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Airlines Face Acute Pilot Shortage
Hugh Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that U.S. airlines are facing their most serious pilot shortage since the 1960s. Federal mandates are taking effect that will require all newly hired pilots to have at least 1,500 hours of prior flight experience — six times the current minimum. This raises the cost and time to train new fliers in an era when pay cuts and more-demanding schedules already have made the profession less attractive. Meanwhile, thousands of senior pilots at major airlines soon will start hitting the mandatory retirement age of 65. 'We are about four years from a solution, but we are only about six months away from a problem,' says Bob Reding, recently retired executive vice president of operations at AMR Corp. A study by the University of North Dakota's aviation department indicates major airlines will need to hire 60,000 pilots by 2025 to replace departures and cover expansion over the next eight years. Meanwhile, only 36,000 pilots have passed the Air Transport Pilot exam in the past eight years, which all pilots would have to pass under the Congressionally imposed rules, and there are limits to the ability of airlines, especially the regional carriers, to attract more pilots by raising wages. While the industry's health has improved in recent years, many carriers still operate on thin profit margins, with the airlines sandwiched between rising costs for fuel and unsteady demand from price-sensitive consumers. 'It certainly will result in challenges to maintain quality,' says John Marshall, an independent aviation-safety consultant who spent 26 years in the Air Force before overseeing Delta's safety. 'Regional carriers will be creative and have to take shortcuts' to fill their cockpits."
It didn't seem like we were having any real problems due to inexperienced pilots before. If this is really a problem, let's just roll this back.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
what about adding a apprenticeship system into prior flight experience??
Air travel prices go up, demand goes down until they match. The riff-raff will have to travel Greyhound.
Have gnu, will travel.
Golly....if only there was something the airlines could do to make being a pilot more attractive.
We're tired of all of these ugly ones.
Well, this is certainly an up in the industry. Just 3 years ago, most pilots were complaining that the economy as well as the reluctance of travelers to deal with the security measures were driving travel to an all time low. I guess if we were serious, we could drop the mandatory retirement age temporarily (and replace it with a more comprehensive physical and mental exam which allows able pilots to continue flying) until more pilots become trained.
Or we could have different categories of pilots, full commercial pilots having the full 1,500 hrs of training, and categories for pilots having less training and experience flying small planes with fewer passengers, and ones having say 300 hrs for flying only cargo and staff.
This raises the cost and time to train new fliers in an era when pay cuts and more-demanding schedules already have made the profession less attractive.
Well, duh! Cut pay, make schedules more demanding, and whine about a pilot shortage!
"with the airlines sandwiched between rising costs for fuel and unsteady demand from price-sensitive consumers"
I think consumers are sensitive to more than just price. The humiliating experience that flying has become in the USA could contribute.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Precisely when I'll begin wailing hysterically about cyber-security for the first time ever. I already have a phobia of large aircraft, despite them being statistically far-safer than smaller planes. I kind of prefer a human backup. However, I am now confusing myself with questions as to who should have over-ride privileges, man or machine. I suppose some are already (and have been) capable of being over-ridden by remote systems.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Starting pilots have been woefully paid and live in miserable conditions. The average pay for a regional starts around 20k a year. To get the 1500 hours to get that crappy pay you have to pay to rent 1500 hours worth of airplane time. Oh you might get a discount by instructing for a while but that just turns it into a ponzi scheme.
The market will sort this out over time. Everyone needs pilots so the cost of tickets will have to rise. Some people won't be able to afford to fly. Fewer pilots will be required. That's the impact they should have expected when they passed this new reg.
I would expect this to usher in an era of complete flight automation, right from taxi-ing, to taking off, to flying, and to landing. That would be so cool :D
Unlikely to happen for the same reason we don't have robots dispensing pills instead of pharmacists. If a human makes an error you can blame them and end their career and cut ties.
If an automated system makes an error then you blame the company(s) that engineered, wrote, tested and built the automation system. Too much blame pointing back that can't be easily put off on a scape goat.
with the airlines sandwiched between rising costs for fuel and unsteady demand from price-sensitive consumers
Really? Actually, jet fuel prices have leveled off in the last six months.
Not all the airlines are doing badly. Southwest--a low-fare carrier--is doing just fine. Maybe there are other problems at the "traditional" airlines.
> [..] John Marshall, an independent aviation-safety consultant who spent 26 years in the Air Force before overseeing Delta's safety.
