Single pilot airliners may be

Soku39 said:
This is an elephant in the room for pilots, truck drivers, and anyone else that operates a machine for a living. The technology is there to replace every last one of us, and economics/capitalism dictate that just that will happen, it's really just that simple. Enjoy the ride while you can.
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Problem with current technology operating machines is that it only reacts to situations it's been programmed to deal with and aren't capable of adapting since it can't learn on it's own. Autopilots are excellent pieces of equipment, but if anything seems out of the ordinary the first thing it does is disengage and inform the pilot that he/she is in control.
 
Well I mean yeah its inevitabruh in the same sense as the collapse of spacetime in to a single discreet point. But leaven your doomsday prognostications/freakouts by having a look at what people in, say, 1965 thought life would be like in 2015...
 
knot4u said:
Problem with current technology operating machines is that it only reacts to situations it's been programmed to deal with and aren't capable of adapting since it can't learn on it's own. Autopilots are excellent pieces of equipment, but if anything seems out of the ordinary the first thing it does is disengage and inform the pilot that he/she is in control.
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All very true, but programmers have gotten clever to the point of getting a jet to trap on the boat completely on it's own. So it would appear that technology is more than sufficient to fly from point A to B.

This is the video that forever changed my mind on the limits of computers, I realized that there simply aren't any;



Edit: at 27 years old I do not believe that airliners will have a 2 man cockpit for the rest of my career. I do believe that the F-35 is the last manned "fighter" the the United States will ever build. To think otherwise would be to put my head in the sand. I do believe that if I am to remain employed until my late 60s I will inevitably need to learn another skill set other than flying, and one that can not be replaced by technology. The world is changing more rapidly than most people can come up with, my goal is to not be left behind.
 
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Boris Badenov said:
Well I mean yeah its inevitabruh in the same sense as the collapse of spacetime in to a single discreet point. But leaven your doomsday prognostications/freakouts by having a look at what people in, say, 1965 thought life would be like in 2015...
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They were very wrong, but it is at this point extremely clear that technology can do pretty much whatever a human can, however it does it more accurately, faster, efficiently and better than we ever could.
 
JustinS said:
Once the price of such sophisticated equipment becomes cheaper than human operators, then yes. Right now, I estimate that technology with all the red tape costs far more than a pilot over the life of an aircraft. Plus you have public acceptance issues, and global interface issues...
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Honestly, no way. This will come as soon as the price is around the $1,000,000 mark - and the cost vs. capability of avionics goes down markedly every year.

I mean consider this:

Air Wisconsin's payscale for a First Officer on min guarantee from APC:

First Year Pay: $24,300
Second Year Pay: $36,000
Third Year Pay: $37,800
Fourth Year Pay: $38,700
Fifth Year Pay: $39,600
Sixth Year Pay: $41,400
Seventh Year Pay: $42,300
Eighth Year Pay: $44,100

Let's assume that this guy gets no per diem, opts out of all his benefits, and so on and doesn't cost the company anything but minimum guarantee for the entire time he works there. Also, let's assume he never upgrades. His salary total is $304,200 over 8 years.

Even if scheduling is insanely efficient - making airliners single pilot eliminates at least 2 first officers per airplane. We're at $608,400 in wages alone for this to be worth it.

The first company to do this will see a huge competitive advantage, it will be astounding. According to wikipedia, Air Whiskey has 71 CRJ200s and 860 pilots. Assuming that half of the pilots at AWAC are FOs, even if all of the FOs were on min guarantee it would save at least $10.4 million per year not to have first officers in salaries alone. Not to mention the costs of benefits, retirement, healthcare, insurance, etc.
 
ppragman said:
The first company to do this will see a huge competitive advantage, it will be astounding. According to wikipedia, Air Whiskey has 71 CRJ200s and 860 pilots. Assuming that half of the pilots at AWAC are FOs, even if all of the FOs were on min guarantee it would save at least $10.4 million per year not to have first officers in salaries alone. Not to mention the costs of benefits, retirement, healthcare, insurance, etc.
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Then apply this to every industry from office workers, to taxi drivers and accountants, and we have a pretty good picture about the "unemployment" picture in the future.
 
