Originally Posted by
Oblique
According to a teacher here in college, in 20 years airplanes flying freight will be completely automated without pilots. Who knows really. They have the technology for UAV's right now. I wouldn't be surprised if we actually lose our jobs to computers someday. Kind of a negative outlook for us, but the industry can change in the blink of an eye.
I don't think you teacher understands large-scale systems or how the real world works. In addition to technology on the airplanes you have to factor in...
- Technical Reliability: We just don't know how to make systems which can function autonomously with the same level of safety as our current air transport infrastructure. Pilots and air traffic controllers can think outside of the box and make up for a lot of design shortcomings. By definition the black box can't do that, it can only do what it was programmed to by the engineers who built it. Did they think of EVERYTHING? Um, no.
- Airspace Infrastructure: The ENTIRE national (and global) airspace system would need to be redisigned. The political and economic hurdles and costs of doing this are monumental. We are taking a tiny baby-step in this direction with ADS-B..which will be fully implemented in 2020.
- The ENTIRE transport fleet would need to be replaced. This MIGHT happen gradually over time as airplanes age, but there's a problem...
- The Chicken or the Egg? Which comes first? Are airlines going to spend vast additional sums of money to buy airplanes capable of flying autonomously if the NAS is not ready for them? No.
- In order to implement this in the forseeable future, someone (the government) would have to launch a Manhattan Project to develop, test, and deploy the technology at all levels. Estimated cost: Over One Trillion Dollars. In this case the short-term thinking of airline managers works in our favor...they want their bonus THIS QUARTER! They are not going to re-invest all of their profits to develop a system that might save some money in the year 2030. Is the government going to spend a trillion dollars to eliminate the jobs of 80,000 airline pilots? No.
- Military UAV reliability has improved from 95% to 99%+. Let's say you improve that to 99.99% We have 10,000 daily flights in the US, so that would translate to 9,999 safe flights each day. Only airliner one crash per day! Airlines reliability is currently like 99.999999% UAV's have a long way to go
- People: How many PAX would want to fly without a pilot?
- Let's look at transportation in general. What else is automated? Elevators? Yes Trains? Very Few. Trucks? No. Pax Vehicles? No. If we can't do it with ground vehicles, why do you think we can do it with airplanes?