USMCFLYR

Gentlemen -

This is just Sky grasping at any straw that would support his view that pilot's are on their way out.
You should ignore this thread and instead read many of his other posts spouting the same drivel.
Nothing new here.

USMCFLYR

SkyHigh

Cyberdyne Systems is designing Skynet to take over all the drone flights for the military. The strategy behind Skynet's creation is to remove the possibility of human error and slow reaction time to guarantee fast, efficient response to enemy attack.

I bet they can create a Global Digital Airline Network as well to take over air travel too.

Skyhigh

SkyHigh

Years ago when I started here with predictions of wage and profession collapse people said that I was an alarmist. Back then most thought that the biggest threat to the industry was from scabs. Now look at where we are.

Dr. Missy Cummings is probably a lot of things besides being an industry leading automation scientist but I could be wrong. I doubt it though. As she said in the interview computers already fly the plane.

Oh for the days of scab hatred. Has anyone here even seen the interview?

Skyhigh

SkyHigh

Planes will still find a way to crash with automation however the bottom line is that we crash far fewer planes now that computers do most of the flying. It is a fact. The greater the level of automation the greater the safety margin.

Computers never get tired, distracted, sick, intoxicated or give up. They don't argue about wages, duty days, hotel rooms or the like. Pilots might be in the flight deck still but their role is rapidly changing from that of pilot to computer manager. There is no doubt about it. Vectors to ILS.

Skyhigh

Grumble

Maybe why she washed out of the Hornet. The computer does a lot of things, flying isn't one of them. Sounds like she never figured it out and has been trying to make irrelevant all those that can do what she couldn't. Sounds a lot like most of your posts here sky, come to think of it.

SkyHigh

Pilots tend to be wonderfully egocentric and I get that. I agree if you are much over 40 then the evils of a completely automated flight deck most likely will not reach your career.

There are plenty of other things that will end your career first. However if you are 20 and reading this I have no doubt that you will not be flying the plane by the time you reach retirement.

A 20 year old could have as much as 45 years in the industry ahead of them. That is plenty of time for computers to have taken over everything in regards of actually controlling the plane.

Even now pilots are thinly trained technicians. It is the reason why an airline can put a 300 hour pilot in the right seat of a modern regional jet and get by.

Skyhigh

SkyHigh

No matter what her flying abilities are she is leading the industry in automated flight and associated with Boeing. I don't think that Wilber Wright was much of a pilot either.

Skyhigh

SkyHigh

45 years ago the airlines still had some piston planes and the VOR was cutting edge. 45 years before that planes had just been invented. If you are in your 20's you will see massive changes in aviation in your career and planes are not becoming less automated over time.

The results will be less wages for pilots that will be thinly trained and essentially sleep in the flight deck. As we learned in Buffalo the problems happen after the autopilot is turned off.

Skyhigh

USMCFLYR

Good point.
And guess who are making those ILSs work.
PEOPLE!

Btw Sky. You never answered the question about your aero/mech engineering father and such. Was he actually working on or designing navaids?

USMCFLYR

encore

Planes can fly themselves all day long and pilots will still be needed... pilots make decisions and interact with all facets of the operation. So much of the infrastructure is centered around pilots, all current airliners flying are designed around being flown by pilots, etc.

Pilots take input from all sources, interact with all sorts of people (mechanics, dispatchers, flight attendants, gate agents, ATCers, other pilots, etc), make decisions, and make the plane do the best course of action based on that decision. Even if they can make a plane do that action by itself, someone is going to have to be there making those decisions either in the cockpit or not. That someone is going to command a pretty high salary.

Pilots will always be around if for no other reason that our current system is designed around them and it would cost too much to change. Look at the ATC system... it works good enough and it takes too many players putting in too much money that just isn't available to change it. They think pilots cost a lot of money, wait til they see what replacing and redoing the entire airline sector to be non-pilot based would cost.