Honeywell advanced technology guru Bob Witwer gave an interesting talk in Las Vegas this week in which he discussed the future of air travel and posed the intriguing question of whether airliners, cargo planes and business jets years from now will have a need for pilots or, indeed, even cockpit windows.
If the thought of the captain of your airliner being a software app that lives in the avionics gives you pause, you’re not alone. Still, as we shift to a satellite-based NextGen operating environment where airplanes can be controlled by computers in 4-D – that is, having the capability of hitting a specific point in space at a precise time, every time – will airliners really need two pilots? Will they even need one?
