Deal would bring Google jets, millions of dollars to San Jose airport

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22546083/deal-would-bring-google-millions-dollars-mineta-through

by pixelcort • 13 years ago

35 49 13 years ago

cleverjake• 13 years ago

For the lay - could someone explain the benefit of a private airport (as opposed to a fleet of private planes)? The speed at which you can get through security can't be worth that much - can it?

Evbn• 13 years ago

That's a half hour savings at leat.

jasonjei2• 13 years ago

Don't you still have to go through TSA even to board your own private plane? I could be mistaken...

ratsbane• 13 years ago

No.

balbaugh• 13 years ago

From my very limited experience of flying on private planes, I have never gone through any security or undergone any form of inspection by TSA.

jasonjei2• 13 years ago

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/private-...

theorique2• 13 years ago

Private flights (aka "general aviation") have to take off from somewhere. I don't know if there are currently private flights taking off from SJC - I think the Google executive planes take off and land at the nearby military base.

newhouseb• 13 years ago

You mean at Moffett Field, which is operated by NASA.

For what it's worth, there's already a Signature terminal near SFO that private jets can fly in and out of, so Google is just saving the 10 extra minutes it takes to get to SFO by lobbying for a Signature terminal at SJC.

prostoalex3• 13 years ago

There are quite a few jets parked in SJC by Coleman Rd, both marked and unmarked (SJSU and San Jose Sharks have their own jets), so yes.

neurotech15• 13 years ago

Moffett Field (a NASA-run federal airfield, and former Naval Air Station) has significant operating restrictions for Google, and there is probably strict limits on what aircraft they can base there, and how often they takeoff and land there.

eroded• 13 years ago

To be fair, this isn't a private airport, it's really just a private terminal at San Jose International (SJC). Don't get me wrong, that's pretty darn cool, though really no different to, say, Lufthansa's dedicated First Class Terminal at Frankfurt. Well, apart from the private Google planes, of course :-)

rst2• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure Lufthansa owns their own planes as well. Not so different, really. :-)

cowsandmilk• 13 years ago

This seems like a downgrade from their current arrangement[1]. I'm surprised TechCrunch did not mention this agreement with Moffett Field, which is much closer to Google HQ and much more private.

[1] http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/tech/150386125.html

prostoalex3• 13 years ago

The company that wants to build the terminal is Signature Flight. Currently Google is their own client, but the terminal would be accessible to other private aviation clients.

avolcano• 13 years ago

Apparently, they're likely to get kicked out, with the government wanting to cut the facility: http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=6626

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

Google's attempts at buying Moffett field and taking it private have been unsuccessful. The 'take measurements when we fly in' was a nice hack to get around stipulations about all aircraft must be working on research but at the end of the day both Sunnyvale and Mountain View have made it clear they do not want Moffett turned into a General Aviation airport and once the Naval armory got Lockheed moved it has become only a matter of time before the Military wants out. NASA doesn't have the budget to run the airport facilities.

It has been the topic of quite a number of spirited debates at both city halls.

EwanG• 13 years ago

Does it occur to anyone that the folks who are working on driverless cars might have a reason to want a place to work on pilotless planes? While the current autopilot in many commercial planes can handle a lot of the flying, there are some decent savings available if you could reduce the number of pilots. Especially if you can make the solutions small and cheap enough for 2-4 seat planes.

Retric• 13 years ago

Airplanes are already capable of operating without pilots much better than cars. The only remaining issue is listening to flight controllers, but that's a bloody difficult problem.

protomyth• 13 years ago

The expense and arguments over a next generation of airplane tracking and control are probably going to go on for a while longer.

seanmcdirmid2• 13 years ago

Isn't that the easy part though? The onboard pilots will automatically listen to flight controllers.

