wrxpilot
New Member
Oh, I don't hate the job at all. Love it. Just don't see much future in it. Airplanes are gas hogs, long range travel at high speed is a luxury, some would argue that automation decreases the necessary skill set and thus the renumeration, multi-crew licensing, etc etc etc. It seems glaringly obvious to me that jetting around the globe at the drop of a hat is exactly the sort of behavior that will be economically unfashionable in years to come.
Anything's possible, but I really don't see what alternative transportation there is to flying. The fact is, the world's just too darn big for anything else. Needs will outweigh fashionability any day of the week. I've taken trains across the US and Europe, and they're great for regional travel. Extremely tedious and long for distances greater than that, even when traveling something as sophisticated as the German ICE train.
As far as energy is concerned, once our society finally takes future energy seriously (hint, we still aren't), viable plans for a sustainable cost effective future will most assuredly be developed. Apparently it's going to take a couple more years before we hit reality and invest in fission and fusion, but it will come. Along with it, cost effective means for producing synthetic Jet A.
Undoubtedly we will see many more changes with aviation in the upcoming years, but as far as full automation and that sort of thing goes, it will likely be well after most of our careers before airplanes have that sort of high level sophistication.
If none of that goes down, and airplanes are relegated to the history books while we revert to sailing the seven seas, I guess I'll go to my plan B (and it ain't sailing or woodworking)!