The Federal Aviation Administration this week signed a research and development agreement with GE Aviation to come up with a way to safely mix the burgeoning amounts of unmanned aircraft with commercial aviation.
With this research the FAA and GE hope to accomplish aviation first by completing the research to facilitate flight of an Unmanned Aircraft System with an FAA certified, trajectory-based flight management system, said Chris Beaufait, president of Avionics for GE Aviation. Such trajectory systems let aircraft fly from point-to-point rather than the zig-zag routes most commercial aircraft fly today. The system is a key component of the FAA NextGen flight management system.
As part of the research, GE will be working with unmanned aircraft builder, AAI to demonstrate flights with its Shadow tactical unmanned aircraft. Simulations will be conducted at the FAA's William J. Hughes Technical Center beginning this fall and will continue for two years.
More:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/44336The article quotes some big concerns from the GAO, not least of which is how the unmanned aircraft are meant to see and avoid everything else. One particularly interesting one, I thought, was the inevitable terrorism angle - if the cockpit's at ground level, it will need some pretty serious security around it.
My friend and I applied for airline jobs in Australia, but they didn't Qantas.
