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Boeing CEO: First Operational Self-Flying Cars Are Less Than 5 Years Out (geekwire.com)
Speaking at the GeekWire Summit, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the company is making rapid progress on the first operational self-driving airborne vehicles and that we could see them take to the skies in under five years. "Muilenburg laid out the company's vision for flying cars, as well as the importance of safety measures for the concept," reports GeekWire. "Muilenburg said the company is already building prototypes and expects them to fly within the year." From the report: "Imagine a future city that has three-dimensional highways, with flying taxis, flying cars," Muilenburg said. "That future is not that far away. In fact we are building the prototype vehicles today. We are also investing in the ecosystem that will allow that to operate safely and reliably as it must." The full vision of self-flying cars ferrying people through busy urban areas will take longer than five years to realize, Muilenburg said, but vehicles that start with more simple functions like cargo aren't far away.
The ecosystem to manage this new method of travel includes enhanced air traffic control. Earlier this year, Boeing teamed up with Austin-based SparkCognition to develop artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies for tracking and directing flying cars through traffic corridors. Muilenburg wouldn't say where these futuristic vessels would be tested, though he did say that the environment would be a "similar case" to Airbus' Vahana flying-taxi testing ground in Pendleton, Ore. Testing self-flying cars requires dedicated airspace and a slate of approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The ecosystem to manage this new method of travel includes enhanced air traffic control. Earlier this year, Boeing teamed up with Austin-based SparkCognition to develop artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies for tracking and directing flying cars through traffic corridors. Muilenburg wouldn't say where these futuristic vessels would be tested, though he did say that the environment would be a "similar case" to Airbus' Vahana flying-taxi testing ground in Pendleton, Ore. Testing self-flying cars requires dedicated airspace and a slate of approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration.
People already can't drive with wheels on the road, just think of the danger once they get airborne. Am I suppose to turn first, or do you? Just imagine all the ground injuries.
No one reads the manual.
They've had operational flying cars since before I was born.
Making it operate is not the problem with the Jetsons fantasy.
sounds like fluff intended to pad their stock prices, perhaps to offset short-term losses due to the recent announcement that elon will beat them to manned flight.
fully autonomous "flying cars" are a lot more than "five years" away.
I don't want a self flying car, I want to fly that fucker myself, and if it could be the shape of a spitfire that would just be tops.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Flying cars are not ever going to be mainstream. The problem isn't who operates them (humans or machines), even, though human drivers can't even handle two dimensional operations reliably so I would be terrified of the average driver today having to deal with three dimensions. No, the problem is the energy cost of getting a car in the air in the first place. I don't see a reasonable solution to that problem coming any time soon unless we discover some heretofore unknown magical method of doing antigravity or something like that. In general, it's far more economical to keep general transportation using traditional ground transport simply because you necessarily remove the cost of lifting and then lowering again the cargo and vehicle.
That's not to say that rich people won't have flying cars. I mean, they may be a bit more practical and helicpoters assuming they ever work. That's assuming they aren't already helicopters....
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
Flying cars have been 'any day now' for the last 20 years at least. The only thing that has changed since then, is the emergence of auto pilots that might solve the problem of how to manage flight logistic and safety. Because manual flight for the average Joe as a means of transportation is never going to happen.. But the main problem still remains the same as 20 years ago. Short of some revolutionary new battery or incredibly efficient motor it's not going to be practical. Making something fly takes a lot of energy. So you end up with some bastard hybrid car with wings, that aren't very good for either for flying or driving on roads.
Your idiot neighbor having one of these.
The noise of these things flying over your house. day and night.
The 3 dimensional zoning debates. And lawsuits.
The amount of energy this needs, just while we try to reduce our energy footprint.
The pollution this generates right where it causes the most problems, in busy urban areas. The levels of energy required can only be achieved by burning something. crudely.
Don't get me wrong, flying cars would be great, in a Jetson style future. But in our overpopulated world I associate them with the more bleak and dystopian images of the future that some science-fiction paints.
See subject.
Technically they could be5 years out, I believe that. But regulation-wise there is a long way to go. That's not gonna happen in5 years.
Flying cars may happen in 5 years but they'll just be toys for the mega rich and won't be allowed to go anywhere that a helicopter can't anyway due to civil regs and noise issues. This is nothing more than Boeing pumping its share price. Again.