If instead they had hired someone who spent 26 years in the Delta Force before overseeing Air safety maybe I would not have to step in bare socks on a mat covered with foot sweat while holding my pants at the security checks in airports since all terrorists would have been Chuck Norrised.
lucm, indeed.
The military will train you to be a pilot. You're required to serve with them for a period of time though. What if the airlines just did the same thing? Get them their hours, but the pilot trainee agrees to work under pre-negotiated salary and benefit package for a period of time after training. After that they become "free agents". If that's legal under the labor laws, the only thing holding the airlines back from doing it is their own misgivings. What are they afraid of? Going bankrupt? Yeah, like, that never happens... to. an. airline. Get over it. Just start a training program, and if you can legally bind the pilot to a contract that contract is an asset in bankruptcy? Not sure. Once again. Labor law. Not sure how it works, but they bind baseball players to contracts, so I don't see why they can't do it with pilots. Once again, it's a fair deal--the pilot gets to fly, and then agrees to fly with the carrier that trains him/her. Just don't exploit them with these $20k pay packages and ungodly hours. I don't want my pilot worrying about losing his house. The only thing hard about the training should be... the training. Everything else should be easy. Good dorms, good meals, good pay. I want my pilot worrying about just one thing: the fucking plane.
Let's invest in a US transportation infrastructure that * Uses less fuel ( air travel has become more efficient - but so could rail if we made lighter trains * Get's you closer to your destination with less traffic - train stations are usually downtown - airports aren't * No 'pilot problem' * No air traffic controller mayhem * Lots more room to move around on board * Makes lots of JOBS!
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
No thanks! A robot does not feel their life is on the line.
The simple fact is that there are just not enough reasons that makes one want to be an airline pilot.
Some of the downsides are:
Expensive outlay in initial training through to Commercial Pilot Licence level.
Huge time investment in hour building after that, flying usually as an instructor, hacking about with students doing their best to kill you, for nowhere near enough money to live on without a second job or two.
Even more expense to get multi engine rating, turbine rating...
Then you get to sit your ATPL.
Then if you're lucky you might get offered a job as first officer (copilot)
Then you have to do a rating on the aircraft you're going to be flying, which you'll have to pay for, and is generally stupendously expensive, or your employer pays for your rating but you are then indentured to the employer for years. All the time earning diddly-squat.
Ascending to captains chair, or onto larger types, is usually seniority based, and if you want to move to a new employer, you go back to the bottom of the ladder.
Most of the upsides are:
You get to fly planes for a living.
You get to wear a pilot hat and put bars on your sleeves.
It's just not an attractive job any more. It's not even an "impressive" job any more, once upon a time, pilots were seen as near enough to gods, today, they are barely a step above your local bus driver.
For some, getting to fly panes for a living is enough,they just love flying *that much*. But there are not enough of those people to meet the demand.
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The shortage of doctors in the U.S. is due to the AMA cartel's control over university accreditation and corresponding rent-seeking state laws requiring accreditation. The result is speed-exams when you go visit a doctor (or maybe not see the doctor at all, but rather a "nurse practitioner").
Similarly, with legislatively reduced supply of pilots, look for cattle class throughout, with even tighter row spacing. Better keep those 747's tuned up, airlines, because you're gonna need to convert them to full economy class the way Japan uses all-economy class 747's between Osaka and Tokyo.
Don't worry, even though there won't be a business class to upgrade to with your frequent flyer miles, you'll still be able to spend your miles on magazine subscriptions.
This works for everyone, everywhere.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
...And will therefore not panic when something goes wrong.
Commercial drone aircraft are coming, the only questions are timing and regulatory regimes.
In this size class (as opposed to tiny surveillance drones) expect them to be proven out in unmanned cargo flights first. By the time they're used for passenger flights, they'll have tens or hundreds of thousands of hours logged on similar platforms.
Airlines Face Acute Pilot Shortage
Most of the pilots I've seen are pretty fugly.
Absolutely a great face for radio!
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Why am I not surprised that the libertarian with the malware download link completely glossed over the low pay and bad schedule?
The senior pilots get the planes that fly themselves.
The junior pilots get the 737s and worse.
There is a problem with high speed rail. It requires good public transportation at the end nodes. It works in Europe because they have good local public transportation systems. It will not work in the US because we do not.
High speed rail is step 2, not step 1.
Step 1 is good local public transportation.
