Business · BBC Technology
They also argue automation could make flying safer, pointing to past declines in accidents as more automated systems have been
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Pilots' groups remain wary.
Key facts
- Pyka aims to scale up production from around two dozen planes a year currently to 1000 by 2030
- The US Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) calls removing pilots "a serious gamble with safety and a step too far
- The reporter has come to one of Pyka's crop-sprayer test sites, about 80km (50 miles) east of the company's factory and reached by a bumpy dirt road
- Pyka's planes are sometimes called large drones, but it seems an understatement: they all have 11.5m wingspans
Summary
Over an alfalfa field in California's San Joaquin Valley, a small crop-spraying plane is flying scarily low to the ground. "We can go lower than a human pilot can," says Russ Marotzke, as the aircraft skims over the crop. Flying lower means less spray drift and therefore less chemicals are needed than in conventional manned crop-dusting, he says. The pilotless plane belongs to Pyka, where Marotzke works as a flight test engineer. Based in a converted Second World War hangar overlooking San Francisco Bay, the start-up makes self-flying aircraft without cockpits, designed either to spray crops or deliver cargo.