Originally Posted by
FDXLAG
While I can see John Edwards practicing his chops, perhaps channeling the auto-pilot. Please explain why the liability should be different if a manned vs unmanned aircraft smacks your house; assuming both aircraft are similarly certified by appropriate FAA/ICAO regs.
Because they can't say the accident was pilot error.
I doubt this will ever become the norm. Like a previous poster said, all terrorists have to do is get a few good hackers and then every single airplane can be taken over. If a 19-year old kid can hack into the Pentagon, then these planes will obviously be at risk for a hacker to take-over.
I would like to see how computers deal with in-flight emergencies, you can only predict so much, and since it is a computer program it has a strict set of guidelines that it will follow. The Pilot is in the airplane for when things go wrong, sure its easy to fly when things go right, but when the **** hits the fan is when you need someone who knows what they are doing, and a computer program does not "know" what was not programmed into it. There are tons of examples of things that went wrong, that had a computer been at the controls everyone would of most likely died.