GJ,

Thank you for your reasoned reply. There is a role for UAV's. That role is rather specific to missions where it is less dangerous to have a remotely piloted vehicle. For passenger aircraft, two pilots are safer than one, one is safer than none; three are safer still.

I was relating my personal experiences. One, a Korean Air 747 forgot to arm their LOC on a parallel runway, the other a T-34 was doing acro in the clouds and was inverted pulling into us when we both broke out. The electrical malfunction was a lock down and short in the Bus Power Control Unit, which took out ALL of the aircraft's electrical busses. I've no idea if we'd have hit if action wasn't taken; but I've no doubt a complete and total electrical failure would take out a UAV. (Would the Uav be smart enough to use his DV window as an outflow valve? My thumb provides a 500 FPM increase in cabin altitude )

As for autopilot malfunctions ... they are too numerous to count. .. and of course, I'm not the only BPCU melt down guy ... even 747's have done it with all of their redundancy. Southern Air, Quantas & British Airways come to mind. The 787 Flight Test bird did it with the Fed in the left seat.

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Boeing: 787 fire caused by failure in aft electronics bay power panel | ATWOnline

DailyTech - Boeing 787 Test Aircraft Makes Emergency Landing after Electrical Fire

Airliners are magnitudes larger than UAV's and much more complex machines. Until Boeing can invent a cabin temperature control system that works on a 737, I'm doubtful in their abilities to design an aircraft which can deal with Kennedy ground.

The Gulfstream G650 is a lesson in modern state of the art fly by wire engineering gone wrong. I've zero confidence in UAV's and would never board one as a passenger.

 

Security costs would be pretty high. Think of the security airlines would have to invest in at their "data center". We spend a lot of money at the airport to keep terrorists from taking over one plane. If a group of terrorists could just take over a building (( or kill the power and backups, jam or takeover the signal) and gain access to a couple hundred flying missiles, the security would have to damn near military grade.

 

The fact is that his 2000 hours of UAV operation is minimal and will only be remotely possible for him to have a "career event" during that short time. A high cycle UAV running an airline schedule WILL have these issues on an incredibly higher basis.

 

Yeah, that would do it:

Air Force investigates mistaken transport of nuclear warheads - CNN.com

The BGOV Barometer shows Northrop’s Global Hawk and General Atomics’s Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles have had a combined 9.31 accidents for every 100,000 hours of flying.

http://snafu-solomon.blogspot.com/20...loss-rate.html

lemme see ... 16.6 million block hours in November would work out to be 1,545 and a half crashes for our civil aviation fleet, apples to apples, this month. I'm thinking the FAA is going to say, no .... but hey, that's just my opinion ... .

 

All just to save on hotel rooms and Per Diem. The airlines would have to explain that reasoning in a congressional oversight hearing after the first accident which would most likely occur within the first year of implementation (maybe hyperbole, but maybe not). Tens of thousands of dollars of revenue for a single flight, but they'll remove the pilots and have them work from an ops desk in order to save on two $70 hotel rooms and $100 in per diem for the night...while still overnighting the FA's.

"The savings are worth the risk, Mr. Senator."..."Not even close, Mr. Cohen."

 

80, yours is a new idea that has not occurred to me. The benefit in the military of removing a pilot from an aircraft is weight savings of the removal of life support systems and less volume required in the aircraft. However, since an airline carries passengers then there really is no benefit to pilotless airliners. There will be an operator regardless, either in the air or on the ground. Why bother with costly measures to remove the pilot from the cockpit?

 

3rd year airline pilots.
I am talking about 22 year olds with degrees in IT, science, engineering.

So how much money will airlines save?


BTW- the next Mission Impossible movie has the terrorists taking control of the armed drones.

 

If they matched the safety record of the Predator, the crashes would occur roughly every 30 minutes.

The difference between our suicide bombers and theirs, is that theirs live longer.

 

How does my "2000+ hours" of UAV experience compare to the Unit, USAF, or Contractor average?

Son, 2000+ hours, with 350+ LR events Commanding a Detachment on a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan equates to over four years of RPA "experience". Again, how does that time, & experience compare to the normal 2nd LT, 1st LT, or Captain in the Air Force performing the mission?

Please refrain from stating your "facts", that are not "factually correct".

I've just returned from Afghanistan & am personally responsible for recovering ELEVEN (11) "career events", without loss to AF assets.

Next, "made-up" fact please?


These "high cycle" UAV's that the airlines use, I guarantee you wouldn't be operated at the hours the military demands from them.

Do you even have a guess at how many hours the AF puts on these airframes, or is speculation turned into "fact" in your mind?

Have a nice day,

GJ

 

Remotely ... possible?

Pun of the Day!