Dornier 335
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2005
- Posts
- 1,089
I used to be one of those "Maybe...someday...but not in my lifetime" types.
...until this past year when I witnessed:
1) The pilot buffoonery on display in some recent accidents (I guess we truly have become the weakest link)
2) The FAA's gathering momentum on finally establishing regs (and the subsequent approvals) for UAV operations
3) The military continuing to demonstrate what's possible (now they've demo'd UAVs doing flawless traps & cat shots off a carrier!)
4) The major auto manufacturers stated plan for driverless cars within the decade (you think the passenger acceptance thing is going to still be an issue when George just drove them through rush hour traffic to the airport?)
Parents, don't encourage your kids to grow up to be pilots because the job is going to disappear a lot faster than many ever thought possible. Never underestimate the pace and ramifications of new technology.
Bear in mind that new technology works usually fine when it's new! Give an UAV a couple of thousands cycles/hours and I'd like to see the reliability and precision of parameters. It made me laugh when Embraer talked about single pilot aircraft two (?) years ago, I have seen many many glitches on the 145 series and even more on the 190. Looking at the 190 you never know whether the VNAV profile will be captured at the TOD. The problem is more software-related than mechanical. Embraer blames Honeywell and Honeywell blames Embraer. In many cases a CTRL+ALT+DEL procedure clears the fault, but sometimes really odd messages appear.
It's like saying that your computer/iPad/iMac/Android etc. is never going to crash/becomes unresponsive.
Look at a new car that's overload with electronics. Are you really believing that everything is going to work after thousands of hours of hard city driving?