Imagine when Muslims hack them, and tall buildings everywhere are hit by flying cars
It doesn't make any sense (yet) from an energy economy perspective.
Better get rid of cars now (a long process, as it entails re-thinking how cities work: as they do now, many people do need those cars), optimize public transport (that's the short term), and in the long term, perhaps technology can come up with whatever is necessary to make "cars" "fly".
Mr. Muilenburg's drivel is just that: marketing drivel. How can I position a new gadget to extract money from the public -- the greater good be damned. Those types should be put in jail -- or in the asylum.
Heck, in times where people are thinking on how to terraform Mars, we're 100% busy on de-terraforming Earth!
In many ways self-navigation in air is simpler than self navigating cars, which is a nearly mature technology. In air you don't have to follow roads, stay in lanes, account for and merge with constant traffic, or avoid as many obstacles. Just "Go north by northwest and fly higher than power lines and wind turbines". Take off and landing may be tricky to implement reliably for all scenarios.
However this only eliminates the cost of trained pilots. As OP pointed out its the energy cost that makes it unlikely these will ever transport people, as (I assume) the cost scales exponentially with mass. Its one thing to lift a ten pound hobby drone, lifting 200 lb meatbags plus luggage will be orders more expensive than using wheels. And this does not include the liability costs which also would likely be higher than ground vehicles.
However it is conceivable to envision many jobs in commercial air flight replaced by automation. One pilot to take the controls in case of emergency or malfunction, one flight attendant to deal with passengers (already have self checking boarding passes and luggage), one human supervising baggage handling robots, etc.
OK, now I know this is complete marketing B.S. (look, I'm being nice!). There is no reasonable use of "Blockchain" in "Directing Traffic and Tracking Vehicles". That is utter and complete nonsense.
Just call it, "Blockety McBlockFace" and be done with it. F.F.S. (see, I'm being nice again).
"artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies for tracking and directing flying cars"
BINGO!
Molller anyone seen Moller. http://www.moller.com/
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
The first to be written up in Popular Science and other publications was over 100 years ago - the Curtiss Autoplane. Like many in the past 20 years, it succeeded in getting off the ground for short hops, but little more. There were efforts that truly flew at least as early as the 40s. As you indicate, flying hasn't really been the problem.
Makes me sad to here him say this, how very dumb he must.
[($)]
but assuming they are correct, even if it is 10 years ... after all, they're just larger drones that can carry a bit more weight.
They will be for the rich or other entities that currently use expensive helicopters. Maybe after 20 years it'll become affordable for more than the 1%, maybe even 2 or 3%!
They will be cheaper than helicopters. They will cost less to run than helicopters. They will be autonomous, so no pilot required.
So I can see a lot of expensive air ambulance (and other fast response emergency) type services switching to these very quickly, and saving money, or scaling out, at the same time. Obviously they would need more than a single-person unit, but they will surely happen.
What's _your_ test coverage?
Coconuts will not be the only thing that fall on your head!
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the company is making rapid progress on the first operational self-driving airborne vehicles and that we could see them take to the skies in under five years.
Note the use of the word "vehicles" not the word "cars". We already have operational self-driving airborne vehicles. They're called drones and we've been doing them for quite a while now. Not a single one of them resembles what we call cars nor are they useful for that purpose. We also have transportation vehicles for people to fly in but they are called airplanes and helicopters and they aren't going to drive on our roads. If it doesn't drive on a road by definition it is not a car. If they want to developed a vehicle that doesn't require a human pilot yet is safe to fly people around that's great but then just say that. They aren't working on flying cars because flying cars are impossible with any technology we currently or are likely to possess any time soon. And even if the technology was worked out the economics of it make it an absurd proposition. Operating any vehicle that flies is going to be VASTLY more expensive than almost any vehicle that doesn't for all but a handful of corner cases.
"Imagine a future city that has three-dimensional highways, with flying taxis, flying cars," Muilenburg said. "That future is not that far away. In fact we are building the prototype vehicles today. We are also investing in the ecosystem that will allow that to operate safely and reliably as it must."
