Pilotless aircraft. Look out Fed Ex wannabees.

[J32driver]

Nothing will ever move again. How many times have you taken an airplane with a minor or intermittent glitch that by the book might have grounded it at an outstation?

How many times have you visually dodged the anvil not painting on the radar?

How many times have you intervened because the autoflight/fms/autothrust wasn't doing its job?

How slow will the airspace system get when you can't give a robot a visual approach to speed things along?

There isn't a commercial airline pilot worth his sack that would ever argue for this. Go ask a predator pilot how many they lose in theater because of communication loss!

 

[STREAKS]

Stand by for the "Jewish Airplane Programmers Association" thread!

 

[acaTerry]

Pilotless cargo and passenger ops will happen in our lifetimes.

And they will very likely be safer. "Pilot error" causes a huge amount of accidents. Sad but true.

Been saying it for years, and no one wants to believe it.

Design it....at least 5 years (the miliary doesn't count: I'm talkin' passenger planes here).
Test it....at least 3 years
Prove it....at least 5 years
Submit it...at least 1 year
FAA test it...at least 3 years
Red tape it...at least 2 years
Sell it...at least 3 years
Implement it...at least 2 years
Get the public to trust it...who knows

No, not in our lifetimes. Also, consider that ATC radar can not do the job on WX avoidance. So it flies into a big storm, injures pax, no one in the cockpit to negotiate a deviation, or even ask for other altitudes for everyday turbulence. Pax get injured, lawsuits....I just don't see it any time soon.

 

[MDAutry]

Depends On How Long You Believe People Will Live After 2025....

 

[d.fitz]

I am pretty sure the Fedex contract already addresses and prohibits pilot-less aircraft being flown by Fedex... The technology is already there, and they are planning ahead...

 

[WSurf]

I agree, not in our lifetime! Technology is there, however its along way from happening!

I could see going to a 1 crew cockpit with the system as a back up before it would go totally pilotless.

 

[Huck]

Whether they are holding a yoke or typing on a keypad, humans will continue to make mistakes that put airplanes into the ground.
__

I like the analogy of the ham and eggs breakfast: the chicken is involved, but the pig is commited....

Pilots make safety decisions based on their desire to see their kids again at the end of a trip. A drone operator on the ground just don't feel that in his gut.

Now, you could have some kind of gun pointed at him, and if the plane crashes he gets it in the head.....

 

[WSurf]

Plus I think it is hard to take the pilot away when it comes to certain wx situations. Gusty Landings, pickin your way thru weather.....

But who knows? Look how far we have come since the Wright Brothers flight. No telling where will be in another 80 years.

 

[YourPilotFriend]

If someone ever leaked the source code of the software that ran these unmanned things, every unmanned airplane on the planet would need to be replaced. So that means ever airplane would need a different set of millions of lines of code. It's one thing to control them from the ground or run experiments, it's another to put them into actual experience.

 

[HA25]

would you rather have a computer or a 300 hr regional pilot fly you around?

Exactly...