The flight system allows a plane to be remote operated by a pilot on the ground, which could streamline pilot airline operations in the future.
Better wages and work life balance would also solve the pilot shortage. It’s one of those jobs where companies over rely on people’s passion for the profession in lieu of treating and paying them what they deserve.
A decade ago, my pilot friend informed me that after 4 years of college, starting pay was $18,000 a year. After a year of experience suddenly you’re making 4 times that. Not a lot of people can afford to make that measley income for a year. It’s not a sustainable way to recruit talent.
Then there’s the issue is being on call when you’re the lowest seniority in you’re position where they can call you anytime a pilot calls in sick and you have to be at the airport in 30 minutes.
You can make a lot of money, but there’s a lot of bullshit to deal with at the start of your career.
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Not anymore for most pilots. Pay has skyrocketed.
For a recent example, Southwest Airlines pilots just won a 50% raise over 5 years, including 29.15% immediately.
That thankfully isn’t true anymore. Pilots are now very highly compensated from the jump.
I remember back in the 80s (middle school career days) commercial pilots were near the top of paid professions, topping 100k on average.
Lowering the costs of flight school would help more, making shitty money is one thing. Making shitty money when you dropped 200k to get there is another.
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And entry level second seat barely paying 40k a year to start.
It’s like they want the world to collapse.
So what? The company is on track to make record profit exploiting the labor.
There is no possibility of this ever causing negative effects of any kind, certainly it will not ever be misused (like one pilot being pressured into flying 5 planes at once bc… profit).
- Elon Musk, probably
This is what I expect to happen to truck drivers first. Automating driving still needs help in the last mile conditions but can navigate distances easily. I foresee fleets of automated trucks which are remotely connected to pilot centers where truck “drivers” sit at simulated driving stations and connect from truck to truck as they enter or leave warehouses or transfer stations. Instead of a small percentage of high-stress driving separated with stretches of monotony, it will be 8 hours a day, 5 days a week of high stress operating.
I would bet more in the range of 20 to 30 in any 8 hour shift.
Don’t most planes fly almost entirely on automated systems nowadays? The pilots mainly handle takeoff, landing, and monitoring the instuments if i’m not mistaken.
That said, remote controlling a plane of any kind seems like a very, very bad idea, cargo or not. If the 737 Max prevented pilots controlling the plane from the actual cockpit, I’d not like to think about what a similar plane would do in the event of a poor radio control signal and faulty instrumentation
Pilots aren’t paid to manually fly the aircraft from A to B. They’re paid to handle emergencies and abnormal situations. The kind of situations that automated systems are extremely poor at handling.
TIL, thanks for the info!
Yep.
If you want to see why we need highly trained, highly skilled pilots, with strong work ethic and principles, just go watch The Flight Channel.
When systems fail (and they do all the time), these are the folks ensuring you make it to the ground at an appropriate speed (or not).
“You never want to run out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas”. We’re a long way from tech itself generating ideas on the fly.
Thousands of military drones have been remotely piloted for decades. This news isn’t as ground breaking as it might seem. Some of these drones are large: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk
I know a military drone isn’t the same as a passenger carrying airplane, but for cargo I think the only reason this isn’t already a thing is because drones are military tech and most governments don’t want that falling into the wrong hands.
My first thought was it’s already being done with drones.
I’d be curious, what the military’s loss rate is to non-combat issues.
You’ve been hacked. Pay 500 BTC to regain control of engines and landing gear.
Yeah autonomous flight has been a thing for 50ish years. But there will always be edge cases. Plus A lot of the safety we have in aviation that we have today is due to the two pilot system where every action is checked by your fellow pilot. I can’t see a near future where two pilots in the cockpit are not required for safety.
It’s a good thing that critical instruments never fail and need human intervention.
That’s fine for cargo planes over remote routes.
Aside from planes being really expensive to replace, they usually contain some toxic chemicals like fuel, hydraulic fluid, and exotic metals. The lack of loss to human life might be nice, but it presents other complications.
Until it veers over non-remote areas.
One interference away from crashing in a residential area…
I’m more worried about it going into another skyscraper.
Predicated, of course, on radio frequency communication being 100% reliable, 24/7, 365.
Which they are not.
I’m fine with self-flying cargo planes with no human passengers flying over uninhabited areas besides landing/takeoff.
The innovation
Do they just not keep up with things at all? lol
I wonder how does ATC talk to the plane. Does it get routed to the remote pilot? The article describes controlling the plane through a series of menus. Does the pilot have enough flexibility when something unexpected happens like a sudden weather change or bird strike?
“pilot shortage” meaning “pilot salary shortage”. Fixed that.
