To quote Donald Rumsfeld, “there are some known knowns, some known unknowns, and some unknown unknowns.”
We live in a generation where bean counters and sales staff are in the driving seat and they leave the engineers to play catch-up. This gung ho style leads to much greater risks being taken with great pressure to deliver technology that is not yet mature.
The development of pilot-less airliners would most likely place in steps:
1) Current generation aircraft would need to be able to complete standard airline sectors with very little input from pilots. ACARS route uploads, CPDLC Comms, and advanced VNAV and LNAV would be required. Unfortunately thanks to a policy of just stretching and rehashing old aircraft designs that would still be a long way off especially for the 737 family with its antiquated master caution system and manual switching philosophy. Recent accidents show that automation is not yet up to scratch, once again pushing for pilots to be better trained rather than being able to relax and take it easy. If aircraft achieved this high level of automation, accidents and incidents should drop to almost nothing. This idiot proof concept would pave the way for single pilot airliners. As a great deal of investment is required I feel that this phase alone is still 20-30 years off as airliners that have yet to fly still have antiquated systems being built into them. Keep in mind however that it has been 25 years since the first delivery of the A320, with its philosophy of designing out the pilot, yet we still have crashes such as the GF320 and AF330.
2) The next stage would involve removal of one pilot with highly advanced artificial intelligence systems on board to reduce the pilots role more to that of monitoring and interfering. As this stage has the greatest amount of unknown unknowns we will probably hear about their introduction to the civil world at the earliest in 10 years time. However design issues and cost overruns will probably mean that we do not actually have a viable commercial airliner available to achieve this for another 40-50 years. It will probably take at least another 10-20 years of operation for flaws are ironed out and where intervention becomes minimal. Due to the huge costs, the most likely scenario would involve re-applied military technology, however because of the very different nature of military and civil flying almost a complete redesign will be required. The key hurdle during this stage would be technology and software, the closer they to achieving the goal the more difficult it becomes to move forward. Incidents such as the QF330 pitch flaw over Darwin would present themselves and cause major setbacks.
3) Combined with the data from the previous generation of aircraft along with redundancy and improved highly encrypted communication, at the next stage we would be likely to see ground based operators tracking 10-20 aircraft simultaneously with interference only on rare occasions. This could eventually be reduced to emergency crews based at the manufacturers headquarters. This step in my opinion would be one of the most difficult to achieve and could take another 50 years. By this point most technical issues will have been ironed out.
My view of how soon all this can happen is probably too optimistic as the biggest hurdle to achieving all this will be litigation. Therefore it could easily at least twice my estimations. In the relatively short twenty years I have been flying I find procedures and briefings are getting longer while technical data I get from the manufacturer seems to be getting more vague and irrelevant. Since I only really have a background on Boeing aircraft I can only speak about them. Everything is now more about lawyers then test pilots or engineers. But they still make a good business selling you AFM pages for weight changes or tailwind limitations etc.
Now take for example the case of actually really wanting to improve safety using technology. The technology to get accurate aircraft weights has been around for a least the last 70 years. Combine that with the computing power available for the last 30 years, then it should be feasible to mount weighing sensors on the oleo’s and have the aircraft weigh itself and calculate takeoff performance by itself with no input from the flight crew. This could have prevented the MK Airlines crash in Canada, EK incident in Australia, and SQ incident in New Zealand. So why hasn’t it been done yet? Well of course it would move liability from the airline to the manufacturer.
How many times have you heard a manufacturer admit they have a design flaw and need to recall or completely redesign a system. I am not talking about AD’s and SB’s for small changes, I am talking about Li-Ion type groundings. Hardly ever, because most of the time it is easier to blame things on a tool/rag left in the wrong place while the system quietly gets redesigned in the background.
As complexity grows it actually becomes even more necessary to have a fall guy to blame for things not working. Business can then continue as usual while ICAO introduces even more rules and hoops to jump through. Next will no doubt be a six monthly visual approach certification.
The other question has to be what incentive is there for the manufacturers. Boeing for example will probably want at least a 15 year production run on the B737max. If first delivery is in 2020 and last delivery in 2035 with a useful life of about 30 years then you will effectively be seeing a rehashed 1960’s design still flying in 2065. As for Airbus, I think with various tweaks and stretches we can probably see the A380 flying for another 70 years. After burning their fingers on delays with the A380 and B787 I think both Airbus and Boeing are unlikely to push for pilot-less airliners. They would rather have low risk of amending current designs with minimal changes. The only way I see them taking on such a project would be with a massive launch order financed upfront with clauses specifying there would be no penalties for delays. Or perhaps a new player would want to enter the market based on such a design, something that is likely to end in bankruptcy.
So I am curious why we are hearing so much about this now. It sounds like some accountants wet dream. Since we are all viewed as prima donnas who demand a lot and do very little it probably seems like a very good idea to someone sitting off in their ivory tower, disconnected from the reality of day to day operations. It actually reminds me of an airline I used to work for where the new CEO was trying to cut costs. The CFO told him the best way to do this would be to get rid of the top thirty percent of most expensive pilots, which he promptly did. This included firing the joint Flight Ops and Training post holder two weeks before the AOC was due for renewal. Needless to say the airline was grounded for six months while things were put back in order. The CEO was then fired only to have the CFO take his place.
But back to the topic of pilot-less airliners, what would be the one thing that really causes demand for aircraft like these? In my opinion only a massive worldwide pilot shortage, but even then occams razor would suggest the real solution would just be new, innovative, cheaper, ways of training pilots and it will be business as usual.