PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Drones threatening commercial a/c?
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Old 5th Sep 2015, 20:25
  #370 (permalink)  
Mechta
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: At home
Posts: 1,232
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Ok, just a few operational questions.

What is the MTOW of a drone delivering a 1kg package? A 2kg package? A 5kg package?
Can a drone deliver only to a secure site with the recipient present? Or will the drone hide your package as the UPS driver does?
How will the drone deal with a curious neighbor? A curious neighbor child? A pet dog?
When the drone is ready to depart, does it yell, "Clear!"? Will non-aviation types even understand what "Clear" means?
If the drone malfunctions, will it radio for help?
Are drones VFR Only or are they all-weather?

Just some operational questions.
All good questions, and if I were Amazon or any of the other 'players', I would be keeping the answers very quiet until I had the whole lot wrapped up in patents etc. Don't assume the videos they have put out so far are anything like what they really plan to do. They may simply be to throw the competition off the scent.

Mechta,
Google and Amazon seem to be getting on splendidly without SUAV's. ATC are often stretched (by staff numbers, driven by cost), to provide ATSOCAS to manned aircraft.
Google and Amazon's shareholders won't be impressed if the management are not exploiting an opportunity which could give them a considerable return on investment. If paying for ATSOCAS to expand is what it takes, then maybe they will. In which case, remember 'He who pays the piper calls the tune'.

There will no doubt be some very serious lobbying by the courier companies, citing environmental benefits (less vans clogging up roads, delivery as the crow flies etc.), so anyone using a helicopter for a job another drone could conceivably do, had better start putting an extremely good justification for their continued existence together. 'We were here first' won't carry much weight.

Heavier-than-air powered aviation has yet to pass the point that it exceeds every human lifetime. We need to be looking at the next hundred years, not just the next ten or twenty.
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