Boeing Shelves NMA

[CargoOne]

Originally Posted by amc890

”There'll be a Captain on board if only to sign the paperwork”

I am interested to know where this Captain will come from?

Anyone with a title Captain is too expensive, that’s not gonna work. What we may need instead of flight crew is a human, performing monitoring function on automatics (which is 95% of todays flight crew job anyway). We can get back those System Panel Operators which we had in place of flight engineers when requirements have changed.

[Mk 1]

Thanks TDRacer. Interesting.

[b1lanc]

Originally Posted by tdracer

It becomes a bit of a chicken or the egg problem - you can't design an aircraft without an engine, but the engine company doesn't want to spend money developing an engine without something to put it on.

Unlike some other posters, I don't think Boeing is giving up on the NMA, they are just putting it on hold while they get the rest of the house in order.

I think the first pilotless (or even single pilot) aircraft will be freighters - not passenger aircraft.

That's in addition to what Pratt & GE are doing for the military establishment - some engines are adapted from existing commercial types but others are entirely new technologies which might in the future be adapted to commercial applications - either way that is an investment in time and technology. I don't think Calhoun's message reads finality on the NMA chapter either. There is still too much innovation to be had that could dramatically change air travel (commercial application of QueSST technology for example). The military have been operating a number of RPAs for a long time. It's not hard to envision a commercial pilot in a remote sim monitoring a larger RPA, though like the Google self-driving cars, there will still be quite a bit of distrust from the public - or more not-in-my-backyard mentality. The December A350 autonomous take-off tests are another step in that direction. That said, pilotless is far in the future IMHO.

[Skyjob]

All those engineers and resources can now be used to create a new 737 replacement, using NMA/787/777X technology gained.
Watch this space