But honestly, don't you see the solution here? You have a room full of pilots in Tulsa Oklahoma (or wherever) or are providing manual intervention when necessary. Just like how we manage millitary drones today.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

Good luck pitching that to the FAA. I think they'd happily shut down aviation before they'd let planes without pilots carry passengers. A human being with his life at stake is extraordinarily resourceful. Sure, 'pilot error' is the cause of quite a few incidents. But 'pilot lands plane in difficult circumstances' outnumbers pilot error by a substantial amount, it's just that those don't get nearly as much press.

So I don't think that Google is working on 'pilotless planes'.

seanmcdirmid2• 13 years ago

To continue the satire from the parent post...

Yes, remotely piloted or autonomous flying drones could never work. There must be 2 pilots flying a bird, that will never change, even the Air Force wouldn't be that crazy.

But honestly, give it twenty years.

Cowen• 13 years ago

My understanding of modern airlines is that unless your plane is in the process of taking off, landing, or crashing, it's already essentially pilotless.

There's always been too much at stake in the airline industry to allow a lot of room for human error. Combined with the huge leaps that fly-by-wire planes have made in the last few decades, that made for some very powerful incentives on everyone's part (engineers, regulators, and companies) to advance autopilot as far as they possibly could.

davidmr2• 13 years ago

While your last sentence may be true-ish (I'm not really qualified to answer with authority), your first sentence is very much not.

This relevant link gets posted a lot, but is worth posting again: http://www.salon.com/2011/08/04/can_jetliners_fly_themselves...

rst2• 13 years ago

In normal conditions, yes. But when things go wrong (your "or crashing", perhaps), the pilot is suddenly very much involved, and screwups can be fatal.

Take, for example, Qantas flight 32, an A380 that was successfully landed after one of the engines more or less blew up, damaging several other systems. Truly pilotless operation would require automated systems that could do as well --- and hopefully better than the pilots of Air France 447, the transatlantic flight that was lost due to recoverable pilot error.

prostoalex3• 13 years ago

The technology is pretty much there, but currently there's still a requirement for human supervision/control in case of mechanical or electronic failures.

Like a need to land the plane in Hudson River when the plane hits a flock of geese, or emergencies when vital system monitoring tools become inaccessible.

A large portion of FAA's required reading for pilots http://www.faa.gov/library/manuals/aviation/pilot_handbook/ is dealing with various failures of subsystems.

indubitably• 13 years ago

Savings assuming you’re not a pilot.

joonix2• 13 years ago

The savings aren't that big of a deal when you're talking about a flight with 200+ paying passengers. You are still going to have someone in there in case the computer system malfunctions, they might as well be a pilot. Autopilot is driverless flight already.

tosseraccount• 13 years ago

Oh what lengths people will go through to bypass the TSA.

pmorici• 13 years ago

Chrome says that site had malware on it...

"Content from us.bernerverein.ch, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware."

tedivm• 13 years ago

This actually looks like a false positive (I'm not 100% sure though, still waiting on confirmation from my researchers). Earlier today the Mercury News reported on Chrome blocking a number of websites, including Youtube, for distributing malware. The article specifically mentioned the malicious server ( us.bernerverein.ch ) that google is claiming is present on that site, and I think they got it from the article itself.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22556675/google-chrom...

It's also possible that there's an advertising network that's compromised and pushing malware (as seems to be the case quite often).

eropple• 13 years ago

A number of news sites, including SB Nation, have had some weird malware warnings go on today. Wonder if one (or more) providers have been compromised.

rashomon• 13 years ago

I hate to point you back to OP's link but if you read the headline, it's in response to the exploits that have taken place at the New York Times and others.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22515730/malware-warn...

OGinparadise• 13 years ago

from a Prius to save the world from Global Warming http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3666241.stm to 8 planes for 3 people.

(I'd probably have even more planes, just pointing out the upgrade)

joonix2• 13 years ago

Number of planes per person seems irrelevant because you can only be in one plane (and thus emitting carbon) at a time.

Deal would bring Google jets, millions of dollars to San Jose airport

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