Has there been some magical breakthrough in power density that I'm not aware of? Because unless we have invented the equivalent of Tony Stark's arc reactor we aren't going to have flying cars. Muilenburg's statement is the sort of marketing BS you would expect from a company that makes aircraft. Saying they are "building the protoype vehicles today" is a content free statement. Ford built a nuclear powered prototype car back in the 1950s and yet I don't see them at dealerships curiously.
Also the word taxi has NOTHING to do with any specific type of vehicle. Any type of vehicle can be a taxi because taxi is by definition a vehicle hired for transport. A 747 can be a taxi. So can a boat, a helicopter, a bicycle, and yes a car. Taxi is a service not a specific type of vehicle. Airplanes and helicopters are used as taxis today. Whether or not they are piloted by a human or a computer is irrelevant.
Fucks, read the fucking next story about fucking limiting burning fucking fossil fuels,
fuck you, you fucking morons
Go well
an faa level code audit is not easy but at least Boeing should have coders who are good unlike uber.
Everyone else has pointed out this marketing BS from Boeing so rather than repeat that again I'll point out that using a tech like this for longer haul cargo could have some benefits.
Maybe not so much personal flyers as cargo blimps, long haul would be great but also possibly as lift platforms for gliding vehicles. Blimps have a log of surface area that could gather solar energy and/or make an excellent target for beaming microwave energy from the ground. For local transport you might be able to do something along the lines of lifts on the blimps to hoist cargo systems with gliding capabilities to transport between the main hubs and smaller distribution centers within a city for instance.
What part of "self-flying" did you not understand?
Doesn't matter. You're worrying about the wrong thing. Vehicles that don't need humans to operate them safely are arguably a good idea. Frankly piloting vehicles (cars, planes, boats, etc) is a waste of human time and ability for the most part. If we can develop computers that can do the job better then that's great.
What gets lost in these discussions is the fact that even if we develop planes that can fly themselves it isn't going to change the economics of operating an aircraf of any description dramatically. Replacing a human pilot with a computer doesn't suddenly make planes affordable to the common man. The cost of the pilot is almost a rounding error in the cost of owning and operating any flying vehicle. You have the purchase cost, maintenance, storage, inspections, insurance, fuel, financing, and more which together VASTLY outstrip the cost of the pilot. Replacing a human pilot with a computer doesn't change most of those costs much if at all.
Will it be legal to shoot them down, like drones - if they fly over your property? :D
They've had operational flying cars since before I was born.
Let's be accurate. We've had a few thoroughly impractical prototype vehicles that have no real utility as either a car or an aircraft. They barely qualify as cars, perform badly as aircraft, and even a minor fender bender would render one no longer airworthy. They have very limited cargo capacity, are slow, and are hugely expensive. Not to mention you REALLY don't want to be in one in a real accident on the ground. They are basically proof of concept demonstrators that served to prove that the concept won't work in the real world.
Making it operate is not the problem with the Jetsons fantasy.
This is true even if we ignore the above. We don't have the infrastructure for flying cars, we don't have the navigation systems, we don't have the autonomous flight controls, we don't have power supplies with sufficient power density, etc. And even if we somehow ignore all that the economics of it make it a non-starter.
User installed bomb bays and DIY drug couriers
Gimme Gimme. Bolt on some bomb racks, and have fun and mayhem over packed events. It could be a cigarette, a soiled nappy,,urine, a house brick -whatever.
In an Instant, Mexican transportation becomes possible. The Irish version will have wind down windows and no baby or dog restraints.
Why would they need to be especially good at either?
That's not the problem. The problem is that any design we can actually build are REALLY BAD at both. To get the thing aloft you have to strip out vast amounts of weight and even then we can only just barely get them airborne with limited cargo capacity. They are so light and fragile you can't really drive them on the road safely. Even a minor fender bender renders them no longer airworthy. When they are on the ground you have to lug around heavy impractical wings and in the air you have to lug around heavy impractical drivetrains. They're bad on fuel economy, fragile, expensive, can barely carry any cargo, can't land or take off anywhere useful, slow, loud, uncomfortable, etc.
The ONLY way a flying car could be practical is if we had a breakthrough power supply. Think Tony Stark's arc reactor made real. No internal combustion engine, no EV tech, no fuel cell tech, nor any other power source we have or are in any danger of making can generate enough power while being light enough to make flying cars a practical reality either technically or economically.
