I can understand how passenger flights will take a while longer - but would cargo flights that don't have nearly the safety concerns would be AI piloted much sooner? If so, how much sooner?
I can understand how passenger flights will take a while longer - but would cargo flights that don't have nearly the safety concerns would be AI piloted much sooner? If so, how much sooner?
If you say autopilot that implies a wildly different technology. I think the first successful autopilot landing with passengers onboard happened last week.
Taking off is much easier than landing and if passengers aren’t involved…
I guess the question is not about technology (might be ready now) and is instead about regulation (when will the FAA allow fully autonomous flights). I’m guessing the current generation of regulators will need to die before that happens so 25+ years.
What definition are you using for "autopilot landing" here? Autopilots have been able to land planes for quite some time.
Conversely, autopilots still can't handle takeoff (though the more modern airliners have significantly more takeoff automation than before).
I.e. if takeoff is dangerous you dont do it. Making takeoff generslly easier. The option to not land doesnt exist (insert old joke about a good landing)! So landing may have harder problems like wind sheer, thunder storms, tailwind, visibility, and more incentive to take load off pilots with automation.
Eg you have to stay on the runway, you have decisions to make about whether to reject takeoff (the asterisk I mentioned earlier), etc.
For a computer, I'd say it's 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. For runway equipment (ie ILS), it probably changes enough that you couldn't "just use ILS" for takeoff.
I did infra work for a team that was contributing to Airbus' ATTOL (automated taxi, takeoff, and landing) project a few years ago. They (the ATTOL folks, not the side I was on) did do an automated takeoff demo and it definitely wasn't simple.
PaulHoule•16h ago
To first order, the bigger a vehicle is the less you worry about the cost of the pilot/driver. The biggest untold story in aviation is the battle between the pilots of small "regional aircraft" vs "mainline aircraft", the former of which generate less value for the same amount of work and necessarily get paid less. Unions have enforced "scope clauses" that have prevented a new generation of slightly larger regional aircraft which could lower costs at small airports and have no trouble getting filled as those lower costs get passed on to consumers. As it is small airports are dying out, harming smaller cities and towns and giving the "left behind" all the more reason to lash out.
Similarly there is a lot of a talk of crisis in truck driving, both at the local and long-haul levels. My brother-in-law has a CDL and he is always talking about how inexperienced drivers seem to wedge their trucks on a bridge in Binghamton once a month, stall out on the highway and get into accidents, etc.
tacostakohashi•11h ago
The narrative is that human labor is expensive super expensive, there are "skills shortages", etc etc... but in actuality, hiring a few people rounds down to 0 in the context of an airliner or an office building in Manhattan, and you get a lot of political sway for employing folks and paying payroll taxes, and the "doorman fallacy" is very real. The "robots taking our jobs" narrative seems hugely exaggerated to me.
rkomorn•11h ago