Autonomous Airliners
 

My dream is to become an airline pilot, but with the rapid advancement of technology, I am unsure if that will be such a good idea. Boeing is "studying" autonomous airliners and plans to test it on real planes next year. They are citing the reason for this is the huge need for pilots and the huge increase in demand for air travel. I am worried that if I choose to become an airline pilot, it would only be a matter of time before autonomous flight begins to take over. However, I am not a pilot and am by no means an expert on any of this. I realize no one can tell the future, but could someone provide insight on this?

Here is the article: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/boeing-start-testing-self-flying-planes-autonomous-aircraft-no-pilot-artificial-intelligence-a7798901.html

Your crystal ball is probably as good as anybody else's.

What I would tell you is this:

Airframers "study" lots of things, all the time. Evolutionary ideas, revolutionary ideas, things like supersonic transports and blended wing body transports and ____________.

And despite all that "study"...Boeing just announced the 737 Max 10, aka Czar Guppy, aka Seattle Sewer Tube, as their latest airliner. An evolution of an airframe that first flew FIFTY YEARS AGO.

There's also FAR Part 25, which regulates certification of transport aircraft. TL;DR - transports have to have LOTS of redundancy, and an autonomous airliner ain't your quadcopter with "return to home". Single pilot airliners with remote-pilot backup will come WELL before autonomous airliners...and the technology simply isn't here yet to support and secure such reliably.

I'd also tell you freight trains, to this day, still have two crewmembers - an engineer and a conductor. Operating in an environment FAR less dynamic than an aircraft.

I wouldn't go making career decisions based upon click-generating "news" articles that are long on hope and short on reality.

Another thread on this...

To the original poster: my dad tried to scare me away from becoming a pilot 16-18 years ago by stating that pilots will be obsolete in a decade. He is a very smart engineer at GE. Clearly he was wrong. Engineers always "study" things but that doesn't mean anything.

The "world's greatest Air Force" cannot even operate RPAs without constantly crashing them, losing them to Iran you name it. It won't happen anytime soon for a plane carrying 200+ lives.

Go be a pilot! You won't regret it!!

If you're old enough to post on the internet, you won't have your career impacted by automation, or at the very, very worst you might lose your co-pilot when you're an old senior CA and have nobody to talk to enroute.

If you want to be extra cautious, don't commit to a career at a cargo airline...they will be the first to be automated.

I really appreciate all of your responses. I am only in high school so I have a few years before I make my decision. I know it was just some news article, but I just thought that Mike Sinnett of Boeing had brought up a valid point that was worth considering.

Speaking as somebody with 30+ years left flying boxes - we're a long, long LONG time away from it.

I agree. Cargo jets are not usually clean-slate designs, they're modified airline designs. There are not enough cargo planes to justify the manhattan project necessary to build an automated one that can operate routinely in manned airspace. So (large) unmanned cargo planes won't happen until the system is about ready for automated pax jets. I just think they'll put the design in service for cargo initially, as a lead-in for pax.

Not anytime soon, just a little sooner.

The previous comments are pretty good. While no one knows the future and technology has a way of upsetting things, it never seems to be in the way the media forecasts. IE Flying Cars, Space Travel, etc.

Well trained human pilots are still the most flexible and most adapted resources, to dealing with the real world. Automation as a tool really has grown to augment the unique strengths humans bring, and in many cases has made humans more valuable/productive.

I've included a link to an article it's a little long winded but spells out some of the "large" hurdles that have to be overcome before we are flying aircraft without pilots, or even without two.