A flying car is certainly for a completely different context than most planes and as a car it would would only need to offer an adequate experience as any trips of significant length
Not when it's cheaper to buy both a plane and a car than a combination vehicle that does both activities worse for more money. Even if we ignore all the technical problems with flying cars (which are legion) the economics of them immediately make them non-viable.
(like the commute from the burbs to major urban areas for work) would likely be done in the air.
Umm, where do you think you are going to land this thing? It isn't going to be landing on 5th avenue on NYC. You have to land at an airport and drive from there. And if you are going to do that then you might as well just fly a real plane and own/rent a real car. You're not really thinking the problem through. Even if we somehow managed to figure out the technical and economic problems with flying cars (which we won't) we would have to make VAST changes to our infrastructure to be able to use them anywhere except flying to/from airports. You're not going to land a flying car in the parking lot of your local mega-mart and you sure as hell aren't flying one into a dense urban area.
Wedged between two alarming messages about the urgency of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, this press release shows how far removed from reality Boeing management really is. Any form of heavier-than-air flying is much more energy intensive than surface transportation and can only realistically be powered with hydrocarbon fuel. I trust that Slashdot readers are educated enough to understand that all those battery powered electric multicopters for personal transport need an order of magnitude increase in energy density before they even start to be of any use (except for fleecing naive investors, that is).
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
Portable EMP weapons will be added to the 2cd amendment.
And it wants its marketing catch phrase back. 'Five years out' is tech speak for, 'It might, but probably won't work, we have no idea, but give us money!'. I can already tell you we will not have flying cars in our lifetimes.
Just to point out that people are forgetting the broader context: not just Boeing but a lot of companies from startups to mature aerospace firms are all racing toward the unmanned flying car concept. Airbus, Bell, Uber, EHang, Zee.Aero (backed by Larry Page), just to name a few all have various VTOL unmanned passenger aircraft in the works.
Till they get anti-gravity. Pushing enough air down to lift a person up makes a lot of noise.
Hmm I wonder if Boeing even thought about these costs before they decided to spend billions of dollars on research down this road.
Please cite a document showing Boeing spent "billions" on this specific research. They do spend billions on R&D ($3.1 billion in 2017) but most of it is for other projects. For example they spent $29 billion on R&D for the 787 program alone. I've seen no evidence that this is anything other than PR puffery.
I guess it's just something an army of engineers don't think about when they are designing a new product to sell in the marketplace?
Unwad your panties. There is a financial reason to develop technology to fly vehicles autonomously - just not the ones cited in the article - that "justification" is pure marketing BS. Flying cars are not a thing and probably never will be. Flying taxis are already a thing and there might be some marginal benefit to autonomous piloting but it isn't going to be a game changer economically - most of the costs are unrelated to piloting. Safety is important and airlines will be happy to cut costs anywhere they can if there are savings to be had. Furthermore Boeing makes both civilian and military aircraft and there are obvious military applications for this sort of tech. Autonomous piloting has some obvious advantages if done properly but pilot salaries are reportedly somewhere around 4%-8% of the cost of operating an aircraft.
believe half of what you see and less of what you hear.
Till they get anti-gravity. Pushing enough air down to lift a person up makes a lot of noise.
That's why claiming Boeing is working on "flying cars" is a lot of "bullshit". They aren't. They're working on air taxis. They will have all the same restrictions as helicopters, but they won't have a pilot. None of them are going to be singlecopters, either, nor run on fossil fuels. They will all be battery multicopters. That makes them quieter than helis at all times, so while they still won't be fit to take off from driveways, they will be able to take off from more locations.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And literally all the good flying cars in science fiction movies are lifted by some kind of antigravity. So that's where the research better be.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's always just "five years out". Seriously, the complexities of everyone flying + the complexities of self-driving = not going to happen in 5, 10, or even 20 years out.
for me, its the whole reason to own an airplane is cuz its so much fun to fly them.
A self-flying one would be a severe downgrade in my book.
The Pipistrel Alpha Electro (the world's first mass-produced electric plane) has running costs (energy, mantenance) one fifth of the gasoline-powered version.
Citation needed. That plane can stay in the air all of 60 minutes. A typical small plane like a Cessna can stay aloft 4-6 hours and carry more cargo. Even the company's website says it is "optimized for traffic pattern operations" which is PR speak for it can take off and circle the airport and that's about it.
