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.
Better wages and work life balance would also solve the pilot shortage. It's one of those jobs where companies over rely on people's passion for the profession in lieu of treating and paying them what they deserve.
A decade ago, my pilot friend informed me that after 4 years of college, starting pay was $18,000 a year. After a year of experience suddenly you're making 4 times that. Not a lot of people can afford to make that measley income for a year. It's not a sustainable way to recruit talent.
Then there's the issue is being on call when you're the lowest seniority in you're position where they can call you anytime a pilot calls in sick and you have to be at the airport in 30 minutes.
You can make a lot of money, but there's a lot of bullshit to deal with at the start of your career.
Lowering the costs of flight school would help more, making shitty money is one thing. Making shitty money when you dropped 200k to get there is another.
I'm pretty sure they don't get paid anywhere near what they're worth. Same old story in the US: anything that's important to society, has to do with people's health, safety, education, and so on.
There is no possibility of this ever causing negative effects of any kind, certainly it will not ever be misused (like one pilot being pressured into flying 5 planes at once bc... profit).
This is what I expect to happen to truck drivers first. Automating driving still needs help in the last mile conditions but can navigate distances easily. I foresee fleets of automated trucks which are remotely connected to pilot centers where truck "drivers" sit at simulated driving stations and connect from truck to truck as they enter or leave warehouses or transfer stations. Instead of a small percentage of high-stress driving separated with stretches of monotony, it will be 8 hours a day, 5 days a week of high stress operating.
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 aren’t paid to manually fly the aircraft from A to B. They’re paid to handle emergencies and abnormal situations. The kind of situations that automated systems are extremely poor at handling.
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.
Yeah autonomous flight has been a thing for 50ish years. But there will always be edge cases. Plus A lot of the safety we have in aviation that we have today is due to the two pilot system where every action is checked by your fellow pilot. I can't see a near future where two pilots in the cockpit are not required for safety.
Aside from planes being really expensive to replace, they usually contain some toxic chemicals like fuel, hydraulic fluid, and exotic metals. The lack of loss to human life might be nice, but it presents other complications.
I wonder how does ATC talk to the plane. Does it get routed to the remote pilot? The article describes controlling the plane through a series of menus. Does the pilot have enough flexibility when something unexpected happens like a sudden weather change or bird strike?
If you fly commercially then you’re flying in an airplane that flies mostly autonomously. The vast majority of the pilots interaction is during takeoff and landing. The rest of the time it’s pretty much flying itself.
One huge difference between commercial aircraft & cars is that the air traffic is highly regulated. There are specific corridors & altitudes, distances between aircraft that must be maintained, and ground based controllers are monitoring and directing everything. It’s not even remotely like the free for all on the highways.
This isn't about AI and has nothing to do with whatever bullshits Musk is/was up to. They basically integrated drone tech into a Cessna and flew it remotely from a ground base. It's drone tech combined with an autopilot—fairly basic and proven, already utilized in military, agriculture, and hobby industries. Also its for cargo not humans.