: how would you feel boarding a plane without a human hand at the controls?

( B )

Yet automation introduces fresh challenges for pilots. When autoflight computers experience situations they haven't been programmed to handle ―sudden structural damage to the aircraft, say, or extreme weather like that experienced by flight 447 ―they can unexpectedly throw responsibility back to the pilots. Those pilots may become confused over the level of control they have been handed when something goes seriously wrong. Equally dangerous is the fact that flight-deck computers can overload pilots with a stream of alerts, checklists, and audible alarms at critical moments. In November 2010, for instance, an engine exploded on Qantas flight 32 with 469 people on board, cutting 650 control wires. Yet as pilot Richard de Crespigny tried to land at Singapore, he and his co-pilot were disturbed by 120 menus of instructions flashing on their screens.

Cummings believes that the era of fully automated planes is inevitable. In her former job as a U.S. Navy pilot, she realized her fighter jet's autoflight system made her practically unnecessary. It could land the craft on the deck of an aircraft carrier far better than a human, she says. "It adjusted direction, airspeed, and altitude much faster than I could." Computers have the edge in split-second operations because eye-to-brain communication is slower than sensor-to-processor transmission. "From the time you see a stimulus that requires action to the time you act on it is at best half a second," she says. A computer, meanwhile, takes just milliseconds to detect sensor signals and act on them. "Humans cannot keep up."

The experience of the U.S. military with remotely controlled aircraft confirms this―their crash rate dropped markedly the more automated they became. In particular, improvements were achieved by preventing pilots flying during takeoffs and landings, when crashes frequently happened. "Takeoffs and landings are close to the highest workloads pilots experience," says Cummings ― almost half of all fatal airline incidents occur during these stages of flight.

So how far away are pilotless passenger planes? Well, one already exists, in a way. An unpiloted Jetstream airliner operated by BAE Systems, in the U.K., has been flying 800-kilometer trips to see how it interacts with other aircraft and air traffic controllers ―although it still has a crew on board, ( C ).

Despite these advances, it is unlikely that passenger airlines will be the first to introduce pilotless planes. Cummings expects cargo carriers such as FedEx and UPS to be the first plane operators to drop from two pilots to just one. ( D ) to be tested in the same aircraft as those used by airlines, but with no passengers aboard. If that proves safe, we can expect to see cargo airlines abandoning the crew completely by around 2035, she suggests. Instead, a pilot based at a company's hub would watch over a fleet of cargo planes via satellite, ready to assume control if anything goes wrong.

But pilots are unlikely to let themselves be replaced by technology without a fight. "We will only be able to build reliable pilotless aircraft when we can reproduce human consciousness, awareness, and prediction in a machine," says de Crespigny. "Until then it is pilots who have the only chance of saving people." Richard Toomer, spokesman for the British Airline Pilots Association agrees: "Passengers want to know they are in the hands of two well-trained, well-rested pilots. We can't see that changing anytime soon."

1 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (A).
(a) about to improve (b) on the point of being lost
(c ) ready to be forgotten (d) set to get worse
(e) soon to be resolved

2 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
The principal problem with using computers alone to fly planes is that
(a) airlines would have to lower their fares, with the result that they would make less profit.
(b) airplanes then have to fly more slowly, so flights would take more time.
(c) passengers may feel insecure without a human pilot flying the plane.
(d) the cost of maintaining high-end computers is likely to increase the price of tickets.
(e) those flying in the front of an aircraft would find their seats smaller than they are now.

3 Choose the most suitable order of sentences from those below to fill in blank space (B).
(a) And the computer has long been able to pick up a runway radio signal and land the aircraft　automatically.
(b) Autoflight computers can take over when the plane is just 30 meters off the ground.
(e) They then maintain whatever speed, heading, and height the crew program into the flight-management system.
(d) This revolution arises out of a simple fact: computers now do so much on planes that airline pilots rarely have cause to take the controls during any of the three major stages of the flight.

4 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
Computers may cause problems for pilots on planes by
(a) changing the flight path that has been decided by the airline company.
(b) choosing to do something with which the pilot agrees.
(c) disturbing a pilot at an important time by setting off alarms.
(d) losing power suddenly and shutting down.

5 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to complete the following sentence.
According to one pilot who has flown navy jets, computers will eventually replace human pilots because computers
(a) are much more economical to operate on a daily basis.
(b) can be trusted not to panic in a dangerous situation.
(e) do not suffer from physical problems such as getting tired.
(d) react to a situation more quickly than humans can.
(e) require no training of the sort that human pilots need.

6 Choose the most suitable answer from those below to fill in blank space (C).
(a) at all costs (b) in all probability (c) just in case
(d) so they seem   (e) to be specific

7 Use six of the seven words below to fill in blank space (D) in the best way. Indicate your choices
for the second, fourth, and sixth positions.
(a) allow (b) new (c) of (d) technology (e) the (f) this (g) will

印刷用