In any case this has nothing at all to do with autonomous piloting systems which have no inherent relationship to the type of power used to propel the aircraft. ICE, jet, EV, etc doesn't matter for purposes of steering.
This is not about putting people at the helm of flying cars. Heaven forbid.
Putting a self-driving land car into the real world presents a much bigger challenge than putting a self driving drone fleet in the air. Especially if they were all networked and reporting their positions centrally and to each other.It has long been apparent that moving a self-driving conveyance in the air poses fewer problems than putting a self driving a car on the ground for several reasons as follows:
Computers have been controlling aircraft for decades. There is a big body of knowledge.
The flyer has three dimensions for avoidance of unanticipated obstacles. There are far fewer pedestrians, dogs, bikes, drunks in the air than on the ground. (Yes. There are birds and other flyers. Enhanced air traffic control is crucial.)
Downside to this idea relates to security in every sense of the word. Technically it is much more doable than, say, getting an AI to navigate through Manhattan at Friday rush hour.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
It's even better when you consider the fact that you can fly straight lines instead of winding paths, which cuts down on distance as compared to a car.
That's only true if you restrict your travel path to nothing but airports. If you want to actually go anywhere that is not an airport you aren't likely going there in a straight line no matter what vehicle you choose. Cars in general can get a LOT closer to their ultimate destination than any aircraft in most circumstances.
Nor do you have to waste fuel accelerating and decelerating at lights, or in bumper to bumper traffic.
No instead you have to drive to an airport, fly to another airport (which may or may not be close to where you want to go) and then drive to your ultimate destination. Calling that point to point travel is not even remotely accurate. Aircraft which can actually fly point to point (basically helicopters) is going to be quite inefficient in use of fuel compared to the alternatives.
Getting into the air doesn't have to use huge amounts of energy; it just depends on how you're generating lift.
Flying is (relatively) energy efficient in some use cases but not all. The real question isn't can you get the vehicle into the air. The question is how much cargo can the vehicle carry (including people) for a given amount of energy and then can you utilize that cargo capacity efficiently. Also there is the questions of how far you are traveling and how fast you need to get there. For long distance travel in short time periods it's hard to beat airplanes. But if you can take a bit more time or if the trip is relatively short there are usually more energy efficient means of travel.
Helicopters and other rotary-wing aircrafts do not takeoff and fly by "pushing air down". Vertical takeoff jets like the Harrier do.
meanwhile in the real word real research is happening by Boeing's competitors
You specifically claimed that Boeing was spending billions on R&D for this stuff and then failed to back up that assertion. Now you are talking about Boeing's competition? (who you also fail to establish is spending "billions" on this stuff) That's called moving the goal posts my friend.
So keep thinking it'll never happen
The only think I claimed will never happen is FLYING CARS which is absolutely true because physics is a bitch that way. You linked to a research project about a type of drone airplane being used as a taxi. Planes are already used as taxis today. The only difference here is that a human is not the pilot. Cool stuff but not a flying car. Do you understand the difference between a car and a taxi? Cars can be taxis but so can boats, airplanes, helicopters or bicycles. A taxi is a type of service not a type of vehicles. When an uber driver is driving themselves their car is not a taxi.
The "chopping" noise that helicopters make comes from collision of air from main rotor with air from the tail rotor. Since most of air taxis do not have tail rotors and instead use various kinds of multiple main rotor systems, they're fairly quiet.
Helicopters and other rotary-wing aircrafts do not takeoff and fly by "pushing air down"
The wrongness is impressively great in this one, Obi-wan.
ALL aircraft attain altitude by pushing air down. Despite what your incompetent 3rd grade book might have claimed, Bernoulli doesn't apply in open systems, the shape of the wing doesn't matter, and if you haven't noticed, planes can fly upside down just fine.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
In just a few short years they will hit the ground running!
Clearly you have no idea what we spend building roads, or the cost of highway fatalities.
You think putting autonomous piloting tech into planes will change either of those things in the slightest? Air travel is already FAR safer than driving and yet we still drive far more than we fly because safety isn't the only or even the paramount concern. You think planes are are going to become magically able to land where cars do and that some miracle will occur to make them affordable by people who aren't crazy rich? Air travel isn't going to replace cars and no amount of wishful thinking will make it otherwise.