Soku39 said:
Then apply this to every industry from office workers, to taxi drivers and accountants, and we have a pretty good picture about the "unemployment" picture in the future.
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I liked your post, but only because I agree with it...not because I really like it...
 
ppragman said:
I liked your post, but only because I agree with it...not because I really like it...
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Well like I said I'm 27 and patently disagree with the way we are going. Technology is ruining us socially. Japenese men are choosing porn over the chase of a real woman and sex, when is the last time we made it through dinner with loved ones without anyone getting on their phone, it is actually becoming harder to connect with people. Technology gives more control and economic gains to fewer people. Technology will take away jobs faster than society will know what to do with the masses. We are clever enough to make these amazing things, but as a species are not clever enough to know what to do when we ruin the entire basis of our economic system (I give you time, you give me money).

Just last week I heard an interview with a gentleman at CES who said excitedly "In this driverless car the windows are replaced with screens, if you don't like what you see outside, you'll be able to select something different!" Literal excitement over creating a false reality.

We are creating a very special hell for ourselves with this technology.
 
Soku39 said:
Well like I said I'm 27 and patently disagree with the way we are going. Technology is ruining us socially. Japenese men are choosing porn over the chase of a real woman and sex, when is the last time we made it through dinner with loved ones without anyone getting on their phone, it is actually becoming harder to connect with people. Technology gives more control and economic gains to fewer people. Technology will take away jobs faster than society will know what to do with the masses. We are clever enough to make these amazing things, but as a species are not clever enough to know what to do when we ruin the entire basis of our economic system (I give you time, you give me money).

Just last week I heard an interview with a gentleman at CES who said excitedly "In this driverless car the windows are replaced with screens, if you don't like what you see outside, you'll be able to select something different!" Literal excitement over creating a false reality.

We are creating a very special hell for ourselves with this technology.
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Realistically, we'll see something like a post-scarcity star trek economy, or a reverse income tax or universal basic income in the long run - otherwise nobody will be able to buy the widgets we produce with our hyper-automated factories. I suspect that'll be the way that a lot of these problems are ultimately rectified...but in the meantime, this is going to hurt a little bit.
 
Soku39 said:
All very true, but programmers have gotten clever to the point of getting a jet to trap on the boat completely on it's own. So it would appear that technology is more than sufficient to fly from point A to B.

This is the video that forever changed my mind on the limits of computers, I realized that there simply aren't any;



Edit: at 27 years old I do not believe that airliners will have a 2 man cockpit for the rest of my career. I do believe that the F-35 is the last manned "fighter" the the United States will ever build. To think otherwise would be to put my head in the sand. I do believe that if I am to remain employed until my late 60s I will inevitably need to learn another skill set other than flying, and one that can not be replaced by technology. The world is changing more rapidly than most people can come up with, my goal is to not be left behind.
Click to expand...

Have you seen the robots that supposedly walk, much less run? They can't even build a four legged creature to match my dog as far agility goes. Why would you continue in this line of work if you're so sure it's a dead end career? You say on one hand that computers can do everything better than us and then turn around and advise us to learn a skill set that the computers can't.
 
ppragman said:
Honestly, no way. This will come as soon as the price is around the $1,000,000 mark - and the cost vs. capability of avionics goes down markedly every year.

I mean consider this:

Air Wisconsin's payscale for a First Officer on min guarantee from APC:

First Year Pay: $24,300
Second Year Pay: $36,000
Third Year Pay: $37,800
Fourth Year Pay: $38,700
Fifth Year Pay: $39,600
Sixth Year Pay: $41,400
Seventh Year Pay: $42,300
Eighth Year Pay: $44,100

Let's assume that this guy gets no per diem, opts out of all his benefits, and so on and doesn't cost the company anything but minimum guarantee for the entire time he works there. Also, let's assume he never upgrades. His salary total is $304,200 over 8 years.

Even if scheduling is insanely efficient - making airliners single pilot eliminates at least 2 first officers per airplane. We're at $608,400 in wages alone for this to be worth it.