Although commercial planes do fly on autopilot for most of the flight once they are in cruise, you still need the pilots that are fully capable of controlling the plane and landing it when the autopilot suddenly drops offline because the pitot tubes freeze, wings ice over, a gyro fails, or an engine catches on fire. The routine flights can indeed be handled by most any low-time pilot, but the unusual circumstances are where you need pilots with sufficient experience.
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Sounds like they made a good decision here. How were you planning to pay back those loans?
It couldn't possibly have anything to do with airlines dumping on pilots for the last couple of decades, now could it? Less pay, longer hours, training programs slashed, and pension plans reneged on repeatedly. Gee, I wonder why less people find it worth the costs in time and money to become pilots.
The airlines had three years warning about this and they're just now getting around to realizing that some action might need to be taken.
Naturally, they would have us blame the bad 'ol government and it's eeeeeeevile regulations because it couldn't possibly be that the million dollar golden boys at the top are dumber than a sack of hammers and have been eating the seed corn.
You probably should thank them. You'll live a better life this way. They saved you from crappy pay and being fired the day before you reach a level of seniority to actually enjoy the job and instead having to start at zero seniority at another exploiting outfit. I looked into it myself - it's for enthusiasts these days. And even enthusiasts are better off getting their PPL and just doing it for fun with a well paying job on the side.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
There's a shortage of airline pilots because the job doesn't pay well any more and takes extensive training. Training most US airlines are not willing to pay for. The WSJ is whining that the FAA raised the standards for an Airline Transport Pilot rating and requires pilots to get more sleep. That's in response to the crash of Continental flight 3407 on February 12, 2009. The WSJ conveniently does not mention that.
Some airlines do pay for training. Here's the British Airways training program. BA pays pilot trainees as employees through the whole training process. Most US airlines expect pilots to work for years for less than a typical city bus driver makes to build up their hours before they fly the big iron.
A First Officer (copilot) on RyanAir starts at $3700 a month.
I am an ATP Pilot turned computer programmer. There is no shortage of pilots, just a shortage of pilots willing to work for 18k a year and be treated like crap. I went into the airlines after 4 years of college for a bachelor in Aeronautical Science, several years of flight training and being an instructor and over 100k in debt. What I found out was that the old theory of working for a commuter to build your time was gone. The major airlines outsource over 65 percent of the flying to the commuters who are now flying tons of the majors old routes. So what you have to look forward to someday is maybe making it to a major after surviving several furloughs and years of 18k in pay. Oh yeah the furloughs? They are because the majors move the flying around to whoever is cheaper, and if a commuter starts to get too powerful, they shut them down and open them back up under a different name after filing bankruptcy and selling the assets off to their new company. Over the years it has gone from needing to be super experienced and professional to guaranteeing people jobs if they pay the airlines 70k. Yes that's right people now pay them for guaranteed jobs. Oh and the crash rate? There was years without a pilot error crash, then the airlines started lowering their minimums, and requirements from college degree to heartbeat, and they plowed 3 or 4 into the ground within a few years. The whole thing is really complicated, and the airlines like it that way. On top of all this they put out propaganda that the avg pilot makes $120k a year. Guess what the average pilot now makes $22k a year, has to pay for a dump crashpad, parking, their own uniforms etc... All this for a job that you are never home and on avg is letting you get home to your family maybe 10 days a month after the bitch of commuting. Oh and on top of it, the government bails the bad airlines out every time they go into bankruptcy. United and US Air were out of business in 2005 ish time. Guess what the government came in, wouldn't let the creditors re po their airplanes, and bailed them out. So the next time you say you "won't fly this airline", don't bother. Because your tax payer money allows them to run the crappiest operation they can. Politics gets involved and they say "we have to keep the airline" x amount of people will lose their jobs. Guess what, all the airlines that were doing a good job have planes and pilots ready to go on furlough, and can help the "FREE MARKET" prosper. The problem is it's not free, especially when cities and states fund their pensions on US Airways stock, and the shit starts hitting the fan. Sincerely, a bitter ATP pilot that isn't going back to that crap hole job for less than 200k!
It also has no intuition or learned experience. It cannot make a leap of logic and intuition and perform actions "outside the envelope" to save a desperate and logically hopeless situation. If you want to know what I mean, go read up on some of the stories about how many WW2 pilots managed to bring their aircraft home after severe damage when they should not have logically been able to stay in the air. Many private, charter, and airline pilots can tell you about similar seemingly-doomed mid-air situations, especially in places like Alaska, where it was an experienced and intuitive move counter to normal logic on the human pilot's part that saved the day.
If some military drone goes down, oh well, just another item on the next supply req form. When it's a plane full of passengers, people get all excited for some reason.
