Pilotless aircraft. Look out Fed Ex wannabees.

[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...

 

[Flyer1015]

How will a computer detect a small animal on the runway, which calls for a go around? How will a computer sense an impending ground excursion with another airplane? There are some things you need human eyes for, so pilot-less passenger airplanes won't be happening for a LOOONG time. The general public wouldn't fly on a computer-flown-only airplane.

Besides, anyone who praises pilot-less passenger aircraft.... all I have to do is show them the video of that (Air France?) A320 that is automated and coming into land and runs straight into the trees. Supposedly, that landing was all computerized (even with pilots in the cockpit, but I don't think they could do much).

That shuts them up pretty well, and I win the argument.

 

[J32driver]

all I have to do is show them the video of that (Air France?) A320 that is automated and coming into land and runs straight into the trees. Supposedly, that landing was all computerized (even with pilots in the cockpit, but I don't think they could do much).

Air show flyby.... screwed up by the pilot. He got below a radar altitude and disabled the "Alpha Floor" protection. The same protection he was relying on to force the autothrottles into TOGA. When he purposely slowed into Alpha floor, and didn't get TOGA as a result, he was slow to respond. By that time, the airplane was in the trees.

I'm no fan of drone airplanes, but this one was pilot error because of a lack of systems knowledge.

 

[Soverytired]

I
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.
.

True. But to play devils advocate . .. in a truly f-d up, we're on fire kinda moment, a trained crisis response team (ground based) with a real time data link to the aircraft might very well be able to assess things more calmly, and delegate different tasks among more people, than two chuckleheads fumbling in the airplane.

Weather is a tricker beast. Flying around +TSRA is a lot easier with a Mark 1 eyeball AND radar, for example.

We're not there yet. But I'd be very surprised if we're not there in 30 years.

IMHO.

 

[Soverytired]

Ummmm. How's a pilotless aircraft going to handle taxiing at ORD? Anyone?

Actually, I'd think setting up a pilotless taxi system would be fairly easy at a major airport at ORD. And tugs for the last 50 feet could work well.

The bigger problem will be the expense at all the smaller airports that don't want to spend billions on a system a couple of planes use a day.

 

[YourPilotFriend]

You guys take for granted how reliable humans are vs machine software. A great piece of software is reliable 98% of the time, while the other 2% is failure or error. A 2% failure rate would result in about 10 million deaths a year. You just can't program software to be anywhere near human reliability, unless they come up with something completely new, which I don't see happening in our lifetimes.

 

[MALSR]

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.

If airbus makes it: add 10 more years

 

[dogtown]

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

Seriously, you're even bothering to ask that question? A pilot.

 

[Flyer1015]

I can imagine it now: the blue screen of death appears in the cockpit.

"Unable to find LAX... Abort, Retry, Fail? ___"




[Computer enters an infinite loop of "R" entries for Retry, with no luck]

 

[HA25]

Seriously, you're even bothering to ask that question? A pilot.

I guess his comments just went over your head... Sure the pilot, but he's "begging the question" if you know what that means.

 

[dogtown]

I guess his comments just went over your head... Sure the pilot, but he's "begging the question" if you know what that means.

Wow. You're kind of ass then arn't you?