Future of aviation? General and commercial. Please Answer.?

Question

What do you see as the future of general aviation? As airline?

How long do you think airlines will be around? The next 50 years? I feel that people won't use airline travel.

Will people use flying cars?

What do you think airplanes will look like in 50 years? Both general aviation and commercial.

Will being a pilot still be a good job?

Will pilots actually fly the plane? What I mean is takeoff and land the plane.

Will pilots even be in the plane?

And lastly, will air travel just be a thing of the past?

Laslty, what do you think about all these questions? What is your opinion. Thank you!!!!!!!

Answer 1

I think air travel will be around indefinitely.  The need to find other fuels for aircraft will cause some changes, and will either hinder air travel or help it, depending on the cost and availability of alternative fuels, but I don't expect air travel to disappear.  A continuing slide towards a police state and widespread paranoia will make air travel more and more difficult and irritating.

I don't ever expect to see flying cars.  People have been predicting those for ages, and it has never happened.  There's no obvious advantage to it, it is complicated enough that average people wouldn't be able to use it safely (just look at the stats for automobile accidents, and cars are easy to drive compared to aircraft), and achieving sufficient automation to make it safe without a great deal of competence and training probably won't be cost-effective.

I expect airplanes to look very much as they do today in 50 years, unless some unforeseen breakthrough occurs in aeronautical engineering.  The basic design works very well, and aviation is a conservative industry, and right now there isn't much reason to make any major change.

Being a pilot will be less and less of a good job in most respects, although those who love to fly will continue to undertake piloting careers.  The training and career paths of commercial pilots and private pilots will diverge considerably, until they are almost completely separate, with some people training exclusively to fly airliners, and others training just to fly little aircraft.

Airplanes will be increasingly automated, especially commercial transports.  They already are flown by computer most of the time, and this trend will continue and expand.  Pilots will remain in the cockpit for a long time to come, as back-up, but they will intervene less and less in the actual flying of the aircraft.  They will have remedial training allowing them to fly the plane to a limited extent in emergencies, but they will mostly be systems managers and caretakers.  In a more distant future, flights might be completely automated, with no pilots, but given that we still haven't seen that for buses, trucks, trains, or ships, it's a long way off (about the only thing we've been able to safely automate is subway trains).

Private pilots and small aircraft will continue to dwindle in number, as flying a plane for leisure increasingly becomes a niche hobby for the very rich (it already requires considerable wealth).  Pressure from airlines and bias from government will continue to favor the development of huge commercial airports, and the closure of GA airports.  The same pressure will squeeze the private leisure pilot out of the picture.  The corporate aspect of GA will continue to develop until it looks very much like the airlines, and this, too, will squeeze out the private pilots.  There will be increasing regulation, and increasing automation, and increasing restrictions that favor commercial air travel and impede just about all other aviation.

The future of aviation is affected by all sorts of factors, many of which are completely unpredictable or impossible to even imagine until they arise, so all of these predictions may be wrong.

Answer 2

We have seen the golden age of aviation, and also of the automobile as it has existed.  Aviation will certainly decline in the decades to come, because we have seen the end of cheap oil.

Airlines will continue to exist in a limited sense for as long as 50 years, but not forever.  Rail travel and oceanic passenger ships will return as the dominant forms of transportation.  In effect, we will return to a cleaner, more efficient version of the transportation systems of 75-100 years ago.

Some aviation for military purposes and for the transport of the richest and most influential people will continue for a couple of hundred years, but not forever.

Flying cars are not practical, and will not appear.  Airplanes will look very much as they do now; there will not be too many significant new developments.  There will be a spurt of new plastic airplanes for a while, but the last airplane left flying will probably be a Cessna 172.

Professional piloting will be a very rare job, but may be a very good job if you can get it.

Live pilots will always be required on the flight deck.  If you aren't sure why I think so, try getting a computer to translate Chinese into English or change a diaper.

There will come a time when the general quality of life will deteriorate to the point that there will be no more aviation.  We could fix this now by taking swift action to control population and reduce pollution, but we won't.  Too many greedy people who don't care what happens to their grandchildren.

In my opinion, the questions are all things worth asking about and worth considering.

Answer 3

-Airlines will last till people see it as a practical transport.

-flying cars-only in James Bond movies perhaps.

-In 50 years Boeing and Airbus will develop/produce more short to medium planes because the high cost of fuel it isn't practical to fly the A380,B787 with 50 pax only.

- Yup, but they're getting to be one to many.

- yup even now with auto landing, pilots still trust human mind and decisions. if there are planes certainly there will be pilots to fly it.

- Re: this questions It is OK to be is this being skeptical sometimes. We're all humans.

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Answer 4

haha flying cars. Not in your lifetime kid,