You'd really need something close to a true human-level AI, IMHO. We ain't there yet.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Yeah, myth busters in a sim, where the "pilot" was not tired after a long shift and had to land the aircraft already put in line with the runway, was perfectly functional, with a perfect radio connection, with no real life pressure, could land it in perfect weather conditions.
Well, here is a fucking hint, I did that WITHOUT someone talking me through it. It is fucking easy! That they even managed to crash shows how stupid these guys really are. Anyone can try it themselves, you can play with high quality sims as "games" on the PC all you want and most come with scenario's that do put you in line with the runway and all you got to do is land. As long as you don't start freaking out and jerking the controller around, you will be able to land the plane pretty easily.
The problem in real life is that when shit happens, it happens in spade. Bad weather, confusing communication, failing instruments, high pressure, lack of sleep. THAT causes accidents, not having to land fresh on a sunny day with no wind on an wide open runway.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They didn't offer sufficient pay and now they don't have enough pilots. Seems pretty simple to me.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
and stop calling me "Shirley".
Well, they better start paying pilots a lot more money then. I don't see what the problem is. If they have to start charging more for tickets to cover the overhead, then they have to charge more for tickets. It is not like it is a cost that will affect one airline but not another.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/airline-and-commercial-pilots.htm#tab-5
Just to bring some numbers into the discussion.
Personally, I'm a private pilot, I would NEVER make this my profession - so much more money to make in IT, and working hours as a pilot are pretty bad mostly.
Don't forget that entry level pay is much less than those stats show - that's the MEDIAN (not even average).
"The median annual wage of commercial pilots was $67,500 in May 2010. Among commercial pilots, the lowest 10 percent earned less than $34,860 and the top 10 percent earned more than $119,650."
For such an important job this pay is RIDICULOUSLY LOW.
How odd, in the Netherlands we have a surplus of trained pilots. It was big news here of few weeks ago, with many freshly graduated pilots even willing to fly for known unsafe Africa/Asia based airlines just to get a job!
Some news articles (dutch) i grabbed just now via Google:
- http://www.nrc.nl/carriere/2012/10/16/zorgen-over-opleiding-en-banenmarkt-verkeersvliegers/
- (dated) http://blog.spitsnet.nl/2010/06/28/jonge-piloot-zit-zonder-baan/
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Years ago, I knew guys that wanted to become pilots. The costs were extremely prohibitive, with very few job prospects. One found it cheaper to become a lawyer. Breaking into law is a tough gig, but 20 odd years ago, becoming a pilot was much tougher. You had to be an 18 year old millionaire to get trained, and then spend at least another dozen years being unemployed before you get a job. I have no sympathy for airlines or the entire industry.
... who knows?
Maybe the gubment hikes the basic requirement to force the airline to think of the unthinkable - to employ robots as pilots
Hey, Hong Hai (Foxconn) is doing it in China, Canon is doing it in Japan, what is stopping USA from joining in the fun?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They need 60000 pilots by 2025 (i.e. in the next 13 years), and only 36000 have passed the ATPL exam in the past eight years...
60000 divided by 13, times 8, makes... 36923
Slightly less dramatic than you thought, no?
If each passenger has to pay $1.50 per hour of flight more then before they would not even notice a difference. The crew on the other hand - with 30 passengers on average and 6 hours of flight a day, 5 days a week that would add up to about $70K to split up between the two pilots.
What if the autopilot or some sensors critical to its operation malfunction?
Drones do exist that can take off, fly some given route, come back, and land. If the weather is fine. With systems no more complicated than simple flight controls, an engine, and whatever surveillance equipment they're carrying. Even with those extremely modest requirements, a pretty high number of them still crash due to some malfunction or other.
If you ever have a chance to witness a flight simulator session, by all means do. As soon as systems start failing (which they do in real life, from time to time), both pilots are extremely busy and we would often wish for a third pilot to help out. Airplane manufacturers are not even considering moving to a single pilot, let alone no pilots. Maybe in a hundred years or so, but certainly not in the near future.
Remember Qantas flight 32, with an engine that exploded and cut a number of fuel lines and electrical systems? They actually had five pilots in the cockpit instead of the normal minimum of two (observation, check pilots,...) and still took hours before they could get all the checklists done to land the plane safely.
Whenever systems start failing in a serious way, automation starts giving up as well. Big failure in the electrical or hydraulic system? Say bye-bye to the autopilot too. Trust me, you still need us.
