People are stupid. So, yeah.

 

Excellent point.

 

or works for another airline. Not every passenger airline asks this of their pilots.

 

We've been flying the Global Hawk for about 20 years, and that thing has a wingspan larger than the 737. How long before they start moving cargo like that? Unless you're 80 years old, I'm thinking in your lifetime, you will see freight dogs replaced, driverless/augmented cars, and some form of automated airborne personal transport in the next 25 years, if not sooner.

 

The discussion was about moving people. In that context, it will not happen in my lifetime, and I'm no where near retirement.

For all the reasons mentioned in this post, no matter what the price of the ticket, people will not get on a pilotless plane, passengers are not that stupid. Consider the variables that may or may not exist on current drones. Snow storms, Slick taxi ways, slick high speed turn offs, short runways (SNA,LGA,DCA) Deicing, and the thousands of variables that pilots take into consideration every day.

We agree to disagree.

 

It's been a while since I worked with GH, but I recall several limitations that made me question the viability of GH or Predator/Reaper type ops in the commercial sector.

It's possible that they have been adequately remediated, but I honestly doubt it.

 

um…https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran...Q-170_incident

As long as this is a threat, I don’t see pilotless commercial transport

 

How does the accident rate of the GH compare to the accident rate of part 121 airlines?

 

Of all the aircraft to pick why pick a King Air? After retiring from the airlines, and after spending 10 years on the Bus, I got rated in the King Air 300. I had flown an earlier version King Air in the early 1980's. The truly sad thing is how much alike they were. 12 anti / deicing switches, a B-29 pressurization controller that required technique to operate properly. A Byzantine electrical system with current limiters, hall effect devices, and an overall weird buss configuration.

I would think it would be much simpler to remote control a much more automated platform. To me flying a King Air 300 single pilot would be a very high work load, much higher than a lite jet. Yes computers are great and really skilled at doing things but this computerized flight control system will be a one-armed paper hanger just to operate the aircraft systems efficiently. Operating single engine or with a significant degradation in electrical power will be a challenge.

That's my $.02

 

Most likely because it was the cheapest POS they could get a hold of and will make a non marketable prototype that will commercially fail. Like most GA ventures, it’s going to get some press then will quietly disappear.