Not so long ago the hottest topic of discussion, and a major item of contention, was the idea of Free Flight. In case you are not sure what that was all about let me just say that free flight is an air traffic management concept under which the responsibility for providing separation is transferred to the fight deck and pilots do a part of what air traffic controllers normally do. And this happens with IFR flights in controlled airspace and not only for the odd crossing maneuver we have long used it in visual conditions.
No, I have not gone off my rocker, every research project on the subject has shown that this is eminently possible, is safe and does bring capacity and efficiency benefits. Of course it was not surprising that controllers were not exactly charmed by the idea. The arguments ranged from the purely technical through the operational to the social… Admitting that you were a believer in Free Flight was likely to earn you few friends.
Headwind or not, the idea of Free Flight has persisted sufficiently that it is in fact part of the new air traffic management paradigm albeit being pushed more and more into the future with the opponents no doubt fervently hoping that it will go away…
While this uproar about free flight grabbed most of the attention, another revolution, much more critical, has been slowly shaping up quietly reaching the point where it is not possible to open an aviation journal without stumbling on multiple articles discussing the subject.
I am talking about UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles of course. Sometimes they are called UAS where the S stands for System… For the time being they are mentioned mostly in the military context but their appearance in civilian airspace and out of the war theatres is imminent.
Now an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is not an airline flight with a very low load factor… a UAV is an aircraft that has no pilot or other crew member on board. Some of them have a pilot on the ground piloting the thing remotely but others will operate completely on their own changing the age-old paradigm of “see and avoid” into “sense and avoid”…
Of course for the moment there is no danger of your next Airbus flight running on remote control but the attention of the box shifters, all cargo airlines and the like, is drawn to these machines for a very good reason. In any airline’s operations, fuel and salaries are the two biggest costs. Reducing fuel costs is on the agenda and new engines and aircraft will take care of that. Reducing salary costs is a harder nut to crack. Unless of course you dispose of the pilots… enter the UAV.
Interestingly, the outcry about having these computer controlled beasts mix in with traditional traffic is much more limited than what free flight had been greeted with. For some reason it seems to be generally accepted that by the time UAVs are certified to operate alongside their more traditional brethren, the technology involved will be mature enough to allow this to happen without any problem.
Now if you stop to think for a moment, it is easy to see that much of the technology involved in operating a UAV is in fact very similar to or identical with that needed for Free Flight. So, if they work for UAVs, they should also work for Free Flight…
The operational issues involved in UAV operations are a good deal more complicated than what Free Flight had ever proposed…
Although there is a long way to go, the focused and intelligent discussions going on around the world with the aim of making UAVs a feasible proposition also for civilian purposes are so different from the vitriolic attacks triggered on Free Flight when it looked like it might actually happen.
If the technological and operational issues can be solved for UAVs, they could have been solved also for Free Flight. In fact, a lot of the ground work had already been done…
So what is left that accounts for this visible difference in the reaction to UAVs?
UAVs do not threaten the jobs of air traffic controllers and the monopolies of ANSPs. In fact, one might even argue that with UAVs coming, there may be an urgent need for more of both.
Those in the know have long suspected that the opposition to Free Flight was rooted in social issues and a fear of losing monopolistic control over what happens in the air more than any technical or operational consideration. For sure, no research project has ever turned up any issue bringing the feasibility of free flight into question.
UAVs do not touch those sensitive areas so a civilized discourse is possible. I wonder what will happen when UAV related technological and operational solutions are picked up by the Free Flight people and they start nagging once again…
May be, just may be, the second time around it will not be so easy brush Free Flight into the uncertain future. The future will be the now…