Century Report arc
Autonomous Aviation & Remote-Piloted Flight
As autonomy stacks take over taxi, takeoff, cruise, and landing with a remote pilot supervising from thousands of miles away, aviation is quietly relocating the pilot from the cockpit to a screen, reshaping who can fly and where.
- Status
- Active
- Developments
- 1
- Last 30 days
- 0
- Last covered
Current synthesis
Where it stands
Joby's coast-to-coast flight (09-21) is the first documented cross-country trip with a remote pilot supervising from thousands of miles away rather than a hands-on cockpit operator, extending the same human-oversight relocation pattern seen in Zurich's driverless airport shuttles (09-14). The claim rests on the manufacturer's own single-crossing account and roughly 800 automated flight hours; no independent safety audit or regulatory certification has yet verified the system for unsupervised civilian passenger use.
Complete record
Development timeline
1 qualifying development, newest first
September 2026
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[SCAN+TCR] An aircraft running Joby Aviation's autonomy stack flew 3,199 miles coast to coast with zero control inputs from its onboard safety pilot, remotely supervised from up to 2,323 miles away, including a leg through Shaw Air Force Base for a military-readiness demonstration.