A cargo plane flew 50 miles with no pilot onboard using a semi-automated system. An aviation expert says the technology could address the pilot shortage.
news.yahoo.com
The flight system allows a plane to be remote operated by a pilot on the ground, which could streamline pilot airline operations in the future.
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Don't most planes fly almost entirely on automated systems nowadays? The pilots mainly handle takeoff, landing, and monitoring the instuments if i'm not mistaken.
That said, remote controlling a plane of any kind seems like a very, very bad idea, cargo or not. If the 737 Max prevented pilots controlling the plane from the actual cockpit, I'd not like to think about what a similar plane would do in the event of a poor radio control signal and faulty instrumentation
Pilots arenβt paid to manually fly the aircraft from A to B. Theyβre paid to handle emergencies and abnormal situations. The kind of situations that automated systems are extremely poor at handling.
TIL, thanks for the info!
Yep.
If you want to see why we need highly trained, highly skilled pilots, with strong work ethic and principles, just go watch The Flight Channel.
When systems fail (and they do all the time), these are the folks ensuring you make it to the ground at an appropriate speed (or not).
"You never want to run out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas". We're a long way from tech itself generating ideas on the fly.
Thousands of military drones have been remotely piloted for decades. This news isn't as ground breaking as it might seem. Some of these drones are large: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk
I know a military drone isn't the same as a passenger carrying airplane, but for cargo I think the only reason this isn't already a thing is because drones are military tech and most governments don't want that falling into the wrong hands.
My first thought was it's already being done with drones.
I'd be curious, what the military's loss rate is to non-combat issues.