Who the hell cares about 500, 1000 years from now, why don’t we worry about fixing the multitudes of problems we have now first.
I said in my original post that it COULD be done. Heck, it could be done NOW. Look at what the military has done with UAV’s. There’s is NO question it CAN be done. But that’s the military, totally different arena, whole different set of rules, completely different animal.
We’re talking moving up to 2.5 million people a day, in very busy airspace, with constantly changing wx, moving at speeds ranging from 120 knots to 400 knots, on a machine that is pretty complex. And that’s just the estimated number of passengers in U.S. airports alone. That public perception thing is largely underestimated. That will be a major hurdle to overcome. I’d like to know how we’re going to go about addressing that. I think a lot of the people talking about this becoming a reality have the mentality that pilotless airplanes will never crash, or that there would be fewer crashes than current manned aircraft. I’m talking specifically part 121 here. I think that’s being overly optimistic without addressing current problems with computer software. Even the best software has ‘bugs.’ That cannot be allowed to happen to a fully automated, pilotless airplane. It’s a huge roadblock. How do we get around that? That’s what we need to solve first before we continue. The flight testing of these aircraft will be extensive, as well as expensive. The testing would need to cover a nearly infinite amount of possible emergencies/abnormalities that could happen to the aircraft or the software. Can it handle everything thrown at it? Can it respond better than a human pilot could? Will the backup systems respond appropriately at the right times? It would have to, otherwise it won’t happen until it does. How would it handle a fan blade separation and subsequent loss of cabin pressure, maybe loss of multiple other systems? Birdstrikes? Dual engine failure? Loss of the glide slope on short final when the wx is down to minimums? Will it automatically execute a missed, or will it screw up and continue in a descent and hit the runway? Wx radar malfunctions while flying around severe thunderstorms? Will it respond to a wind shear alert and do wind shear escape like it should? I’m just scratching the surface here. A better way to evaluate the software is give it the exact same type of emergency scenarios that real manned airplanes have been involved in. If it can’t handle it at least equal to or better than what the human pilots could, it’s time to go back to the drawing board again and get the coffee running. People keep talking like it’s inevitable, without addressing these underlying concerns first. It will be awhile dude lol. That’s why I’m not bothered by it. It won’t happen in the next 40-50 years. Could it happen someday, yes. At that point I will come back and eat my words on these posts lol.
If it were easy to do, airlines would have been talking about going this route years ago, and we’d already be seeing aircraft deliveries from Boeing and Airbus. Pilots would have been on the chopping block at least 10 years ago. But it hasn’t moved in that direction, and it won’t anytime soon. I laugh when I hear some people say “it will happen in my lifetime,” or “it will be here in 30 years.” Yea, because a driverless car or a train has the same level of complexity as a Boeing or airbus jet. A driverless car definitely moves at 300 mph to get the passengers there. It also has as many complex systems as a triple 7 does.
