Originally Posted by
MissChief
Think of salary structures. Most Long Haul operators promote pilots from their Short/Medium Haul Ops. Would SH/MH folk take a big drop in earnings to work as a back-up cruise pilot on the LH fleet? Obviously not. I cannot see where the airline's cost savings would come from given the salary structures of SH and LH being roughly comparable. A well-paid SFO on SH is far more likely to want to move to the left seat on SH than step way down in earnings to right-seat/sleeper seat on LH. And how would the new and lowly-paid FO/SFO in Long Haul ever get trained properly? While they are asleep? And does the Captain stay awake for the whole flight?
I think that the real airline bosses are not even after cost savings: they are after power. They don´t want anyone to interfere with whatever they deem to be the best operation, the best PLAN . So, if there are no pilots, no-one is going to say ´no´ , no one is going to go on strike... and the bosses can rule.
Incientally, they save the $ for the pilots, too, but that´s a secondary consideration.
Pilots´ responsibility ? Will be legislated away from the airline, just as the risk of rockets falling onto earth-dwellers has been legislated away. Look to the Virgin rocket : it almost fell onto Teneriffe !
Thus, no-one in the airline hierarchy is personally responsible anyway...and the auto-pilots can do their job, one way or another.
Slightly scary thoughts, I admit. But cost can´t be the real point of getting pilots out of cockpits. You need to pay for a ton of research, electronics and extra maintenance to make that auto auto auto-mated cockpit happening.
Yes, technically, it can be done - as long as those auto auto auto-planes are the only objects in the sky and nothing goes wrong. Russia flew their space-shuttle around the world decades ago - no humans on board.
Many military organizations fly UAVs halfway around the world.
But: look at the safety record. Not good. (( mentally subtract those ´shot down´):
https://dronewars.net/drone-crash-database/