Originally Posted by
rickair7777
That's the problem...chicken vs. egg.
The airline managers are the only folks who really stand to gain by this, and their planning horizon ends at next quarter's earnings call.
Now take everything I said and multiple by that by however many nations there are in the global community. The most potential savings exist on long haul flights (short domestic hops will need more human supervision per flight hour), but you need to get the whole world or at least the high-dollar destinations on board.
The problem is not one of technology, it's one of public (and political) perception, regulatory and ground infrastructure, and the massive up-front cost of implementing such a scheme.
Also from an engineering perspective while the required reliability and redundancy is certainly achievable, the cost/benefit equation is dubious with today's technology. You can only spend so much on the unmanned airliner adding smarter computers, more reliability, and layers of redundancy before you exceed the cost of the pilots! The obvious example is spacecraft...they operate for years reliably with no maintenance, but must be assembled in clean rooms and cost billions per copy.
Not in our lifetimes...
The military is going to continue building more drones and keep improving the technology, and the transition will come. We have moved from a handful to over a thousand last I heard. One company just needs to decide to go for it, and they will push the legislation. People would probably have said the same about space flight 40 years ago. But look where we are now. Private corporations are working hard and spending big to fly barely anyone to NO WHERE. There is a drone pilot/engineer out there with an entrepreneurial mindset that is already dreaming of spending a lot on technology being heavily vetted by the military to fly people to places they can actually live and get things rather than into the cold void. The technology and demand exists. A new company will move to do this, and just like new steel or manufacturing companies use new tech to out maneuver bigger companies with bigger infrastructure, the same will happen. And since airlines have shown they have no problem routing out pilots when it suits them to try and catch their competitors it wont surprise me to see this.
And you want to talk about battling the public. The public only cares about one thing and that is the money. If a company using drones can cut flight costs further the people will come. As long as they don't fall out of the sky in their first year more people will keep swarming to them.
I also didn't say NO pilot. There will be pilots just not on the plane, and not working just one plane. The airports will remain roughly the same. The technology for drones will be worked and reworked until they can function in the environment. Cars are already being made that drive themselves(still testing), a drone will be able to navigate an airport where it is being given precise instructions from ground control. Then they will just hire someone for peanuts to make sure they watch it doesn't crash into someone.
Oh and my prediction for all this is within ~70years. Delta may or may not be around.