Is It Possible To Fly Planes Without Pilots?

April 2, 2015: The tragic crash of Germanwings in the Alps this week was caused by the mistake of the copilot. Experts have answered “Yes” to the question if it was possible to fly planes without pilots.

“Pilots only spend 3 minutes per flight flying a plane anyway, and they don’t really need to do that,” said Mary “Missy” Cummings who is a former Air Force pilot, an engineering professor and director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University.

Moreover she added,”About 80% of plane crashes are caused by human error.” She said planes can fly themselves. As the U.S. military already flies Global Hawk drones, which are nearly the size of a the widely-used Boeing 737 passenger jets, there seems to be the possibility of doing so.And according to the military data, drone flights crash less often than piloted flights.

But businesses working on drones are working only for non-passenger uses, like delivering goods and taking areal photographs.