It is natural for pilots to disagree with anyone proposing to eliminate
their roles. As much as I like the sensation of being in control of an
airplane, I believe that computers can be designed to do a better job
than people. For that to happen, airplanes need to be designed and
built differently. ATC need to be designed and built differenty. It
would be a complete revamp of the system. I don't think it would be
possible to take your average Piper Cherokee and retrofit it for
pilotless flying and send it into a busy class B airspace controlled by
talking humans. The same will be true for airliners as well. This is
also why most pilots think of automated flight as being impossible.
They are thinking of the the conventional cockpit, and the amount of
human interactions that are required to make a safe flight. If one
could start with a clean slate, a much more efficient and better system
could be built.



Larry Dighera wrote:
On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 08:04:06 -0000, Skywise
wrote in
::

From http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/03/30/p....ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pilotless planes could be the "next great step forward" in
aviation, or a new safety hazard in already crowded skies, a House panel was
told Wednesday.

There is little question of the latter. Has anyone seen any proof of
the former?

Since 1997, unmanned aircraft have been used in U.S. airspace primarily by
the military. But now the government wants to fly more of them to patrol the
nation's borders, catch criminals, monitor the environment and assist in
disaster relief.

Would that be a result of the effort of lobbyists, or a genuine need
for UAVs? If the latter, I would like to see a cost justification.

Some companies think pilotless planes have a vast commercial potential for
uses that range from crop dusting to weather prediction.

UAVs can't even see and avoid other aircraft; how are crop dusting
UAVs going to avoid things like electrical wires, etc?