Originally Posted by
Ian W
I (unfortunately) can remember when elevators all had operators, when trains always had drivers and when there were no automated cars. This court action will hasten the demise of the job of pilot.
(And before anyone asks - yes I would fly in an unpiloted aircraft - the one I am in is currently on full automatic operation over the East Atlantic and the automatics will be in control until a few hundred feet on finals in Atlanta, and that could easily become an autoland.)
I, too, remember those days. Tomorrow I will fly my last flight as a 747 Captain.
Unlike you, I would NOT fly in an unpiloted airplane. While you can point to the vast majority of uneventful flights, a significant majority of them were uneventful ONLY because of pilot intervention. The simplest of ATC events - a deviation for other traffic - cannot today be easily accomplished automatically. In the US, we cannot even use CPDLC in 99% of airspace. While ADS-B may make controllers' lives easier, it has no similar benefits for pilots - yet.
The next level of intervention is that for weather avoidance. An autopilot cannot rely on radar returns, because they, too, are not reliable enough for complete confidence. At one end of the spectrum, an autopilot would chase false or spurious returns in circles forever; at the other end it would fly right through an area of visible weather that does not show on the radar.
Finally, there is the [in]ability to deal with non-normal and emergency situations. These are the times when an experienced pilot is most valuable and most needed. Even a 'drone operator' in some control station on the ground would be hard-pressed to analyze some of the situations I have dealt with in the air. Add to that the fact that one of those emergency situations - or a result of some other failure - may be loss of communication with the ground operator!
If you want to risk your Amazon Prime package to a drone, that's fine. It just isn't a reasonable option for passenger airplanes in the foreseeable future.