Originally Posted by
hunterboy
Flying airliners is an excellent career…but for how long? Will the job still exist in 40 years? Or will it go the way of a whaling ship Captain? Maybe airships powered by solar panels will be the future?
If you have a look at flight engineers, the first widebody without an FE was the B767 in 1982. The last real commercial services with FEs was ended with the downturn following the 9/11 attacks. So that is around 20 years from first certification until the job was essentially finished.
I'd hazard a guess it would be vaguely similar for replacing the Navigator (1960s-1980s) and maybe even the radio operator before that.
So in terms of single pilot ops, given no aircraft has yet been so certified, let alone pilotless I'd think you'll be ok if training now.
I am as sure of this, however, as I was that 640kb of RAM ought to be enough for anybody....