I cannot see why anyone would want to be a pilot for a living unless you just want to fly.
I was shocked when I learned that he gets no pay while sitting on the ground, the stewardesses/stewards/flight assistants (whatever), were getting like a buck fifty an hour until the doors closed.
and all this even after years of working his way up through the commuter lines to being a captain where his pay is still less than what most programmers make.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
When the job is too unattractive, because of exhausting work schedules, low payment and high entry cost, then there is an easy way to fix it. Pay them more. I do not want to sit in a plane where the pilots have to think about their dept or the financial situation of their family. They should be awake and focused on the job. You normally get that with a fair salary and good working conditions. And yes when the ticket prices will go up a dollar or two. So be it.
Here's a step by step approach to becoming a commercial airline pilot:
1) Spend $15-20K on getting your private pilots license
2) Spend another $10K on your instrument, high performance, and complex ratings
3) Fly 250 hours at a cost of about $100/hr to build time and experience
4) Spend another $5-10K on a commercial rating
5) Become a flight instructor, getting paid about $10-15/hr to put your life in the hands of a student pilot - fly about 500 hours as a flight instructor
6) Spend another $5-10K on a CFII rating, so you can instruct instrument, getting a ~$2/hr raise
7) Fly another 500 hours at $12-17/hr teaching instrument
8) Spend $5-10K on Multi Engine Instrument and MEI-Instructor ratings
9) Fly 200 hours Multi
10) Apply for a first officer position at a Charter or Regional making $10-12/hr, but with benefits, if awarded job, spend $5-10K of your own money on the rating for whatever aircraft you'll be flying, and your ATP rating
11) Fly 1000-2000 hours as a first officer, and then apply for a captain position making $15-20/hr with benefits.
12) Fly 1000-2000 hours as captain for a Charter or Regional, then apply for a First Officer position for a major airline, making $20K/year - the airline MIGHT pay for your rating on their B737 or whatever you'll be flying
13) Do that for 25 years
14) On a seniority basis, you'll be able to apply for a captain position when an existing captain quits, dies, or retires. Then you'll make $100K plus.
So the short story is, you'll lay out $200K of your own money to get a job that pays $10/hr, and you'll make that for 25 years, and then maybe you'll get a left seat and make the big bucks, but chances are you won't, because you'll either get sick of working 100 hours/week for 40 hours of $10/hr pay and quit, or you'll fail your Class-1 Medical on Blood Pressure and lose your job.
Why am I not surprised that the libertarian with the malware download link completely glossed over the low pay and bad schedule?
When you're a nut every solution starts to look like a wrench coming to twist your head off..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
See how underpaid pilots have to live and work as well as other consequences of cost cutting:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/flyingcheap/view/
Also available on Netflix
i'd rather fly on a fully automated. or remote operated plane, where human errors are less likely.
Do you really not think the airlines would be all over that like a rash if they thought they could get away with it?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
At least there is not a shortage of acute flight attendants!
Kit Darby. Who for 20 years ran Air Inc. This company sold interview prep and other get you hired by the airlines services. For every year he was in business he predicted a pilot shortage was just around the corner so get in now! Air Inc has now ceased operations but he is still in aviation consulting, http://www.kitdarby.com/. Gee, after reading the artice I wonder who was the main source for this article?
This is a rather silly problem. If you have a shortage of a particular kind of worker in any industry, the cause of that problem is very simple: You're not paying enough. We live in a relatively free market, when you want something that's in short supply, you get it with $$$, not whining to the press.
I'm stunned the article doesn't include the public's distaste for dealing with the TSA as a substantial contributing factor in lower patronage. I've always assumed it was at least a relevant number. I know I don't fly anymore unless unavoidable due to TSA. I've had friends lose computers at the airlines. I'm avoiding the airports, and keeping both my dignity and my property safe.
Maybe the airlines need to do some serious lobbying to get rid of the TSA, if only to be looking out for themselves? I've heard they understand it's affecting sales, but I don't see them doing anything about it other than cowering and going along with it. Ad when their customers complain, they just blame all the inconvenience on the TSA. (who really doesn't give a damn) I can't believe they have no ability to influence change here.
If they're really in as dire straights as they're saying, evicting the TSA from their terminals ought to be somewhere on their how-to-avoid-bankrupcy list.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
They actually had five pilots in the cockpit instead of the normal minimum of two (observation, check pilots,...) and still took hours before they could get all the checklists done to land the plane safely.
