"The pilotless airliner is no longer unthinkable. It is just a matter of time before airliners have one pilot, and soon after that they will have none.
The first one-pilot commercial air transport aircraft will be freighters, and that sector will almost certainly blaze the trail to the pilotless passenger aircraft. That will be a cockpitless airliner in which first class passengers will occupy the window seats at the sharp end.
The aircraft might have a pilot standing by for emergencies, but s/he will be back at base.
What are the indicators?
Airliners are already highly automated, and pilots are increasingly being told not to interfere with the automation. Meanwhile it is already accepted – or even status quo – that unmanned autonomous or remotely piloted air vehicles will take over many of the military and general aviation tasks now performed by aircraft with a cockpit."
As one commenter said, the two biggest obstacles to this are going to be public acceptance, or more accurately resistance, and the possible interference with the ground to plane communications, or a glitch in the computer doing the actual flying.
The computer can't smoke a few joints before flying or down a toddy. But the people who program it can.
ReplyDeleteIt's going to be the same with long haul cargo trucks once the technology for hands-free automobile travel comes on line within the next five or six years. From point to point, 18 wheelers will be driven by the computer, with a human pilot for in-city delivery. Both pilotless passenger aircraft and driverless trucks will change the character of interstate commerce forever.