FedEx Seeks to Add Small Self-Flying Planes for Remote Areas

FedEx Corp. is looking at using small self-flying cargo planes to serve remote areas after experimenting with a technology startup on autonomous aircraft, said Chief Executive Officer Fred Smith. The effort builds on the courier's work with Silicon Valley's Reliable Robotics, which was founded by veterans of Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. With approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, Reliable Robotics demonstrated in June a fully automated remote landing of a Cessna 208 Caravan turboprop owned by FedEx. "This initiative deals with small turboprop airplanes and in this particular case the single-engine C208, which we're looking at putting in very remote and uninhabited areas as part of our network," Smith said Monday at FedEx's annual shareholder meeting. FedEx pilots shouldn't be concerned about robots stealing their jobs -- for now.