I think the question is - isn't it possible to do this remotely? It's not like humans can do significant repairs anyway, is it? At least, provided that reliable connection is available, a whole team could participate in solving the problem, not just a few people in the cockpit. Think of spaceflight mission control centers.
Ezekiel 23:20
We need a 50-60% reduction in the number of flights. And just quadruple prices to compensate. I for one am fed up with hearing year after year after year that the airlines are in trouble and billions of dollars in the hole. Just let them massively contract. It's not as if they're doing anything like a good job.
What you have to understand is this. When the airlines talk of a pilot shortage, what they are saying is "There are only 20 applicants for each job". Normally, there are 200 applicants for each job.
The thing is most people who fly *really want to fly* and will practically prostitute themselves just to be in the air. This causes several bad things to happen. For instance, the majority of flight instructors aren't instructing because they want to, they are instructing merely to build hours to get that airline job. This means many private pilots are being trained by instructors with a few hundred hours, who aren't good teachers and have no interest in actual teaching. (This is why I found a grizzled old freelance instructor who did instruction as something on the side to his main job as an engineer, he was instructing because he cared about instructing, and also had thousands of hours of experience). That's not to say all young instructors with their eyes on the airlines are like this -- there are some who really do care, and continue to instruct after they get the coveted airline job. But at the same time, whenever I go for a checkout to rent a plane somewhere, it's not unusual that I have three times the hours than the instructor who is checking me out, and a much broader depth of experience. Aspiring airline pilots also take on some other pretty awful flying jobs such as flying canceled checks around in marginally airworthy aircraft in weather conditions they have no business flying in (single pilot IFR in a marginally airworthy light twin is pretty risky). I get the impression that half the aspiring commercial pilots would do these jobs for free, or even pay for the privilege.
Because there's never really a shortage of pilots as most normal people understand it, even during times of "pilot shortage", the pilots of smaller airliners (think the small turboprop aircraft feeding into airline hubs) are paid peanuts. You can make more as a first level supervisor at Mc.Donald's than you can as an airline first officer in these outfits. It's not until you have quite a lot of seniority and are flying a jet do you actually get a liveable wage.
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And then the data link breaks or gets jammed (or even hacked?) by a terrorist. Especially when electrical systems start failing, the connection will be lost. Human pilots have their actual, physical hands on the controls. Even on fly by wire airplanes, there are still some things that work even if all electricity fails.
Maybe they just need to hire more cute flight attendants!
Automating a process doesn't mean moving the manual operation to a different location.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
As soon as systems start failing (which they do in real life, from time to time), both pilots are extremely busy and we would often wish for a third pilot to help out
I seem to remember a case in the southern US, where something went wrong and both pilots were so intent on finding out what was wrong, they essentially forgot to keep flying the plane and crashed.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
There's a shortage of people who want a shit job with huge responsibility for lousy pay. Here's a solution. Figure out what it would take to pay each and every pilot at least 6 figures, and take that percentage of salary from each and every manager. I guarantee there'll be no problem paying and very soon, not shortage of pilots.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
it's a boring job no one respects.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's where they hang out.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
When you're a nut every solution starts to look like a wrench coming to twist your head off
Whoa this seems to be original work. Another world-class great quotation has made its debut on Slashdot!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Every few years some idiot journalist sees an ad for a flight school that touts there is a severe shortage. They imply that getting your pilot's license and degree (for a mere $50k to $80k) will be your ticket to riches.
I know many pilots with over 1500 hours and a commercial flight certificate that cannot get into the big airlines due to too many pilots.
The ones where the plane went down because the pilot wasn't able to handle a situation that a computer would have been able to by adjusting trim and flight parameters don't make such good stories.
we have a bunch of trained pilots sitting on their ass in guantanamo. they just need to finish their landing training. i don't think they need 6 figures either, i bet 73 virgins would do it.
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Hell, about 75% of gamers have more than 1500 hours sitting in their parents basement playing video games, drinking red bull...no problem! LOL.
About 10 years ago, I got into a heated debate with a few friends over paying salaries to what I'd call high-responsibility jobs like pilots. Their answer was, well if the free market dictates a pilot make $20K/year then so be it.
