dera

I'll take my 15 years of professional experience in this field over your pathetic comments.

Which autonomous company do you currently work for?

Thought so.

****.

Anthrax

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Hey dork, nice try with the straw man argument. No one here is talking about present circumstances (you yourself said lifetime, dummy) but about the technological advances in aviation, and how these will most definitely impact this industry in ways you clearly can’t imagine.

Maybe FDX pilots as a whole don’t deserve an industry leading contract, given the industry leading stupidity we have in the ranks.

dera

I can't imagine? I have 2 patents with my name in AI field. You?

Don't worry, I'm not on your seniority list. But pardon me for dismissing your comments about AI as you have no clue what you are talking about.

SinkRatePullUp

This is what I've been saying. We've been seeing a ton of venture capital getting dumped into flying cars, supersonic planes, and pilotless aircraft from a bunch of tech focused companies that think they can revolutionize everything. I think we are going to see more and more of these companies evaporate. I suspect we won't see any pilotless aircraft until there is a generation that has only even known driverless cars and that's still quite a ways away. I had a friend who told me I was an idiot for going into commercial aviation years ago because of hyperloop...look where that ended up.

Beech Dude

I agree. Things start small and grow; always have, always will. If anything these cargo drones will replace the feeder folks unfortunately, prior to any transport category size drones doing anything.

TheBear

Indeed and their operation will be heavily scrutinized. Too many accidents/incidents will set them back even longer.

Lowslung

One of the problems with the tech industry getting involved in the physical world is their "beta" mentality. They've always been able to get away with pushing an 80 or 90 percent solution to the public. Not necessarily a huge problem with traditional software as you can update and patch as time goes on. Huge problem when you're talking about certifying something that will fly on a transport category aircraft (or even a relatively much simpler automobile).

Another piece of the puzzle that many of the tech bros seem to be overlooking is the power of existing infrastructure. Just look at the push for electric vehicles; one of the things that's holding more mass adoption back is the lack of charging infrastructure. It will be many, many years before even "fast charging" can hope to compete with the existing petroleum infrastructure, not to mention upgrading repair shops, training first responders, and myriad other issues that come with adopting a new technology on a mass scale. Will it eventually happen? Probably, but many of the people pushing it have massively underestimated the timeline involved. Multiply the auto industry's issues by an order of magnitude for aviation, where regulators around the globe are very conservative and expenses/barriers to entry are very high, and yeah, not really worried about pilotless/remotely piloted in my lifetime.

Nordhavn

all good questions. if i were a young aspiring pilot i would definitely not be looking at the cargo carriers for long time employment. this new tech will be implimented at the box haulers first. will the flying public allow it is the question? hopefully not.

Lowslung

The box haulers still have to integrate into & out of the flow at major airports. It’s one thing to launch a glorified RC Caravan out of a small airport. It’s quite another to get the robots talking to SoCal Approach and clearing for the VFR traffic flowing across final. In other words, unless we start building cargo only airports, the freighters are going to run into all the same infrastructure limitations the pax haulers will.