Originally Posted by rickair7777

I'm already at the point where I'd drive 300 miles rather than fly, even if it's free. Beyond that, I'll fly even if I have to pay. Obviously depends on what I'm doing when I get there and for how long.

I think people who take short commuter flights rather than drive to the hub are doing it for easy parking and short TSA lines more than anything else.

I suspect automated cars would put a dent in the regional business but not to an extreme degree... my wife doesn't like road trips more than ablout 8 hours and she does have an autopilot (me).

Originally Posted by mainlineAF

I enjoy your posts. People get worked up bc our jobs are really good and people are scared to lose them.

While i personally disagree with lots of your posts I do like to see another viewpoint.

Originally Posted by Name User

This is how it starts...

https://www.rotorandwing.com/2019/03...-program-year/

And some of this gets us easily down to single pilot:

https://www.newscientist.com/article...plane-licence/

And some of this to finish it off:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/23/your...-vehicles.html

Automating our jobs is the low hanging fruit of autonomous vehicles. Think of the money saved. The money made by software and hardware engineering firms is immense and the flexibility offered to airlines ever more so. No more worries about duty days, timing out, etc. Entire departments are wiped out...etc.

We make good money now. Save it. We're looking at a five year timeline to single pilot/reduced augmented IMO and maybe even autonomous flown/remotely piloted after another five.

It will be ironic if AMTs, rampers, gate agents and FAs continue to have jobs and we do not...

Originally Posted by Adlerdriver

How many times are we going to go round and round about this? Some bozo decides the sky is falling because technology exists in theory and therefore is an easy application to reality, which we know is not valid. Then we spend multiple pages convincing each other what we already know. Enough already.

Originally Posted by Name User

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.

Originally Posted by Red Forman

Boeing can’t fix a 50 year old airplane and you think we are 5 years away from single pilot/autonomous flight?

Originally Posted by Adlerdriver

How many times are we going to go round and round about this? Some bozo decides the sky is falling because technology exists in theory and therefore is an easy application to reality, which we know is not valid. Then we spend multiple pages convincing each other what we already know. Enough already.

Originally Posted by Name User

Ok so when does MCAS activate? Under what conditions? More specifically, if the autopilot was turned on, would MCAS activate?

Keep in mind a 121 flight stalls in the US on average of once each day. No idea what it is worldwide, but one has to assume quite a bit more frequently.