Self-flying planes would be a “nice to have” thing. But its not a “need to have” thing. For the cost, it just wouldn’t be worth it. Here’s why.

Planes, ATC, and the entire aviation infrastructure would have to be completely redesigned and rebuilt for pilotless planes. The cost would be tremendous, far more than the 7-8% of total ticket costs that pilots are currently. Also, planes currently being built all require pilots, because that’s how they are designed. Yes, its true that at one time we required 5 people to cross the ocean (2 pilots, navigator, radio operator, engineer) but the difference between 5 and 2 was far less than the difference between 2 and 1, and going from 2 to 0 is likely a century away.

Human pilots are the safest thing going. Anything else would be exponentially less safe. What would happen if someone started building self-flying planes, and one crashed. People are already saying they won’t get on a guppy MAX and that’s with actual pilots that can override the automation. Its the tech they don’t trust, not the pilots.

Don’t tell me about self-driving cars, because the order of magnitude of simplicity to make a car drive itself is hundreds of times easier, and there is far less risk, since one accident might not kill anyone, just scratch paint, etc. While a mishap in a plane is likely a 100% fatality event. Also you can teach a teenager to drive a car in 5 minutes.

Solving simple problems is simple. Solving hard problems is incredibly hard. Far more than most people realize. Watching too much science fiction makes people believe the really hard stuff is easy. Think about it this way...imagine you were transported back in time to 1980 and you met Steve Jobs. You explained that you came from the future, and you had seen the iPhone. You could describe how it works and the apps and everything. He’d just say “yes, we can all envision how that might work, but we can’t build transistors that small yet. We don’t have enough memory to do that yet. The tech to build it is still decades away. The in no infrastructure to build it yet. And the cost would be so great that people couldn’t afford it, and it wouldn’t’ have the critical mass to get adoption to make it of any value.” Just because you can see something doesn’t mean you can build it.

One last thing. If United or any airline said they were going to buy Boeing’s 1st pilotless plane, I imagine that the 1,000 plane fleet of airplanes would come to a halt immediately. If we didn’t already have some kind of scope protection, which I believe we have language that says all planes will be flown by pilots on the seniority list, I can see a day where airline pilots set the parking brake en-masse and refuse to fly.

If airlines really wanted to cut costs, and the FAA would sign off on self-flying passenger planes, they’d also sign off on no FA’s in the back, which would be a much easier way to save costs. You could get rid of them tomorrow like they do on the “new” 50 seat jets with self-serving snacks. Or maybe just have 1 back there to communicate with the pilots. This would be a far better way to save money.

Building and utilizing self-flying planes is a big “chicken and egg” thing and I don’t see us there until well after we are all dead, because its a “nice to have” and not a “need to have”.