Originally Posted by
rickair7777
They've already automated out some things....
1. Systems Management. Good rid of FE's.
2. Reduced mental gymnastics in IFR navigation. This didn't eliminate the need for pilots but expanded the pool of potential talent, lowering labor cost.
3. Hand flying. Didn't eliminate pilots, but rather made things safer by allowing pilots to focus their mental energy on problem solving vice BAI.
But what they can't automate is judgement and flexibility without a non-deterministic generalized AI. That's problematic because they have no idea how to build one, less idea how to certify it, and there are a host of ethical issues up to and including an existential threat to humanity (low probability I know, but the potential consequences are so severe that it must be considered deadly seriously).
501 and yourself bring up some valid points. A lot of what we comply with on a day to day basis is legal footwork and can be automated. When you look at what is being done these days with tablets running software integrated into the aircraft that will solve basically all the flying portion of our jobs. The only thing left is like you both mentioned judgement calls and probably the only relevant one is an unsafe to fly situation after V1. Not many of those occur each year, I'm not privy to the info if it even exists, but it is a very small % of operations.
FAs can be trained to evacuate or not. In fact they already are, in the event of no communication from up front.
That being said knock on wood the fact we've been this safe over this much time (there have been a handful of pilot error instances over that time) is a testament to the industry as a whole.
I also half wonder if self driving cars will impact us first. For more local sub 300 mile trips it will be easier and probably quicker to get in your car and drive you to your destination. Or maybe we will start running bigger public transit from outlier airports into megahubs, meaning all the short hop flights will start to disappear.
What does get me is how little the industry has changed over the past 40-50 years. That makes me thing it may be ripe for an upset, someone to come in and just do things better. The whole experience before getting on a plane is so cumbersome what with parking, security, waiting before your flight, etc.