A little lateral thinking here. If a wannabe shows up with a record of a couple of thousand hours of VA experience (Virtual Airline on internet) and nows the '400 sim backwards, which a lot do. Rocks up for a sim flight and aces it because of prior experience with a kick-ass PC. (After all it IS a sim-ride) Then he is let loose to manage the FMS in the real thing
Interesting times. After watching cable over the last couple of months and seeing doco's on remote mounted cockpits, hardwired flight control systems to avoid designated TFRs in the states. Systems to positiveley avoid CFIT regardless whatever pilot input or not. Totally autonomous weapon platforms (i.e. no ground control) Plus the current/old technology of fly-by-wire ready made for autonomous computer control....
Technology is pretty amazing. We do not know what will happen in the next decade. Who knows, maybe the best experience an ATPL ( if there will be such a thing in the future!)should have is being able to type at better than 80 a minute...Interesting times indeed
Regards
Mark