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Is there automated flying on the horizon? Seems to me that it should be a lot simpler than for cars and would make operating so much simpler and more cost effec

• kortex 6y ago
  Unlikely. The automatable parts are basically all automated already (autopilot, take-off, landing). Making an aerial robot take off from runway X and land at Y in clear skies with a well-maintained machine is solved. Human pilots, in addition to piloting, do a bazillion small things which add up to a safe flight, such as tons of systems checks. Often, e.g. under autopilot, their job is to act as fallback when the automated systems fail. When the automated checks fail to catch issues in other automated systems, the buck stops with the captain. Or maybe it's an important radio call. Even if you patch the uav into a pilot in a sim, there's so much situational awareness lost. I don't see it happening any time soon in the commercial space.
• alfalfasprout 6y ago
  I used to think totally automated flight was possible before I started getting my pilot's license. Now I doubt we'll even see it in the next 50 years. The national airspsace system relies on interactions with other pilots and unless all planes became automated it would be really hard to pull it off. For starters, flying is the easy part. It's the fuel management, dealing with communications to ensure aircraft are safe, and reacting to constantly changing weather that gets tricky. When there's an emergency things get even more complicated since electrical malfunctions are definitely a not so uncommon possibility. For anything safety critical you're going to need 2-3 way redundancy. Plus you'd need some kind of standardized aircraft to aircraft data link on all aircraft.