Originally Posted by
SkyHigh
Automation will continue its slow advance. The flight deck will get cameras and then free flight will reduce pilot work load to near zero while en-route. Slowly but surly ground control will eventually make an appearance. The pilots will loose actual control of the plane but will still be up front just in case.
Eventually the crew will be cut to one impotent pilot in the flight deck who basically sits there as an organic back up system. A UAV pilot on the ground will be the one who is controlling the aircraft. Every three months the back up pilots will go to the sim to remain current. Once a year they will get to land the real plane.
At one time airport subways and elevators all use to have operators and now they don't. Some transportation systems have a half asleep minimum wage person up front to give the appearance of on-board control for the passengers benefit. Pilots have been slowly loosing control since aviation began. Ground control is the next logical step, but not quite yet.
Skyhigh
To go out on a bit of a limb, I actually agree with skyhigh's commentary here. Once upon a time it took 5+ men to fly, navigate, and operate a big airliner with its complex systems, engines, sextons and radios. One by one, the radio operators, navigators, and flight engineers were replaced by better and more advanced systems. By the same token today's 2 man airplane is by no means the end of the airliner design evolution. Certaintly automation technology by current standards is nowhere near ready to assume the task of replacing both human pilots, but I can see single pilot airliners, with ground datalink to dispatch as a backup, as a possiblity within my lifetime.
The pilot profession will simply evolve along with the technology. In the future, the experienced "captain" might be sitting in the dispatcher's chair rather than in the left seat, to back up the lone onboard pilot/system operator. It might sound dreadful to us today, but imagine if you ask that same DC-3 driver in skyhigh's example to "operate" in today's environment, with FBW, flight directors, FMS, GPS, moving map, CATIIIB autoland, satcom, dispatchers, locked bullet proof doors, TSA, etc, and he'll probably tell you it sounds awfully dull and to take your so called "pilot" job and shove it too.
On the other hand, one can always look back and complain the "golden age" has passed, but today might just be another "golden age" when you look back from tomorrow - so make the best of it.