Originally Posted by
msbbarratt
Vanity
Vanity is a dangerous thing in this business, and it's present in the self driving car industry. To illustrate the "problem" in the self driving car industry, consider the possibility of autonomous cars being "bullied" by humans (they won't drive into me, so I can intimidate it!). When asked on BBC Radio recently (Tech Tent, 10th Nov 2017), an industry personality was deadly serious about solving this problem with laws. Seriously? It becomes illegal for you to act in a way that is interpreted as a danger by someone else's lame brained self driving car? No way! How vain is that, expecting everyone else to be compelled by law to account for the nature of one's own product!!!
Airports and Everyone Else
I don't think the airports would value a self-flying, pilotless autonomous airliner. Want to take some landing aid out of service? Why no you can't, the planes can't land without it. So you'd have to have two, just in case.
The knock on costs to other players are going to be quite large, and that will simply get passed on to the paying passenger; manned aircraft would probably be cheaper to land.
You seem to have more foresight of this issue than most.
The thing is the cost/benefit analysis for cars is different than for airplanes. First of all the economies of scale are more favorable for autos. Second there are more potential benefits to society such as access to transport for those that formerly had difficulty operating or using personal autos. Of course, this has me way more fearful of autonomous car parade trampling the driving rights of everyone else. You already gave one example but there are several other foreseeable consequences as well. Traffic congestion is another big one in my opinion. The autonomous fans tend to tout that traffic will be better since the AI drivers are better and more orderly. That may be so, but I highly suspect the overall effect will be much more gridlock. Once cars are untethered from their drivers, the utilization rate will increase meaning the car will be on the road more. Often for trivial benefits of the owner such as have the car circle block endless to avoid parking or I also foresee an explosion of passengerless vehicles performing delivery services. I really believe that it going to be a huge problem in urban and surburban areas and backlash will form as well.
Fortunately, for aircraft, I don't see it being a big issue in years than I have left to fly.