Re:When Will We Have Unmanned Commercial Airliners?
by onemoreact on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @09:46AM
(#3319426)
It's not just the pilots, cockpits for something like a 747 is not all that cheap to build and adds a fair amount of weight on every trip. If you really need manual supervision of takeoffs and landings you could have a set of pilots at major airports supervising these functions with vary low latency.
Re:When Will We Have Unmanned Commercial Airliners?
by mseebach on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @10:21AM
(#3319554)
Modern glass cockpits are just thin interfaces on avionics you need anyway. I would be surprised if a cockpit-less 777 was significantly lighter than one including it.
As for the weight of the pilots themselves - judging by the cost of excess luggage, I'd say it's negligible for all but the smallest aircrafts.
Re:When Will We Have Unmanned Commercial Airliners?
by onemoreact on Tuesday December 06, 2011 @01:29PM
(#3320294)
I would say just the weight of the pilots, their seats, the extra structural support and reinforced door, and the need to wire control surfaces to the front of an airplane vs it's mid section etc. Your probably down ~2-4 passengers.
There are too many hurdles to overcome. The psychological and liability one for actual plane manufacturers.
+ it just doesn't make sense economically. Pilots get paid fairly little now, and as automation progresses, the salaries will go down to ~40K(so ~80K for the 2). At that point, it's really not that much money to give passengers the extra sense of security.