Originally Posted by
TonyWilliams
I disagree with this. In the current model at Delta, with 12000 pilots, if only 8000 pilots were then needed tomorrow, because there were no more FO's, FE's, SO's, etc, then I'd conservatively estimate that the cost for salary, health insurance, sim training, hotels, etc, is maybe $150,000/year, per crew member, in today dollars?
4000 less bodies times $150,000 = $600,000,000 PER YEAR, at just one airline. Yes, that will get somebody's attention as the technology because readily available.
So how many A/C are we talking about here? 4000 pilots is what, 260 or so planes, give or take? For every additional million a single airplane costs for this "technology" we're talking 260 million. Odds are a single pilot plane would cost many, many millions more than a dual pilot version. Likely tens or hundreds of Billions more (plus interest, since no one really buys anything anymore...even when they "pay cash" it's usually some kind of lease back) even assuming it could get certified. Going from 2 pilots down to one is NOT the same as going from 3 down to two. Today's FO is simply nowhere near as replaceable as yesterday's FE, or the day before yesterday's "radioman" or "navigator". Today's FO is there precicely as redundency. Two pilots is still a massive CRM force multiplier to safety. Single pilot ops at the airliner level. Basically it would be a fully certifiable drone that they install a single seat in to get the public used to it. But a drone nonetheless.
It would need full remote control or internal takeover systems with so much top to bottom redundancy it would be insane. We're not talking a Predator here, paid for with ulimited government dollars with, despite all it's technology, dispatch reliability/crash rates that aren't even in the universe of acceptability for part 121, etc.
I see the expense on that as astronomical. This would not be the same as the Biz Jets going single pilot (something only a few less than ultra top of the line ones have managed to do...a great deal of which still end up with 2 pilots up front).
As for the rest of it I see what you're saying now. I don't agree that it will happen like you say it likely will though, but I see why you come to that conclusion. Never underestimate greed, arrogance and shortsightedness on either end of the dichotomy I guess. Not that it's not possible, just that if it happened it would rapidly consume those on the "top" who let it as well as those on the "bottom" who did it as well, and would do both very, very quickly and in an unsustainable way.