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Old 26th Nov 2012, 08:20
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tchanhk
 
Join Date: May 2011
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Pilotless aircraft

Just been reading this article on Economist, the topic is about unmanned aircraft.

pick a little section below which i felt is quite interesting...like to see what people think...are we soon heading to unmanned aircraft?


"Commercial flights carrying freight and express parcels might one day also lose their on-board pilots. But would even the most penny-pinching cut-price airline be able to sell tickets to passengers on flights that have an empty cockpit? More realistically, those flights might have just one pilot in the future. Technology has already relieved the flight deck of a number of jobs. Many early large aircraft had a crew of five: two pilots, a flight engineer, a navigator and a radio operator. First the radio operator went, then the navigator, and by the time the jet era was well under way in the 1970s flight engineers began to disappear too. Next it could be the co-pilot, replaced by the autonomous flight systems now being developed."


Pilotless aircraft: This is your ground pilot speaking | The Economist
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