Fast forward 5 or so years and we see the Continential flight 3407 accident with a copilot making $16K a year and overworked and a bottom-of-the-barrel pilot. Sometimes salaries aren't just compensation, they're an enticement for a level of professionalism and ability you want. How many people would bother with a $16K salary and years of a low-paid internship while having to deal with the responsibilities and liabilities of being an airline pilot? How excited would you be to get onto a plane knowing the pilot is overworked and making less than your daughter does waiting tables?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
There is no way that anyone with the 250 hour current minimum for commercial flight is getting a job with any company that an ordinary citizen would identify as an "Airline". 1500 - 3000 hours has been the practical minimum since WW II when veterans with that kind of experience became available. At 250 hours you are still paying for your own flight time. To build time in between you can become a flight instructor, but jobs such as utility survey (pipline/powerline inspector), traffic, and corporate pilot are heavily over-subscribed.
Once again, a bogus "labor shortage" is being sold to us not because there aren't plenty of newly trained people eager to work, but because corporations are requiring extensive experience in the exact same position for "industry standard" wages that aren't any better than people with that experience are already getting.
given that there are big differences between planes how many of these hours are on the type of aircraft in question??
small prop planes mean exactly JACK when you are dealing with Jets (and even lear jets mean JACK when you are dealing in the 7XX type of planes)
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No, really: who says flying has to be cheap? If ticket costs skyrocket, what might happen? Here's a couple possibilities. /from airports and pre-board time).
1) Business use of video conferencing goes up.
2) People learn to take vacations nearer to home.
3) Buses and trains handle all the short-haul traffic (as it is right now, it's faster to go Boston-NY by Acela than by air when you factor in travel to
4) More sunny days due to reduced quantity of contrails.
Ok, that last one is a stretch. But I see no reason to exempt airline corporations from the rules of Economics 101.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
And then the data link breaks or gets jammed (or even hacked?) by a terrorist. Especially when electrical systems start failing, the connection will be lost.
I believe that this is where the experience from the military and space research could come in handy. You know, reliability and fault tolerance? And given proper communication channels, I can't honestly imagine the terrorists having the resources necessary to hack into the system. You know, satellites, directional antennas, encryption... If it's good for military vehicles, who's to say that some of the future iterations on the topic (extra comm channels, AI for handling the failure) won't be reliable enough for commercial applications?
Human pilots have their actual, physical hands on the controls.
Both humans and machines can fail. They just have different modes of failure. Machine-driven cars, for example, seem to be less lethal already, if I'm not mistaken.
Ezekiel 23:20
How frequently are these "leaps of logic" needed rather than calmly following a checklist?
Yes, they do use checklists, and checklists save lives. Surgeon Atul Gawande wrote The Checklist Manifesto (apparently back when "manifestos" were cool, but it's a good book despite that), and studied checklists used in commercial aircraft and implemented some checklist procedures at his own hospital department that measurably saved lives, reduced post-op infection, etc. ("Make sure you're removing the right leg": obvious but still possible to get wrong.)
So some numbers about cases where (1) machines could not detect a problem, and (2) "leaps of logic" were necessary would be nice. I have a hunch that lives saved by "leaps of logic and intuition" are dwarfed by those saved by calmly and mechanically following checklists, but I don't know for certain.
Yeah, you might want to do something about that "linkbucks.com" redirect. And I think I even clicked your link in the past and it didn't do that; recent development? There are plenty of other short URL providers.
And then the data link breaks or gets jammed (or even hacked?) by a terrorist. Especially when electrical systems start failing, the connection will be lost.
Then open big parachutes and let the plane land with them (wherever it is currently located). Then send rescue to pick up passengers ... or whatever is left from them :)
Like the ACs said.....you are a bit late to the party as many ARE indeed filled by robot. Most all mail-order prescriptions and most filled for facilities(nursing home(LOTS!), hospital,etc) certainly are. Indeed i would bet the majority are filled by robot now.
Pharmaceutical company i deal with just installed a $500k machine to fill those little pill punchcards for facilities...It does 1000-something scripts a day. Would you really trust your human counting out script number 963 for the day on Friday?
However, I am now confusing myself with questions as to who should have over-ride privileges, man or machine. I suppose some are already (and have been) capable of being over-ridden by remote systems.
Jury's still out on that. Airbus favours machine/computer over man, Boeing believes humans have the final say after providing pilots with necessary info. Both approaches have led to crashes and loss of life.
As for the reliablity of the military, when I see that in most recent wars the coalition forces lost more planes due to malfunctions than due to enemy action, I'm not very optimistic.
