Passenger plane flies 800 kilometres without a pilot
Say hello to the droneliner. A business plane has flown an 800-kilometre round trip in civilian airspace without the pilot onboard operating its controls.
Instead, the plane flew itself like an outsized drone with continual monitoring of its autonomous manoeuvres performed by a pilot based on the ground.
The flight from Warton in Lancashire, to Inverness in Scotland by a British Aerospace Jetstream is being hailed as a milestone by members of ASTRAEA, a £62 million UK research consortium aiming to develop the technology that will allow civilian aircraft to share their airspace with drones – some of which could be as big as airliners.
