Yes it's that simple.....newsflash, it's not. Your forgetting one thing in your simplistic calculus: emergencies, decision making, judgement, you know the things we are paid for. If you are still paying pilots to sit remotely and fly them you are not garnering nearly enough cost savings to offset the initial investments and risks. RPAs in the Air Force are a ****show in point to point but they are allowed because they do a good job blowing up bad guys and no one blinks an eye when an Air Force jet let alone RPA gets lost or crashes. When an "autonomous airliner" crashes, especially with people aboard? You get the picture.

Remote piloted vehicles have nothing to do with single pilot technology. You need to think of it as a current Airbus with an autopilot that can visually acquire flight data.

The vast majority of unmanned aircraft issues are caused by the same thing that causes manned pilot issues: pilot error. The tech is already in place and proven. Flying off on their own is a very insignificant number of losses. Lets be frank about one more thing: Military operations, by in large, involve a larger element of risk than civilian operations. Of course you're going to have a higher loss rate when your margin for error is smaller.

The only time I've ever had an issue with an unmanned aircraft getting too close to a manned asset was because some cowboy Kiowa driver decided he was cleared into my airspace when he wasn't. It happened a crap ton, that's not the fault of a computer.

But having said all that you're a bit off in the weeds. No one, certainly not me, is saying that there will be unmanned 121 operations in our life time. You'll simply have a pilot backed up by a GCS so that the human on board can flex to all the variables you mentioned. Instead of having a spiky haired back pack carrying punk sitting next to the PIC you'll have a dispatcher on the ground backing up half a dozen or so flights. When things go sideways they'll be able to step in and assist or take over if required.

Bandwidth is the single limiting factor right now due to the high cost of SATCOM data-links. That's going to change with the proliferation of private space flights combined with the much lower usage requirements of civilian assets. An airliner doesn't have the need to transmit high-value high-resolution imagery or SIGINT telemetry back to the home base. All they really require is a cockpit webcam and basic telemetry data.

"The vast majority of unmanned aircraft issues are caused by the same thing that causes manned pilot issues: pilot error. "

Source? And if true, what is preventing the same errors by an extremely fatigued single pilot or GCS controller vulnerable to the same issues as RPA operators from making the same mistake? There is zero arguement to enhancing safety. Commercial aviation is as safe as it could ever be.

Economic arguement carries SOME weight, cut your FOs down to the minimum required to man the GCSs and voila, profits right? Well not so fast. The airlines are pulling in record profits right now. Why would they risk their financial backbone on a questionably safe idea, not to mention the liabilities and risks that come with this? Have any airlines actually expressed interest in this? Every next gen airliner being built is supposed to be manned. If all that aligns perfectly, then you have to factor public acceptance. All it takes is for one incident and this cook'd up idea is gone (rightfully so.)

Maybe in a generation or so it will be accepted, but I'm not seeing the grand stimulant or incentive for this to happen in the next 50 years and if it does, a lot of variables (economic, social, ATC infrastructure) need to align. It won't happen until without a doubt a GCS operator can land the aircraft in marginal weather during an emergency with an incapacitated pilot; or can override a germanwings type incident.

Source? It's my job and I've seen a lot of people crater good aircraft because they do dumb things. Read any number of accident reports and they start the same way as when a manned pilot burns one in: "The pilot in commands failure to..." Case in point is the armed Reaper that went down in 13 because the mission crew tried to take back over from the landing crew and didn't follow the checklist...shutting down the engine.

Global Hawks land every day, as do Preds, Reapers, Heron TCs and any number of massive unmanned aircraft.

Hell Aerosonde flies into a net and ScanEagle flies into a rope in crappy weather.

Landing from a GCS isn't in doubt, especially given the ludicrous technologies that can be purchased off the shelf as a redundant backup. (RAPS landings and whatnot)

The technology exists and that's not really even debatable at this point.

Against: "Unmanned airplanes crash all the time!!"

For: "usually caused by pilot error"

Against: "WHARGARBL!!!"

You: whargarble x 2

Neither of you responded to the claim that if unmanned airplanes crash all the time due to pilot error or not, then why would anyone with half a molecule of a brain think it's feasible or a good idea to have unmanned/single pilot/remotely operated commercial airliners with passengers on board? They would have the same vulnerabilities as military drones would they not?

That's a moot point, they aren't remotely piloted aircraft, the pilot sits up front. The level of automation is such that a pilot can be trained in a week.

Oh that simple? A week? Why aren't these fielded and bought today then?

Right now the redundancy for the captain having a heart attack is a trained copilot in the other seat. Under your pipe dream, which shockingly many pilots on here seem to support and god knows why - the redundancy would be a ground controller subject to the same vulnerabilities as RPAs today. Why would you think that is acceptable or even feasible for passenger aircraft?

Not true, the redundancy is not an RPA. Get that out of your head. If the aircraft senses the pilot is incapacitated, it lands automatically at the nearest suitable airport, no remote controls required.



I once thought like you did, since doppler shift LIDAR, the future eyes of aircraft, were the size of a semi truck. I once thought it would be physically impossible to get the size of those systems down to make it viable for aviation. However, last year MIT shrunk it down to this:

http://i68.tinypic.com/2e5758g.png
This tech was originally created so engineers could select optimal placement of Windmill generators.