Rawhide51

That's probably what the guy that drove the elevator back in the day said, as well as the trolley driver. How many of our customers blindly get on a train/people mover at the airport and don't give a crap that there is no one driving it? (LAS/EWR/TPA just to name a few examples)

Once they figure out that you can control a few large cargo transports across the ocean with a few guys in a trailer park, how long will Jeff Bezos wait? That's definitely cheaper than paying a few thousand freight dogs.

Cargo will fall first, while 121 drops its crew requirement down to 1 pilot because of the 'shortage' we will experience. Think about it. Before a worldwide pandemic even ended, two idiots decided now would be a great time to start another domestic airline. One even tried to get free labor by announcing flight attendants would only be for college interns.

The point of the article is that technology is coming for your job. You can ignore it, invest in it, or call your congressman. Telling me that we disagree is just winding the clock.

CANEWT

I have 15 years left. While I believe that someday we will see autonomous airliners, I believe it will take longer to get there than many people think.
Maybe, just maybe I'll see single pilot cargo in my career. Will the tech be available? Sure. Will it make it through the approval process in the next 15-20 years? I doubt it.
Worth less than $.02

Grumpyaviator

We don’t do it, however I’ve flown with two who wore it the whole time.

Grumpyaviator

Agreed, they already control trucking company policies. Automatic transmissions, formal training or two years experience, in-cab cameras, sway sensors, speed governors, electronic logs, etc. If you waive these policies rates skyrocket.

Dave Fitzgerald

Pilotless planes won't happen for a very long time. It will come down to cost. A pilot will be cheaper than designing in sufficient system redundancy for pilotless planes. It will also be heavier, all those systems, a pilot, relatively speaking is pretty light.

All that tech comes at a cost, and at least for the forseable future, pilots will be cheaper. IF one tries, you also have to account for the additional certification costs that the FAA will certainly require.

I don't believe you can efficiently retrofit a current design, so it will have to be a clean sheet design with all the systems integrated. Boeing can't get a new design done in less than 15 years now. How long do you think it will take the FAA to come up with regulations to cover a commercial-passenger clean sheet design?

Larry in TN

I blame Southwest!

KonaJoe

If Southwest were entirely responsible for the perpetual production of the 737, it would have a built in mechanism for the pilots to keep their clothes on.

F15andMD11

Comparing automated light rail or other fixed track systems with remotely piloted aircraft is not even a valid comparison.
Just one mishap where passengers are fatally injured and trust in the system will crumble.
How would that Quantas A380 have faired if it were remotely piloted? My knowledge of the incident is that it took all three pilots, each working separate critical action items, to save that plane. I don’t see it happening anytime in near future.

Airhoss

Well the good news is, if a remotely “piloted” aircraft goes down the pilot will be unharmed.

ReadOnly7

it will still somehow be reported as “pilot error”