Pilot Shortage affecting the Majors

[THEPRFCT10]

Just hand the passenger the statistics of the global hawk and any concerns of a pilotless aircraft will quickly melt away.

I agree. My Air Force Safety school partner crashed 3 Predators! Crosswinds a bitch he says!

 

[NEDude]

There is a dirty word that is about to become relevant in the next 10 years or so relating to civilian commercial aviation: UAV. This will be the next generation of pilots equivalent to RJs and scope.

I predict that when the pilot shortage becomes very acute, and it begins to affect the majors in a big way, maybe around 2020, then airline management is going to get very interested in extreme automation. It is no secret that pilots are a huge pain in the a$$ of management. We are perceived by them as winey, highly paid, difficult to deal with, difficult to replace, blue collar labor. When the unions start demanding increasingly improved contracts, as they will when the leverage is on their side, then management will start looking for a replacement for human, or at least airborne pilots.

It will start with single pilot aircraft. Boeing has already said that the 787 is convertible to be a single pilot aircraft. The next generation of AC will be OVERTLY designed to be single pilot aircraft. The generation after that will be flown by technicians on the ground (like the Airforce is doing now) and eventually super computers.

You say "people will never fly in a pilotless aircraft". If you are saying this, you are probably over 40. The millennial generation, who will be running our country eventually, grew up with high technology and trust it implicitly. They will have no problem with HAL 9000....if it keeps the ticket prices down.

What is likely to save mid-career major airline pilots like myself (20 years till 65), is that the FAA is a very conservative, 1960's style government bureaucracy that moves at the speed of smell. The ATC system is not going to be able to do "free flight" anytime soon, even though the technology has existed since the 90's. The fact that we still do singleplex two way radio communications is an example of this. The bandwidth this requires is extremely inefficient in the digital age. Also, with regards to single pilot ops., we are averaging a death in the cockpit about once per year. Probably do to the fact most airline pilots are older...and many are obese. This will keep FO's around for awhile longer. All bets are off for the 20 somethings getting on now, however.

Any young guy or gal who shells out $100 grand to "live the dream" right now might have good job security and good wages/benefits for about 15-20 years. After that they had better have a back up plan as they are likely to be rendered obsolete by technology.

Don't believe me? Remember the railroads used to have "firemen" who made sure that the fires were stoked in the steam engines. They were kept on even after diesels took over due to featherbedding by the unions. Eventually, however, the unions could not save them.

I don't mean to pi$$ in anyones Grapenuts, but young people getting involved in this career need to be realistic. Its a lot of money to pay for what is something of an old fashioned job that is likely to be automated out of existence.

Not going to happen in our lifetime. NASA has been conducting studies regarding 1 pilot aircraft and they are finding logistical/human factors issues are very significant. Just the money required to secure the ground to air communication link is extremely expensive. There will be a requirement to hire an entire, large staff of anti-hacking experts to counter the inevitable terrorist group, or even bored teenagers, who would love nothing better than to crack the code and takeover airliners filled with passengers.

Most of the issues you have one pilot aircraft are compounded when you remove all pilots from the aircraft.

On top of that the public is far away from accepting such a notion.

 

[ackattacker]

DALPA just sat idly as RA and Lee Moak signed an agreement that lowered the pay at DAL Regionals - In exchange for an interview. Regional pay is going down.

How do you reconcile that fact, with your fantasy.

At the moment the loss of 50 seaters is providing some breathing room. The regionals are therefore in a mad rush to lock in low-paying long-term contracts before market forces catch up and prevent them from doing so.

 

[krewmeel]

Not going to happen in our lifetime. NASA has been conducting studies regarding 1 pilot aircraft and they are finding logistical/human factors issues are very significant. Just the money required to secure the ground to air communication link is extremely expensive. There will be a requirement to hire an entire, large staff of anti-hacking experts to counter the inevitable terrorist group, or even bored teenagers, who would love nothing better than to crack the code and takeover airliners filled with passengers.

Most of the issues you have one pilot aircraft are compounded when you remove all pilots from the aircraft.

On top of that the public is far away from accepting such a notion.

Like I said the public is not going to accept this NOW, but they will in the future. Your iPhone is 1 billion times more powerful than the computer that was used in the 1969 moon landing. In 20 years, computers will be more than 1 billion times more powerful than they are now (google quantum computing). This will easily enable pilotless aircraft.

 

[bizicmo]

Like I said the public is not going to accept this NOW, but they will in the future. Your iPhone is 1 billion times more powerful than the computer that was used in the 1969 moon landing. In 20 years, computers will be more than 1 billion times more powerful than they are now (google quantum computing). This will easily enable pilotless aircraft.

So your saying computer will be able to crack into "secure systems" faster.

 

[krewmeel]

So your saying computer will be able to crack into "secure systems" faster.

Good point...maybe hackers will indirectly save our profession.

 

[atpcliff]

That is one of the main problems with UAVs for pax service...datalink security. They had at least one UAV crash just because of a loss of datalink..no foul play involved.

Another is aircraft avoidance...and there are more problems.

 

[krewmeel]

We shall see. I enjoy my cushy airline job and I would like it to continue with improved pay and retirement. It's obvious, however, that technology is accelerating rapidly.... for better or worse. Almost every profession is affected, even non-technical ons. Alot of these short term concerns that we complain about on this site may be irrelevant due to obsolescence. I still think this profession has about 20 years left in its present form.

 

[jonjuan]

We shall see. I enjoy my cushy airline job and I would like it to continue with improved pay and retirement. It's obvious, however, that technology is accelerating rapidly.... for better or worse. Almost every profession is affected, even non-technical ons. Alot of these short term concerns that we complain about on this site may be irrelevant due to obsolescence. I still think this profession has about 20 years left in its present form.

Good for you. Now move along.

 

[PBRstreetgang]

Like I said the public is not going to accept this NOW, but they will in the future. Your iPhone is 1 billion times more powerful than the computer that was used in the 1969 moon landing. In 20 years, computers will be more than 1 billion times more powerful than they are now (google quantum computing). This will easily enable pilotless aircraft.

Wrong,
Look at technology innovations, all the rapid advances come at the beginning, as the process matures, improvements are more incremental, and increasingly more expensive to achieve.
In short you are wrong on so many levels, it's amazing that you can use a keyboard.