German air traffic controllers are now calling for big change in the aviation industry. They believe that it would be beneficial to build technology that would allow the remote control of commercial planes from pilots on the ground.
This is all in a response to the March 24th crash, where Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz locked his captain out of the cockpit and flew an Airbus A320 into a mountainside killing all the crew members and 150 passengers.
Klaus Dieter Scheurle, head of the Deutsche Flugsicherung air traffic control authority, said "We have to think past today's technology. Such a system could be used in an emergency to take command of the plane and steer it safely to the ground."
This sort of technology would obviously serve as a sort of safety net for the in-air flights, but in the same breath, there are some clear issues that would need to be worked out. What if somebody hacked into the control system and took over a plane? The in-air pilot would need an override of some sort, and then that defeats the entire purpose of the system itself.
Perhaps there is a way to control the planes without a human pilot, the entire process being performed by autopilot and various other electronic flight assists. I am willing to bet that there would be a lower crash rate of commercial planes if there were all drones.
Immediately when I heard about this proposed idea, I drew comparisons to the US military. For years already the United States has been flying autonomous drones that are simply monitored by a single pilot behind a computer. Less lives are at risk, and the aircrafts are far more efficient.
If commercial planes were run like military drones, they might even be safer. The problem with that would be getting the general public to trust their lives on a computer system.
