Do you think free flight will make air traffic controllers redundant?

Question

Will it also lead to flying cars?

Answer 1

Unfortunately I don't see free flight or flying cars happening anytime in the future. I think air traffic controllers have one of the hardest most stressful jobs in the world and yet those men and women do a great job!!

Answer 2

No.

Answer 3

I think it'll be the opposite.  Think back to the past when we had no GPS and limited radar coverage.  Its pretty easy once you have the basics down to run non radar on airways (I'm not talking oops radar just failed whos on frequency again???) to the approach as compared to vectoring umpteen million GPS equipped regional jets to the ILS final approach.  If I'm non radar I'm not pumping them in the sequence at minimums and I'm pretty much only dealing with experienced pilots.  You put a controller in a radar situation at saturation and pump in some new pilots (or for your case just got my flying car license at the DMV at 16) its a mess.  

The other thing is TCAS is wrong sometimes and things fail.  You get some yahoo who spent the same 10 hours I spent learning to get my drivers license and expect them to be able to take over WHEN and I don't mean IF (electronic trim tab runaway anyone?) the auto pilot wets the bed you're kidding yourself.

If you think the average joe is willing to put in enough time and money to get trained to a safe level if and when things fail for a flying car, you're overestimating the need for the system.  It took me 250 hours of training and roughly the cost of a nicely equiped Lexus to learn to fly in IMC.  If I toldyou you can either ride a bus or spend 50 grand to learnto drive a car, I'm pretty sure you'd be a bus rider for life.

Bottom line, automation is cool, GPSs are neat, but things fail.  If you trust your life to TCAS / mode S you are more brave than me.