- Joined
- Mar 24, 2018
- Messages
- 889
- Reactions
- 804
- Age
- 48
It was a cool day in Dallas last November, when a small quadcopter lifted itself off the ground of an American Airlines hangar and buzzed towards a Boeing 777. The drone, a DJI Mavic Enterprise, had been outfitted with a spotlight, but otherwise looked a lot like what you might see your neighbor flying in the backyard. The remarkable difference was that this particular aircraft had been programmed to inspect the hull of the much larger aircraft, the jet. It could do in a matter of minutes what it would take a maintenance crew hours to do. It was, in its own way, a tiny flying robot with a job.
A small gaggle of journalists watched the drone slowly make its way around the airplane, spotting specially located indicators that resembled bullseyes on the fuselage and sending alerts back to a pilot. This was just a demo, though. The drone had been programmed to spot the innocent-seeming bullseyes, but the airline says it could just as easily spot damage. Currently, American and other airlines employ a group of workers on a cherrypicker to inspect aircraft between flights, but some think that drones could do the job just as well—or at the very least, drones could help streamline the process. That is, if the airline decides to make the demo a part of everyday operations.
“This is a tool of the future that should be in every professional technician’s toolbox,” said Lorne Cass, American Airline’s VP of Operations and Industry Affairs, who went on to say that drones could also be used for all kinds of things, like spotting debris on runways.
Read more on: https://gizmodo.com/can-drones-be-good-1830831747
A small gaggle of journalists watched the drone slowly make its way around the airplane, spotting specially located indicators that resembled bullseyes on the fuselage and sending alerts back to a pilot. This was just a demo, though. The drone had been programmed to spot the innocent-seeming bullseyes, but the airline says it could just as easily spot damage. Currently, American and other airlines employ a group of workers on a cherrypicker to inspect aircraft between flights, but some think that drones could do the job just as well—or at the very least, drones could help streamline the process. That is, if the airline decides to make the demo a part of everyday operations.
“This is a tool of the future that should be in every professional technician’s toolbox,” said Lorne Cass, American Airline’s VP of Operations and Industry Affairs, who went on to say that drones could also be used for all kinds of things, like spotting debris on runways.
Read more on: https://gizmodo.com/can-drones-be-good-1830831747