As for the different failure modes of people versus machines: if Google's car detects a serious system fault, it simply stops the car. You can't just stop an airplane. It has to be guided to a runway no matter what, or everyone on board dies. Machines are very good at one thing: doing a repetitive task very accurately. They can fly an instrument approach much more accurately than a human can. But they have no common sense and even the latest and greatest technology in modern airplanes (especially the latest and greatest) will often just fail completely when something unexpected happens.
is that spoiled little children like you still haven't figured out that the adults are getting tired of your self-entitled whining and tingking that we should all be honored for the privilege of being forced to clean up your messes.
You jest, but some recent small jet designs do indeed have a parachute for the entire airplane. They were designed to be flown by rich people with little flying experience, and if they ever get into a situation they can't get out of, they push a button and the plane shuts down the engines and opens a big parachute.
But you'd need one hell of a big parachute for an airliner...
You're a pilot AND brain surgeon too? Remarkable.
FWIW I'm not a comedian.
If air travel becomes more expensive, alternatives like teleconferencing become more attractive. Leisure travelers may choose closer destinations or skip vacations altogether. People can also choose other modes of transport, which in the U.S. usually means driving.
One issue i didn't see anywhere below that i'll just insert here as it is as close a match as anything...
Not all the pilots moving up the chain from little to big and co-pilot to pilot may want to make that final step to pilot of one of the big boys. They also lose seniority when they move from co-pilot to pilot. My dad's best friend was a 747-level co-pilot for ages because he was top of the chart for seniority and got to chose his routes/schedules first. When you 1st move to pilot you would then get whatever route noone else wanted at a slight pay increase or even less income because of less time/easier route.
$75k income with 3 days on and 4 days off
vs
$90k income working nearly everyday for partial days
He had a farm and several days off in a row was much more productive. (ok, productive consisted mostly of building an airport in the backyard and a hanger in the barn) He had enough free time still to build a couple planes from a box of parts.
Paying pilots more will attract more pilots at the same time discouraging customers due to increased ticket prices. At some point the two trends will intersect and there will no longer be a pilot shortage. Problem solved.
No Pilot Left Behind! Aka dumb down the tests. Works in education. More slacker students wasting educational resources than you can shake a stick at!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Disclaimer: I am a pilot.
Pilots do not "sit back and let the autopilot do the work" in any case on approach. And, on the contrary, they are required to maintain active control over the aircraft should conditions change unexpectedly.
Watch the following video to see an ILS Category II automated landing procedure from start to finish.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MdK1Q8gdgmo
I worked for an airline that operated between 4,000 and 6,000 flights daily. After you account for the aircraft lease, flight and ground crew salaries (and per diem rates when applicable), fuel, ground operations, gate auctions, aircraft maintenance, and so on—all adding up to an appreciable sum—the average profit per flight, across the network, was about $200. Worst still, nearly every domestic flight (especially regional legs) lost money.
This is why most airliners no longer hand out free peanuts and pay their entry-level pilots between $18-30K yearly salaries.
Every player in the air transportation industry is running on razor-thin margins and the slightest perturbations cause substantial losses. How these companies have survived this long is beyond me, but it is no wonder all the major players have now filed for bankruptcy (including AMR, which was the longest-lasting hold out).
Add a dollar here, another dollar there, and before you know it you have eaten into all your profits. And before people get out their pitchforks and cry foul about how businesses are evil and greedy, realize first that they have to make profit to buy new aircraft as old equipment deteriorates, and build buffers against cancellations due to weather conditions, changes in demand, and so on.
Let me put it to you this way. Next time you find yourself in an airport, look out a window and find a jet sitting on the tarmac with its engines running. Now look at your watch. For every second that passes, that plane burnt about $20. Tick-tick-tick
As the public demands cheap airfares, the airlines have to keep costs low wherever and whenever possible.
New regs are all about making it harder to fly, so we can reduce our carbon footprints, so we can delay the end of the current ice age by another 100 years (it's coming whether we all start walking yesterday).
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Machine-driven cars, for example, seem to be less lethal already,
This is because human drivers are mostly morons and are completely untrained for the most part, at least here in the USA. It's a totally different situation from pilots, who have tons of training, and have specifically been trained to deal with emergencies and mechanical failures. Car drivers are not, they're really not trained at all in any way, they're just given keys, and quick lecture on the rules of the road, and allowed to pilot a 6000 lb vehicle at high speed in busy traffic among millions of other such vehicles and drivers.
Federal mandates are taking effect that will require all newly hired pilots to have at least 1,500 hours of prior flight experience — six times the current minimum.
I'd rather not be able to fly because of a pilot shortage than fly in a plane piloted by someone with only 250 hours experience.