CEO says unmanned flights are 5 years away

SquatThrust said:
We don't even have driverless cars whisking people about their days yet. Not going to happen before that.
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Doubt it. Driverless cars would be far more difficult to automate what with all the obstacles to contend with. We already have a system in aircraft that you can program a great portion of the flight, push a button, and sit back and monitor things.

It's coming. Not in five years in my opinion, but it's coming.
 
averettpilot said:
Doubt it. Driverless cars would be far more difficult to automate what with all the obstacles to contend with. We already have a system in aircraft that you can program a great portion of the flight, push a button, and sit back and monitor things.

It's coming. Not in five years in my opinion, but it's coming.
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It's all great when everything works properly. When something goes wrong, who is there to mind the store at 35,000' ?
 
Lunchbox said:
The computer would feel satisfied. I've
never head that expression before??
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All it takes is a module of RAM somewhere to start failing and things like this happen. Most components, even without moving parts, will fail at some point and even more so when exposed to extreme temperature changes. Everyone blames it on Windows (in this example.. obviously they wouldn't run an aircraft on windows) but unpredictable errors would begin happening on any OS.

Blue-Screen-error-Windows-7.gif
 
From a technological stand point he is correct. It would be easy to do and only requires adding a few magic boxes to the autoflight systems.

I'll say it again, and again I'll get flamed, we will see single pilot airliners before my toddler graduates college.
 
esa17 said:
From a technological stand point he is correct. It would be easy to do and only requires adding a few magic boxes to the autoflight systems.

I'll say it again, and again I'll get flamed, we will see single pilot airliners before my toddler graduates college.
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Just a couple questions, do you mean single pilot with a remote operator on the ground? If so, as a former drone driver do you think it's feasible to have one remote operator monitoring 5-10 flights at once? You'd have to do that to gain any real savings. If you have a one to one, remote operator to flight ratio, the remote operator might as well be in the plane.

I ask because part 25 airplanes are built with multiple redundancies for all critical systems. Why bother removing that redundancy in the cockpit? Just to save a few bucks? Maybe a purpose built single pilot airliner would save some weight not having dual controls, a second seat etc. How much of that weight saving would be eaten up by the added remote pilot/monitoring systems? I'm just not sure the juice is worth the squeeze. It might be over a huge fleet of purpose built single pilot airplanes, but not a retrofit of existing two pilot airliners. Not flaming at all, just curious of your opinion.
 
PositionAndHold said:
Just a couple questions, do you mean single pilot with a remote operator on the ground? If so, as a former drone driver do you think it's feasible to have one remote operator monitoring 5-10 flights at once? You'd have to do that to gain any real savings. If you have a one to one, remote operator to flight ratio, the remote operator might as well be in the plane.

I ask because part 25 airplanes are built with multiple redundancies for all critical systems. Why bother removing that redundancy in the cockpit? Just to save a few bucks? Maybe a purpose built single pilot airliner would save some weight not having dual controls, a second seat etc. How much of that weight saving would be eaten up by the added remote pilot/monitoring systems? I'm just not sure the juice is worth the squeeze. It might be over a huge fleet of purpose built single pilot airplanes, but not a retrofit of existing two pilot airliners. Not flaming at all, just curious of your opinion.
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You save on training another guy, hotel rooms, matching 401k contributions etc. I think you are really underestimating how for management will go to squeeze blood out of a stone...
 
Soku39 said:
You save on training another guy, hotel rooms, matching 401k contributions etc. I think you are really underestimating how for management will go to squeeze blood out of a stone...
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Yeah, but you still have to pay that person on the ground almost all of those same things, even if they're operating five flights at once. Similar to a dispatcher, but more highly trained. You think the FAA will just let some one take a written test to be a ground based pilot, responsible if some thing happens to the pilot/plane during flight? Look at the new ATP rules, I think they'll make it pretty hard to be a ground based monitor. Recurrent training, medicals etc. I realize Management would love nothing more than to get rid of part of the senioity list. One crash of a single pilot airliner will probably eliminate any savings they may have had. It seems great in theory, just not so sure it's practical.
 
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