Like crewless, zero crew. There isn’t even any flight attendants.
Pilots are just an AI Autopilot and flight attendants are all just robots.
As a pilot, not anytime soon, and not just because I’m worried about my job. Like cars, you can automate 95% of flying pretty easily and for the most part, we already do. But also like cars, that last 5% is several orders of magnitude more difficult.
But cars have a big advantage over planes in automation, if the computer gets totally confused, it can pull over, stop and let the driver figure things out. A plane can’t stop flying without hitting the ground so the computer can’t give up in an edge case. There’s also a different standard for safety. A few dozen teslas slam into walls and not many people care outside of immediate families. 70 people die in a plane crash and it’s international news for months.
I figure it’ll happen, but not anytime soon. And zero pilots is way more feasible than one pilot. And no way in hell can a robo flight attendant manage a cabin in normal operations let alone an emergency, I don’t think that part will ever happen unless we go full synth.
Sure, if the technology has been tested a lot.
Dude, I don’t even want to fly on a fully-manned flight with the way these planes are dropping out of the sky these days.
Stop living in fear from the media.
Your chances of dying in a car accident is exponentially higher than flying yet you have no issue getting into your car.
Ha, fuck no. Airlines already treat pilots like shit and overwork the younger less experienced pilots that fly most of our regional smaller flights. Given their maintenance issues lately, how do you think this pans out? No way in hell am I going to let a machine have 100% control. It would never be able to handle the quick thinking, problem solving, and gut decisions that pilots leverage to bring things in safely when there are problems. Planes already are largely automated, but I’m not sure a regulatory agency would ever be comfortable removing pilots from the cockpit. The day they do is the end of my flying days.
It’s coming. You won’t be able to stop it.
The thing is they aren’t going to jump to this quickly. The first thing you’ll see are single pilot ops, largely augmented with automation.
Once that is proven they will reduce responsibilities for the single crew until the plane is fully automated.
Once the fully automated flight is trusted and proven they will remove the single pilot.
This will take decades.
At my age at least I won’t live to see it.
Just don’t crash on my grave.
If you are under 60 you’ll likely see it
Maybe in like… two centuries.
Have you criticized a Boeing Executive recently? 👀
