Airframe retires at 52

[Plane]

http://www.pddnet.com/news/2015/03/iron-horse-sets-final-flight?et_cid=4454015&et_rid=281033176&type=cta

This Vietnam veteran is finally ready to retire.

But most of the B-52 fleet is even older and not scheduled to retire.

The AF really wrings the value out of an airplane before they let it go.

[sirs]

Wow.....what about the gunship version?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Mlitary aircraft will be extinct in the future, replaced by unmanned drones

[sirs]

Not in this or any immediate lifetime.  Maybe in the era of star wars perhaps

[Plane]

Mlitary aircraft will be extinct in the future, replaced by unmanned drones

  For carrying troops and cargo?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I would imagine so.

[Christians4LessGvt]

yes I think in 25 years many aircraft will not have pilots on-board.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Yesterday I returned to Miami from Barahona. My voyage began at 6:15 AM on the back of a Chinese Loncin 150cc motorcycle to the Caribetours bus station. The entire city is Chinese motorcycle heaven, with motos and pasolas (scooters) loading everyone aboard. I have seen motorcycles deliver50 Kg bags of rice, cooking gas canisters, dressers, washing machines and even coffins and refrigerators. At 9:45 the bus arrived in Santo Domingo and I took a cab to the Boca Chica bus station and thence to the entrance to the Airport. There were about 40 passengers on a 32 passenger Toyota Coaster microbus, and the fare was 60 pesos (about $130) SDQ airport is about 20 kms E. of Santo Domingo As a rule, I get dropped off there and take a motoconcho on in to the terminal, about 3 kms. out on a peninsula, but this time, the bus had several people who worked on the cargo side of the Airport, and they delivered me to the door. In the airport, all the self-registration machines in the AA area were in pieces and surrounded with a rope, but I got booked with no problem. The plane arrived in MIA at 4:00 and it took me an hour waiting to register on a machine, which took 10 minutes. I traveled about six miles on automated walkways and a couple of robotrains  until I got to the MetroRail and took it to Culmer and got on the bus home. I got back at 5:30. I usually take the Metro rail home, but take a cab to the airport to make sure I get there on time.

It was a bit like starting out in the mid-1900's and traveling through time.

The best time to dine with the Colonel is after a month eating rice and pigeon peas. Nothing tastes better than US fast food after existing on a Dominican diet. I find change to be stimulating, actually.  There is something about hearing rain fall on a tin roof along with mangoes crashing down on it that is somehow refreshing.

[sirs]

Welcome back   

[Christians4LessGvt]

Are you ready to fly on a pilotless plane?

So is it time to lose the human pilot altogether? Certainly many in the industry think so. Far better, they argue, for airliners to fly autonomously, under the remote supervision of pilots in an office thousands of kilometres away. Safety-wise it seems to make sense ? flight crew error has been implicated in about half of all fatal airline accidents.

Along with improved safety, pilotless passenger planes could offer dramatic cost savings for airlines and passengers alike. Without pilots, airlines would spend far less on salaries, simulator training, healthcare, layover hotels and retirement benefits, says Mary Cummings, a researcher in autonomous flight at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. That should translate into lower fares, and automated flight should also be more fuel efficient, helping to reduce costs and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

So how far away are pilotless passenger planes? Well, one already exists, after a fashion. An unpiloted Jetstream airliner operated by BAE Systems has been flying 800-kilometre trips to see how it interacts with other aircraft and air traffic controllers ? although it still has a crew on board, just in case.

Despite these advances, it is unlikely that passenger airlines will be the first to introduce pilotless planes. Cummings expects cargo carriers such as FedEx  to be the first  to drop from two pilots to just one. This will allow the technology to be tested in the same aircraft as those used by airlines, but with no passengers aboard.

If that proves safe, we can expect to see cargo airlines ditching the crew completely by around 2035, she suggests. Instead, a pilot based at a company's hub would watch over a fleet of cargo planes via satellite, ready to assume control if anything goes wrong.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/are-you-ready-to-fly-on-a-pilotless-plane-20140921-10j70w.html

[Xavier_Onassis]

I agree that passenger aircraft will be the last to give up a human flight crew, and in the latter years this will be for psychological reasons. People will not want to put their lives in the "hands" of a robot. Piloted aircraft will be initiated at least 20 years after most cars are self-piloted.

[Plane]

Large aircraft already spend a lot of time on autopilot.

This has been true for years.

But there is no auto-hero, You still want an expert on the scene when conditions are bad or unusual.


Have you heard the joke about the Airbus?

The crew standard is a pilot and a dog.

The pilot is to meet requirements, the dog is to bite him if he touches the controls.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I think I would personally prefer to have a pilot on board. The idea of a self-driving car is not something I would pay for at the current time because of the price and because I do not think I want to trust such a device.

Your comment on the Airbus is amusing.

Let us imagine that a troop transport with a robo pilot somehow got hit by lightening or some other freakish occurrence caused it to crash, killing all the passengers. Such a thing occurs when there is a pilot, after all. That Malaysian airliner that just vanished comes to mind. Unlike commercial passengers, the troops had no choice but to fly in the robo piloted plane.

One such incident could postpone robo pilots for a decade at least.