The first company to do this will see a huge competitive advantage, it will be astounding. According to wikipedia, Air Whiskey has 71 CRJ200s and 860 pilots. Assuming that half of the pilots at AWAC are FOs, even if all of the FOs were on min guarantee it would save at least $10.4 million per year not to have first officers in salaries alone. Not to mention the costs of benefits, retirement, healthcare, insurance, etc.
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And why would AWAC pilots vote to amend their CBA to remove FOs from the cockpit?
 
ppragman said:
Just like the tactics that flight engineers used to stay in the cockpit to this very day, right?
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Absolutely not the same. As I posted previously, the issue they faced was systems integration; these days, single-pilot cockpits would completely disregard decades worth of CRM science and advancements.

And hell, we might have the technology soon, but what happens when the single pilot gets tired? What happens when he needs to take a leak? No rest facilities, no bathroom breaks, no food (what if he gets food poisoning?)... Workable for short flights, but what about a transcon?

Unions would have an absolute field day with this one if any company made a push to remove a pilot for air carrier ops.
 
Roger Roger said:
Forget unmanned flight, I want to see a robot that can run a company/national/world economy into the ground then take a job as a government regulator. Let the 1% feel some of the pain.
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And this I love thanks for the laugh. I'm still impressed by United's decision on ground handling at Denver. Save 10 cents to spend a buck!

ppragman said:
Realistically, we'll see something like a post-scarcity star trek economy, or a reverse income tax or universal basic income in the long run - otherwise nobody will be able to buy the widgets we produce with our hyper-automated factories. I suspect that'll be the way that a lot of these problems are ultimately rectified...but in the meantime, this is going to hurt a little bit.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much where I'm at, but ya it's gonna get rail painful in the next 20 or 30 years, until then I'll still have to hear the "they don't have work cause they're lazy, they just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps" line from the American right.

knot4u said:
Have you seen the robots that supposedly walk, much less run? They can't even build a four legged creature to match my dog as far agility goes. Why would you continue in this line of work if you're so sure it's a dead end career? You say on one hand that computers can do everything better than us and then turn around and advise us to learn a skill set that the computers can't.
Click to expand...

The thing doesn't have to be as good as your dog, your dog is only that agile because he needed to be able to hunt. The things we're talking about just to need to carry stuff, or do whatever one application they're designed for. As mentioned there is at least 10 years of red tape on this ever happening, plus design, I mean we're talking 25 years before this could actually happen. That and I love flying. Oh ya, I have friends that are non-profit directors, doctors, lawyers, welders, programmers, librarians etc... guess who works the least for the most amount of money, guess whose phone does ring on every 5 seconds with some demand on their time, yep it's me. That said I will eventually need to figure out something else to do.

Roger Roger said:
I think soku needs to unplug from the dystopian sci-fi for a bit. There are certainly some issues raised by our continually increasing reliance on technology but in the long run we'll be more or less ok.
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In the long run of course, but there is gonna be some pain along the way, a lot of people who are lot smarter than me have observed this. http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-bots-are-taking-away-jobs-2014-3. It's coming and you can't tell me it's not. It's not even that I believe the sky is falling as much as I wish people and governments would just get their heads out of the sand and start preparing.
 
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When this happens a guys first day with a major he'll be the Captain.

toddler-airline-pilot-costume.jpg
 
Soku39 said:
And this I love thanks for the laugh, I'm still impressed by United's decision on ground handling at Denver. Save 10 cents to spend a buck!



This is pretty much where I'm at, but ya it's gonna get rail painful in the next 20 or 30 years, until then I'll still have to hear the "they don't have work cause they're lazy, they just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps" line from the American right.



The thing doesn't have to be as good as your dog, your dog is only that agile because he needed to be able to hunt. The things we're talking about just to need to carry stuff, or do whatever one application they're designed for. As mentioned there is at least 10 years of red tape on this ever happening, plus design, I mean we're talking 25 years before this could actually happen. That and I love flying. Oh ya, I have friend that are non-profit directors, doctors, lawyers, welders, programmers, librarians etc... guess who works the least for the most amount of money, guess whose phone does ring on every 5 seconds with some demand on their time, yep it's me. That said I will eventually need to figure out something else to do.



In the long run of course, but there is gonna be some pain along the way, a lot of people a lot smarter than me have observed this. http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-bots-are-taking-away-jobs-2014-3. It's coming and you can't tell me it's not. It's not even that I believe the sky is falling as much as I wish people and governments would just get their head out of the sand and start preparing.
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Please proof read this and edit. Thanks.
 
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