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Airlines should invest in self driving cars.



 
 
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Old October 11th 10, 06:03 PM
mcjosep mcjosep is offline
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First recorded activity by AviationBanter: Oct 2010
Posts: 1
Default Airlines should invest in self driving cars.

The advent of self driving cars is coming quick. Google just came out saying that they have been working on this; DARPA, MIT, and several other places have been working on self driving cars as well. With success!

What this means for aviation.

Scenario: You are a business man or women and you have to travel for work. You have a at least 45 minute commute depending on traffic to get to an airport to catch a flight that will take you from JFK to Columbus OH. You wait about an hour and a half in the terminal until boarding time, instead of the recommended three hours that airports suggest, because who wants to wait three hours. Then your flight lasts an hour ten minutes. You land and you need to wait to get off the airplane then collect your bags and then you need to rent a vehicle. all this is assuming there was no delay/cancellation/traffic/lost baggage or anything. then you drive to your hotel and prepare for what ever you have to do. just to do it all over again on your way back home.

Now lets say that instead you had a self driving car:
You do your normal packing procedures, then right before you go to bed you jump in your car and it does the eight hour drive while you sleep. you wake up where you have to go to work and do what you had to do, then you sleep on your way back, with no other hassle of traveling. If you wake up and the car is still driving you pick up a book and let the car keep doing what it is doing. This is an absolutely no stress travel experience.

Sure this mode of transportation is not likely to replace longer airline trip and it will not replace over seas trips. The puddle jumpers and trips that would be less than a ten hour drive will see a major hit and what does that mean for airlines and the aviation industry as a whole.

So airlines have to ask themselves are they more focused on strictly aviation travel or on convenient travel. If they stick with strictly aviation travel they will be seeing a large drop in people using their services once self driving cars come around and affordable. Or, they could branch towards self driving cars still see a drop in people using their airlines so much but they will benefit from self driving car sales.

Now, before you say self driving cars are science fiction. stick your hand in your pocket and pull out your fancy cell phone that connects you to everything and has more computing power than the spaceships that went to the moon. Now tell me that something like this is far out in the future and unlikely.

Self driving cars are coming and the aviation industry will take a hit if they do not take advantage of this still young opportunity.

I'm looking forward to reading other peoples thought on this.
 




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