PRINCESS KIDAGAKASH said:
Alright, slow down now. This is a prime example of how something written on the internet can get accepted as factual by people who don't know anything about it except inaccurate and incomplete media sound-byte BS.
First of all, UAVs are "unmanned" aerial vehicles. In other words, there's no people, pilot or passengers in them. They are what we used to call drones. Been around for a really long time. Nothing new. Without a human in the machine, it can be made smaller, lighter, and have great tactical advantage in certain circumstances. However, THERE IS a pilot . . . he's just in a van somewhere on the ground and not in the aircraft itself. The pilot takes off and lands remotely and manipulates the autopilot in flight . . . just like a pilot in the aircraft does.
Now to your rather tortured conclusion that pilotless airliners are just around the corner. Well, there's three reasons it's not.
1. I doubt that JQ Public will want to get on an airplane that doesn't have a pilot. And the first crash of one without a pilot, the speculation will be that if there was a pilot on board, it could have been saved. So, the manufacturers design an aircraft and leave out the human interface (cockpit) and it save a huge amount of weight and money, have a crash, and now nobody will fly on those airplanes. If I were an airline executive buying the new generation of aircraft, that thought alone would cause the blood to rush from my head. Designing an aircraft with human controls, then not putting a pilot in there, and having a crash, would be just as bad. Doesn't matter . . . your fault, my fault, nobody's fault . . . the end result would be the same.
2. Technologically it not practical and won't be for a very very long time, despite what the eternally optimistic futurists would like you to believe. Remember when in 1930 they told everyone by the turn of the century, there'd be flying cars? There are just to many variables that occur during flight. The air traffic control systems in the US and Europe aren't even in the same universe with being able to handle that now or the forseeable future. As far as variables, there is weather avoidance that is not "black-and-white" computer understandable and quantifiable. A lot goes with experience and "judgement" . . . something computers don't have, nor will for who knows how long. Further, with judgement taken out of the equation, the parameters for acceptable performance would have to be fairly strict, resulting in huge numbers of landing aborts, weather turn-arounds, aircraft spacing aborts, etc. While autoland systems are good, they have strict wind limits and require special runways. Air Traffic Control couldn't possibly handle the volume of traffic now handled without the joint judgement and interaction between pilot and controller. A fully automated system would bog down very quickly.
3. Cost. If you think the cost of employing a couple of pilots is bad, try ponying up for the R&D for the aircraft and air traffic control system that it would take to even operate an rudimentary and low-density system. And then the cost of maintaining that system. And what about flying into other countries whose airports aren't up to standard.?
Could it happen someday. Well yea, anything is possible. But not in our lifetimes, and not in our childrens lifetimes . . . . . and my money is on just about never.
BTW, the trains at DFW are automated, but why aren't passenger and freight trains automated and unmanned by engineers??? It'd be a heck of a lot easier to fully automate that.
