Reactivity

So true. It's a rare day that I fly anything with ACARS or CPDLC. We're flying transatlantic trips at FL280 or below because they're too cheap to install the required equipment for NAT HLA and the Covid exemptions have expired.

C17B74

Not about the stress as it will be reality, just where you are regarding life rings (your age) will dictate your path. As mentioned many times before, pilotless will take quite awhile in the heavy world. 4 pilots headed for 3 but actually 2 specifically for long haul not unrealistic by any means cutting half of the heavy work force is on the horizon however long that will be. Capt left seat lounge chair, rest area for other pilot on the flight deck, box in the right doing it’s thing, position reports, etc. Flown with Navs (sextant), FE’s even pairs of them at times for long days on listening watch fat fingering way points as you go. Now ADS, SELCAL, CPDLC, etc. well within 2 decades of change as I haven’t been aloft much more than that.. Just stare at your cell phone or catch the string of satellites overhead on a night crossing, Chinese building space stations oh my, it’s all moving rapidly. Technology isn’t the answer to everything, but if you think it will stop it’s attempts to override what it can than you haven’t counted how many broken eggs it has taken to get where we are today. Good, bad and definitely the ugly. $$$ drives the train. So cheap Management does have its virtue after all I guess thereby keeping pay rates or whatever, etc low.

Busman

Our collective bargaining agreement sets the number of cremembers and the minimum our contact allows is 2

FlyAstarJets

As did the CBA’s of the Elephants back in the 1955-1960’s time period.

rld1k

The industrial revolution and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race

Reactivity

Agreed. We would all be so much better off if we were living in mud huts and growing our own food.

SonicFlyer

This has got to be sarcasm

TransWorld

And, like the US in 1900, have a life expectancy of age 46. Yep.

woolyone

For the doe-eyed pilots hoping to enter the arline industry in the next couple of years, are we walking into futility where AI has the reins before we can reach our high-income years, and the flight deck is granted to the most experienced/lowest bidder? Or is there still juice left to squeeze for quite some time?

rickair7777

There's juice left. I have extensive IT education and experience, as well as experience with government and business management. Worst case you might see transport category cargo planes go single pilot in a few decades.

The AI required to reasonably replace most human capabilities does not exist. The industry has also recently realized that they don't know how to get there. The systems which attempt to "model" human capabilities are non-deterministic and therefore non-certifiable. Do some reading on the current status of autonomous road vehicles.

In addition to that, there are a wide variety of other legal, ethical, political, public perception, and financial challenges to automated airliners.

This is likely the last industry on Earth which is still using 1980's info technology on a regular basis...

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/a...confirmed.html


One of the challenges is YOU. It will take decades to ramp up airliner automation, the process will be very visible, and that will scare off new entrants... that would cause the airlines to run out of pilots long before automation is actually available. That's aggravated by the high cost ($ and time) of entry into the profession, and also the long-term nature of the career payoff. So they have to bridge a "valley of death" on the road to automation, to avoid running out of pilots early.

There are several ways they could do that, but the obvious one (which would work the best) would be to contractually specify guaranteed pay to retirement age if replaced by automation. Or some reasonable fraction thereof for younger folks. That way prospective pilots would know that once they get a seniority number they're set either way and won't end up 50 years old, kids in college, no job, and no marketable skills.

That would be an economically reasonable transition cost for the airlines, since presumably automation would be a lot cheaper than pilots (or why bother). Also there will be a required "transition period" where airliners are fully automated but still have a cockpit and at least one pilot with over-ride authority until the automation is considered proven. That will take years anyway.