MoosePileit

Everybody is used to both depending on pilots' personalities in execution of a flight/sortie/mission AND being easy to blame or hold responsible. The latter will the tougher of the two to replace....

Radial Song

Your point is taken on the trains. As an opposite to your analogy to trains, the crew costs for container ships and tankers are much more than airplanes. Granted, the tonnage to crew cost ratio is better. Even with this in mind, I think there will be unmanned cargo ships before unmanned cargo aircraft on any appreciable scale.

Maybe the selfish part of me is just in denial because I have 20 to 25 years left.

Spartan07

Sorry to butt in here but somebody mentioned that they will do away with the $100-$200k yearly costs per pilot with an automated system. This entire system would be completely and totally dependent on computer engineers that could build and maintain a near perfect computer. Last I checked computer engineers at that level of expertise are a heck of a lot more expensive than gear swinging monkeys. And I really don't think they will ever launch an aircraft completely and totally without supervision, so the man behind the computer monitoring the aircraft will have to get paid too.

MoosePileit

Spartan has a good point- IF a person is ever to fly in/monitor or ferry a UAV, there will have to be most of the weight of life support systems on board. Same for any live cargo. Weight savings won't be on par w/ unmanned combat/UCAVs or Recon UAVs. Also, the stat for China exports is somewhere in the 2-4% of the bulk of exports travel by air- BUT- they make up over 80% of the value of exports. Not a quote, but close. As long as we are hauling the precious cargo, the paycheck we receive should be small in comparison, especially vs. the boats and their crews.

Not saying it can't happen- but chasing the almighty dollar, if pilots can keep their scope intact over the years, there should be little external pressure for a UAV carrying cargo.

Trapav8r

Is there a way to get a copy of these permits and who requested them? I wonder if the fleet of 727's that FedEx is retiring will have a future in unmanned flight experimentation and certification.

Clue32

I have a Hunter UAV company in my organization. To call them unmanned is a bit off base as we have two people operating them at all times. The difference being that our pilot are sitting in a shelter on the back of a HMMWV (Hummer for those civilian folks out there) on the ground. Unoccupied Air Vehicle is more accurate.

There is a considerable foot print on the ground to fly each UAV and I do not see the cost benefit in taking the pilots and equipment out of the aircraft and putting it on the ground.

Furthermore, there has to be some sort of data link between the Ground and the Aircraft. If that is line of sight then the aircraft can't go to far away from home station. If you want to rely on satellite technology to have global reach then you'll have to invest Billions of dollars in launching new satellites in order to have the band width available to control thousands of UAV's at the same time. Then each company is going to have to pay for that band width.

Finally, you have to convince John and Jane Doe to get themselves or thier precious cargo aboard an aircraft that has no pilot monitoring the computers onboard.

I don't see this happening in my lifetime, or even my children’s lifetime.

Jetjok

The technological side of unmanned flight aside, the commercial airline industry is, to a large degree, "customer driven". By that I mean it's the people riding these jets who will make the decision to fly on an unmanned flight. If these folk decide they actually want to see two pilots working up front, then I can't believe that unmanned flight will catch on. As well, imagine the startup cost of such a venture. Imagine this: it's 2027 (20 years from now) and American Airlines (or any other airline of your choice) is rolling out it's first unmanned Boeing 977. Big fanfare. Lots of press in the NY Times and USA Today (the only two newspapers left, as all other papers have gone "electronic".) The inaugural flight from JFK to LHR departs on time, but never makes it to London. Now I ask you, are you going to allow your grandkids to come visit you, on one of these unmanned jets? Do you think any businessmen will be lining up to fly on one? Remember, the vast majority of other airlines have still not gone "unmanned." What would be your choice? - Manned or unmanned? I know what I'd choose. It will only take one accident and that would be the end of unmanned flight, IMHO.