MCAS was installed to counter the exaggerated pitch up in high power settings caused by moving the engines.

 

Easy fix. Just make the robots 2/3 scale. Easier to stop if they decide to turn on us. Also, give them a 6 ft extension chord so they can’t chase us.

 

https://www.flightglobal.com/hai-hel...136388.article

 

No different than mil drones today, operating in combat zones or remote, desolate regions. It probably won't hurt anybody on the ground if it crashes, and if you don't crash too many of them it might be cheaper to crash a few than pay pilots.

But typically the real advantage of this kind of drone is to save the space, weight, and/or endurance of the pilot. The mil doesn't actually save any money on drone pilots, but they can provide persistent overhead coverage with fewer planes if the endurance is higher than a manned plane. So they save on fewer planes, not fewer pilots. But none of that applies to airlines.

 

Just keep moving the goal posts....soon it will be night piston freight, then cargo only, etc. The big concern here is the equipment can be retrofitted, meaning no new design required. As far as advantages for airlines. Think no duty limits, fatigue or "human factor" issues such as oversleeping or missing a commute. The benefits to airlines are huge.

If we're lucky the FAA will mandate an operator to be overseeing each aircraft and we can lobby for them to be type rated qualified pilots. Maybe we can all become dispatchers.

I think we will see the first passenger carrying smaller operation with no pilot on board in 3-4 years here in the states. They have been working on this stuff for over a decade, it's not like its coming out of thin air.

So meanwhile ALPA etc is concerned about getting new pilots spooled up. There is going to be a day when that supply simply vanishes as the realities start to hit.

 

You are a clown in a fantasy world. 3-4 years for non-pilot pax ops? What a joke!

In 3-4 years, the only person who might participate in an un-piloted passenger flight is someone like the aircraft designer or an investor who is willing to put their life on the line to potentially reduce their financial risk or enhance positive media coverage. But, we'll check back with you in 2023 or 2024 and see how many revenue flights by an actual airline without a pilot have successfully been completed.

There's so much more to this than whether the technology exists in 2020. At least your predictions are entertaining.

 

Name is a good dude. He may tend to be a little cynical but he typically has good info and is just trying to keep everyone informed.

I routinely disagree with him on just about everything but i respect his opinion.

 

“Keep everyone informed”??
About something that absolutely will not happen in the timeframe he claims? How helpful of him
The fact that you claim to respect an opinion with no basis is fact or reality doesn’t really put you in a strong position to vouch for anyone. Whatever. Like I said. We’ll check back in 2024 (I’ll be generous and give him the extra year). I’m setting a reminder in my phone to post in this thread in 4 years when a total of zero paying passengers have flown in un-piloted aircraft.

 

That's another HUGE factor that nobody every thinks of....

If industry (mfgs but especially airlines) start spewing diarrhea of the mouth about pending unmanned airliners the training pipeline will dry up in a heartbeat.... nobody in their right mind is going to spend $100K and 7+ years of their life to get a major airline job if it's all going to go away, or they even suspect it might go away during their career.

Even if airlines pay for ab-initio training, it's still a long game with dues paying and poor schedules early on. The airlines would literally be parking planes for lack of pilots, or more likely they would have to offer very significant long-term financial incentives to keep the noobs coming... like lifetime no furlough protection, or maybe a lavish DB pension if furloughed.

Flying can be fun but if I didn't think it was going to last I'd spend my time, money, and sweat on developing a more reliable career. Even worse it wouldn't just be the noobs who vanish, anyone on the younger side would probably start developing alternative career prospects as well and eventually walk off the job. Probably on Dec 20th.

So there's this "valley of death" in the human terrain which they (industry) will have to bridge. The valley starts at a plausible announcement of single or zero pilot airliner development with some sort of time frame and ends on the the date when the entire fleet can be fully autonomous. That's a wide valley.

But I'm still not worried until trains can ditch engineers and Tesla can develop an autopilot that won't miss key visual cues.

Operating small unmanned planes/helos in limited operational environments is not a concern or relevant to us... airliners can pretty much do that now, the issue is decision making, adult supervision, redundancy, and trouble-shooting enroute. It's not a question of can it be done, it's a question of can it be done safely and economically... and I think the proponents are waaaay ahead of themselves on that last.

Tesla for example is trying to do a "work around" on their strict liability for autonomous operations. They call it an "autopilot", but with a straight face they tell customers to "keep their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road" (wink, wink). The results have been entirely predictable. They only got as far as they did because no regulatory boundaries exist yet for what they are doing (although congress is about push back on their misleading marketing techniques). Unlike Teslas, airliners will have to be certified in detail before they fly...

 

Informed? Yea. He does a lot of research on the subject instead of just screaming “it can’t happen.”

Don’t take it personal.