The idea of drone zipping around a plane may seem unsettling, but EasyJet promises this isn't nearly as sinister as it sounds. The British budget airline said it has plans within the next year to use the unmanned flying robots to inspect its fleet of Airbus aircraft. The drones would be used to perform safety checks in awkward places that humans have difficulty accessing and show maintenance workers spots that require additional repair.
"Checks that would usually take more than a day could be performed in a couple of hours and potentially with greater accuracy," EasyJet's head of engineering Ian Davies told the Guardian. The drone's autonomous navigation features and computer vision can deliver data and images from "really awkward places," a spokesman from a drone company added.
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