sharksrock

Hey guys,

What do you think the airline industry will look like in the future (10-30 years from now). I don't mean specific airlines, but that is also interesting. What will the job look like? Keep in mind the new aircraft and equipment, rising oil prices, airline bankruptcy.... I'm curious to what a pilots think about this, since many will still be flying in the future (considering the age 65 rule)

Greg

Oblique

According to a teacher here in college, in 20 years airplanes flying freight will be completely automated without pilots. Who knows really. They have the technology for UAV's right now. I wouldn't be surprised if we actually lose our jobs to computers someday. Kind of a negative outlook for us, but the industry can change in the blink of an eye.

Photon

maybe some types of flying will go down to one pilot operations instead of 2, but I can't really see the technology and most importantly the acceptance of the general population to be flying with only the computer up front

Rocco

Your teacher doesn't know much about the UAV business. Slightly more complicated than most think about......if it were so easy then two dimensional operations....ships, trains would have been automated years ago

Your teacher probably thought everyone would have a flying car by now too.....since the technology is there.....

As for the post? Who knows. The only thing for certain is the skies will get more congested and jets will get faster/more fuel efficient.

schwanm

Perhaps in 30 years planes won't be burning oil, if the current trend continues I can't see oil being a viable fuel source in 30 years

LineTroll

In 30 years I see VTOL technology being utilized in transport aircraft to minimize the space needed for air travel. As cities increase in size and real estate becomes harder and harder to secure in great enough numbers for the amount of air traffic that we will see in the future, traditional airports will decrease and we will see more heliport style air stations.

I'm not saying traditional airports wont exist, and there will still be plenty of air carriers flying the aircraft of today. But regional companies and air taxis, etc. will be utilizing more helicopters and VTOL aircraft than before.

I see a revamp in airspace and airways and a decrease in VFR operations (general aviation traffic). The new airspace will better accomidate IFR traffic and will help deal with the congestion that we get today.

New aircraft will be more efficient and probably will cruise higher and faster than today's designs. Cockpits will stay relatively the same, probably more use of HUDs and FLIR. Navigation technology will increase tremendously.

Piston aircraft will be a thing of the past, and alternative fueled turbines will probably be the new thing. I don't see there being a huge private plane industry but it will still exist. Simulators will be way better than they are today and will take the place of training in light planes (when getting a commercial ticket). Training will also be aircraft type specific.

Aircraft safety will be the biggest innovation I think, more and more emphasis will be put on traffic avoidance and systems will become more and more reliable. Better seats and restraints will be put into aircraft, as well as things such as airbags in airliners. Ultimately the future of flying is more efficiency, safety, and less environmental impact.

rickair7777

In a very few limited applications, yes.

VTOL's are inherently far more complicated and less efficient than standard fixed-wing aircraft. They are also slower, and are unlikely to have long-range applications (more than a couple of hours).

I think the V-22 design will be reasonably well suited for certain short-range applications, but they will have to be fanatic about maintenance...there are quite a few moving parts and subsystems on that design which are single-point safe. Failure = Death.

Fixed wing transports only have three single-point safe parts: Two wing spars and the vertical stabilizer.

rickair7777

I don't think you teacher understands large-scale systems or how the real world works. In addition to technology on the airplanes you have to factor in...

- Technical Reliability: We just don't know how to make systems which can function autonomously with the same level of safety as our current air transport infrastructure. Pilots and air traffic controllers can think outside of the box and make up for a lot of design shortcomings. By definition the black box can't do that, it can only do what it was programmed to by the engineers who built it. Did they think of EVERYTHING? Um, no.

- Airspace Infrastructure: The ENTIRE national (and global) airspace system would need to be redisigned. The political and economic hurdles and costs of doing this are monumental. We are taking a tiny baby-step in this direction with ADS-B..which will be fully implemented in 2020.

- The ENTIRE transport fleet would need to be replaced. This MIGHT happen gradually over time as airplanes age, but there's a problem...

- The Chicken or the Egg? Which comes first? Are airlines going to spend vast additional sums of money to buy airplanes capable of flying autonomously if the NAS is not ready for them? No.

- In order to implement this in the forseeable future, someone (the government) would have to launch a Manhattan Project to develop, test, and deploy the technology at all levels. Estimated cost: Over One Trillion Dollars. In this case the short-term thinking of airline managers works in our favor...they want their bonus THIS QUARTER! They are not going to re-invest all of their profits to develop a system that might save some money in the year 2030. Is the government going to spend a trillion dollars to eliminate the jobs of 80,000 airline pilots? No.

- Military UAV reliability has improved from 95% to 99%+. Let's say you improve that to 99.99% We have 10,000 daily flights in the US, so that would translate to 9,999 safe flights each day. Only airliner one crash per day! Airlines reliability is currently like 99.999999% UAV's have a long way to go

- People: How many PAX would want to fly without a pilot?

- Let's look at transportation in general. What else is automated? Elevators? Yes Trains? Very Few. Trucks? No. Pax Vehicles? No. If we can't do it with ground vehicles, why do you think we can do it with airplanes?

LineTroll

I was thinking along the lines of V-22 style regional aircraft and jumpjet business aircraft/air taxis. As for reliability, look what 40 years has done for helicopters.

I just cant see there being a lot of large airports, if anything we will switch over to serious STOL operations. I think it's safe to say that we are going to be very limited someday on the available acreage to build airports.