Deal would bring Google jets, millions of dollars to San Jose airport
mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
"Content from us.bernerverein.ch, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware."
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22556675/google-chrom...
It's also possible that there's an advertising network that's compromised and pushing malware (as seems to be the case quite often).
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22515730/malware-warn...
But honestly, don't you see the solution here? You have a room full of pilots in Tulsa Oklahoma (or wherever) or are providing manual intervention when necessary. Just like how we manage millitary drones today.
So I don't think that Google is working on 'pilotless planes'.
Yes, remotely piloted or autonomous flying drones could never work. There must be 2 pilots flying a bird, that will never change, even the Air Force wouldn't be that crazy.
But honestly, give it twenty years.
There's always been too much at stake in the airline industry to allow a lot of room for human error. Combined with the huge leaps that fly-by-wire planes have made in the last few decades, that made for some very powerful incentives on everyone's part (engineers, regulators, and companies) to advance autopilot as far as they possibly could.
This relevant link gets posted a lot, but is worth posting again: http://www.salon.com/2011/08/04/can_jetliners_fly_themselves...
And what do terms like “automatic” and “autopilot” mean, anyway? Autopilot is simply a tool, along with many other tools available to the crew. You still need to tell it what to do, how to do it and when to do it. And although it frees the pilot from having to have his or her hands physically on the control wheel (or sidestick) or thrust levers, this is only a fraction of what the act of “flying” entails. The autopilot is not flying the plane. The crew is flying the plane, through the autoflight system.
That in no way says "keeps going without operator intervention" to me.
Take, for example, Qantas flight 32, an A380 that was successfully landed after one of the engines more or less blew up, damaging several other systems. Truly pilotless operation would require automated systems that could do as well --- and hopefully better than the pilots of Air France 447, the transatlantic flight that was lost due to recoverable pilot error.
Then again, human pilots are fallible, and lots of crashes would be avoided if they paid more attention to instruments and less to instinct (where's that horizon again?), so maybe programming planes to just blindly follow the instruments would result in a net reduction in crashes.
Like a need to land the plane in Hudson River when the plane hits a flock of geese, or emergencies when vital system monitoring tools become inaccessible.
A large portion of FAA's required reading for pilots http://www.faa.gov/library/manuals/aviation/pilot_handbook/ is dealing with various failures of subsystems.
It has been the topic of quite a number of spirited debates at both city halls.
Technically speaking, TSA, who are not federal agents, have to be invited onto an aircraft by the Captain.
They're a federal agency, but not of law enforcement (AFAIK).
As I understand it, they can be comprised of actual law enforcement personnel, including federal. But don't necessarily. And even if a VIPR team included federal law enforcement personnel, it's not clear that they're necessarily acting with federal law enforcement authority.
As if the TSA wasn't a confusing-enough bureaucratic monstrosity.
The old rules are simply not something I'd be confident applies. In the trivial case, sure, a gate agent isn't a federal officer. But if a TSA agent were to appear at a private aircraft, that would be out of the ordinary. And once you start talking about out-of-the-ordinary set-ups, it's worth noting that even a random TSA gate rapist may have out-of-the-ordinary legal authority in some situations. To say nothing of what law enforcement officers may be operating under the TSA's purview in said out-of-the-ordinary set-ups.
I know an attorney who flies their own jet, and if the TSA "agents" are doing something "out-of-the-ordinary", that is the time when there is a "badge check".
I think this is a moot point, as what VIPR teams are typically for securing public transportation or public events, neither of which is a private jet. Air Marshals, although actual federal agents, don't typically fly on private jets unless under Space-A (invited) privileges.
As to what VIPR teams do, a small airport is a VIP away from all sorts of federal officers asking all sorts of questions, private planes or not.
For what it's worth, there's already a Signature terminal near SFO that private jets can fly in and out of, so Google is just saving the 10 extra minutes it takes to get to SFO by lobbying for a Signature terminal at SJC.
(I'd probably have even more planes, just pointing out the upgrade)