BoynamedSue

wow- talk about a displacement bid.

20 years? Ok- so i WILL get out before 60. i'm still on track.

NE_Pilot

Twenty years is being extremely optimistic. Someone here once posted that to get to 95% realibility (in technology) is the easy part, it the last 5% that become exponentially more difficult. The accident rate of these UAVs are unacceptably high compared to airliners, and to say that they will be flying passengers around in twenty years is completely unrealistic.

16 computers freezing in 4 months, thats approximately 1 every week. So that is 1 aircraft, being completely out of control once a week, now when you put that into the perspective of airliners, and the amount of aircraft in the air on any given day, and the amount of flights each one does on an average day, then things become really dangerous.

I think it will be a much longer time before we go to UAVs. In the 20's they said we would all be driving flying cars, and robots would replace all work, we astill aren't there.

Slice

I think the bigger limfac will be the ability of our ATC system to deal with them.

bravo24

Keep in mind it wasn't that long ago when the idea of flying a twin-engine airplane to Europe or Asia with paying passengers was considered as ridiculous. Technology has a nasty habit of exceeding our ability to accept or adapt to it.

REGHI

I think it ultimately will come down to a simple cost/benefit analysis. Until it becomes cheaper to operate unmanned aircraft (safely and reliably), then we're done. I think the infrastructure and teams required to operate just one aircraft, let alone an entire fleet, is extraordinarily expensive at this time. My guess is at least 20+ years. Just my thoughts.....

Whaledriver101

I'll never see it in my lifetime. Neither will anybody else on here.

Whistlin' Dan

Just because an aircraft is "unmanned" doesn't mean it's "unattended". The cost of developing technology capable of operating large aircraft sans onboard pilot will be considerable, as will be the cost of maintaining the hardware. When you factor those costs into the equation, the expense of having human pilots onboard, even at $100-$200K/yr, is a heck of a bargain.

The reasons that UAV's are finding acceptance within the military has nothing to do with the cost of the pilots. If anything, it probably costs more to operate those vehicles, not less.

Diesel 10

"Unmanned" joke alert:

Q: What do you call it when two females fly together?

A: Unmanned flight

Slice

Lame.........

limelight

So VOR's were supposed to be phased out what, 10 years ago, and they're still around. The C-17 is a pretty advanced aircraft and we STILL can't shoot GPS approaches and we (military) own the entire system. For pete's sake we still have NDB approaches. There are way too many situations that arise on every flight that need a human to make decisions. I'd really like to see some desk jockey put a 500,000+ lb. airplane down on a 3500 X 90 ft runway. It's a LONG way off.