Millions of barely (if we are lucky) competent people, piloting flying boxes composed of 2 tons of steel, after drinking 6 beers. What could possibly go wrong?
That's close enough to the same time-line for ITER fusion power plant to start producing power. Someone pinch me!
...they will be powered by cold fusion five years after that.
Killjoy cities, towns, counties, and especially HOAs are borking sUAS whenever they can. What makes anyone think that a flying car is going to be unobtrusive to et past those folks?
That's why claiming Boeing is working on "flying cars" is a lot of "bullshit". They aren't. They're working on air taxis. They will have all the same restrictions as helicopters, but they won't have a pilot. None of them are going to be singlecopters, either, nor run on fossil fuels. They will all be battery multicopters. That makes them quieter than helis at all times, so while they still won't be fit to take off from driveways, they will be able to take off from more locations.
Now if only the US military would let them use the technology that makes stealth helicopter blades so quiet. Then they'd really have something.
Fucking hell the future is like.. happening all around me. Flying cars becoming a thing. AI becoming a thing. Landing on distant asteroids, missions to Mars, a moon base. I've got in the palm of my hand a device that can put me in contact with any other human alive or tell me anything I want about anything I ask it and this is awesome I love the future keep happening keep happening 3 3
Fairly quiet...like a nitro burning funny car is fairly quiet? You can be a lot quieter than a helicopter and still be way too loud.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
based SparkCognition to develop artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies
This must be real: they know all the latest buzzwords!
Depends on what you think to be "way too loud". Current "Main + tail rotor" helicopters produce the loud flight sound from the collision of the air from two rotors. Hence the "chopping" sound you hear when helicopter flies. Note that it's so loud, you commonly cannot even hear the engine noise.
If you had to make a car comparison, it's like engine noise to tyre noise at speed. If you had hardest possible tyres with metal spikes on shitty and very noisy asphalt. If you take the tyre noise out, engine noise is actually very tolerably quiet.
And in case of NOTAR and multiple rotor systems, it's the engine noise that you hear, not the air flow collisions.
Long distance commercial flights have a good safety record (fatalities per mile) because only a small proportion of their travel is spent in take-off and landing; such flights have a safety record similar to trains (West European trains anyway).
There is no single reason why commercial aviation has the safety record it does. You correctly identified ONE of the factors but there are many others including but not limited to: strong safety regulations, a strong regulatory body (FAA), a strong safety culture, well trained pilots and ground control who have to demonstrate a high level of competence, extensive testing and maintenance requirements, there is little chance of hitting something during travel especially another vehicle, airplane design, cockpit technology, airport design, and more.
Trains are measurably less safe than commercial aviation (for a variety of reasons) but still incredibly safe overall - probably the second safest means of travel. And for short to medium length journeys trains can be notably more economical if the rail system is designed appropriately like in Europe or Japan. (US passenger rail sucks in most places) Plus trains can go places where airplanes generally cannot like city centers and underground.
That changes however if aircraft are used for short trips, especially private ones, because proportionately more take off and landing is involved.
It's true that more takeoffs and landings will almost certainly increase the casualty rate for aviation by some amount. The exact amount is obviously unclear but the number would be expected to be >0. However it is unlikely that we are going to see a significant increase in general aviation and private aircraft use since the cost is so great.
That would be even more so with the use (and maintenance) that flying cars are likely to get.
Stop. Just stop. Flying cars are NOT a thing. They will NEVER be a thing. There is no point in even discussing them or their hypothetical safety record. If there is some breakthrough that makes them feasible then and only then can we have this discussion.
Night and day, imagine that. /nonsense
Reasons Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg should be replaced:
1) Don't announce a product before it is ready for sale. It is not possible to predict how many problems there will be, and how much time curing those problems will require.
2) Noise, as the parent comment says. Would you accept the noise in your neighborhood?
3) Danger. Would you accept that there could be a crash in your neighborhood, or into your house?
4) It is not known how long the FAA, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, would require to decide about all the many, many issues.
In my opinion, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg has shown he is not qualified to lead a large company. Anyone who can't communicate clearly, sensibly, and logically cannot lead a large, important company.