The Demise of the Professional Pilot

[TDF380]

Unmanned Aircraft.

Unmanned aircraft may well happen, certainly with freighters, however it will be a very long time before unmanned pax aircraft happen.
Even now the US are using pilotless reconnaissance aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan piloted by someone in the US, however these are considered expendable, just as they are willing to fire off $1,000,000 cruise missiles at targets.
If a problem occurred in-flight and they couldn’t sort it out it would crash.

Would the traveling public consider this acceptable for pilotless passenger airliners? I doubt it. Whereas freighter aircraft may be accepted sooner.

Certainly I will be out of flying well before the freighters go pilotless, and retired or 6 feet under, before pilotless passenger aircraft are common. It won’t affect my children as I’m discouraging them from a flying career due to my concerns with the airline industry as per my previous posts. So i’m not saying this to protect my job.

Here's my prediction

Robots and advanced computers are been developed now.
When they are far enough along in there development they will be used for / in;

Armies, Police, Laborers, Factories, Trains, Buses, Ships, and in the Airlines – check in, loaders, ATC, catering, pilots, engineering etc.

Of course the only countries who can afford to have them will be the developed countries, starting with Japan, the main developer. This will cause massive unemployment, and the associated rise in crime, and thus breakdown in society (e.g.; Philippines, Russia, and Africa)
Ultimately people from the developed countries will have to move to the less developed countries for any chance of finding a job. Negative population growth will end in depression for those countries.

So although I believe ‘unmanned transport’s' posts are a windup, we’ll probably see you in the unemployment que before us.

The Demise of the Professional Pilot’s Profession continues Look at what’s been in the news and Pprune lately.

United Airlines

Have made 2.5 Billion Dollars in cuts and concessions / pensions with all staff in the last 2-3 years.
Just read in the paper they require another 2 Billion Dollars in cuts to survive. Will they ask for another 2 Billion Dollars in cuts in another 2 years?

US Airways

More cuts and concessions with its employees.

Air Italia

Cut in pay and conditions, extended working hours.

BA Short Haul

Big shakeup on the cards.

Emirates

The expanding airline with the shiny new planes that was luring pilots from around the world, now working up to max FDL, pilots concerned about fatigue. Pilot shortage just means longer duty times to operate the schedule, will Emirates improve.

These are the National Airlines of some countries.

Ironically the employees of first low cost airlines, Southwest, seem reasonably happy; it’s just the copycats like Ryan air that seem to have taken the concept of low costs and B@ggerised it to a new level of low.

Others national airlines with unhappy staff on Pprune
Air Finland, Singapore, Malaysian, Royal Brunei, Plus many more.

With flights fairly full why are these airlines struggling, maybe airfares should be increased to a realistic level.

This is not the grumblings of a few whining pilots, there is a lot of concern over fatigue and the general demise of the pilots profession