I like that finally this thread is deviating away from speculation on salvage and systems faults...
The way I see it the only major cost cutting airlines can achieve in the foreseeable future is from crew cost and training cost.
Look - a drone can stay airborne for almost 48h depending on mission profile (that normally is much more complicated than flying A to B) and the guy/guys who fly it can get up, go to canteen, take a crap, take a siesta or even call the boss if things start getting out of hand... Isn't it beautiful?!
If in 10 years time the SLF is told they can fly for a third of the price of what they are paying now but in a robot driven a/c with A specialist (called PILOT) who is on board only for the never occurring need to do a hard reset of some equipment?!
Of course above para is a bit in line with H.G. Wells.
But... Are we sure?
Boeing and Airbus keep telling everybody that the price tag goes up because they are selling safer and better a/c that can be flown by CPL holders, albeit for the time being only from the RHS... Soon (I hear rumors) OPC/LPC might be done only once a year, but crew might have to be send to the sim for extra training... Who in their right mind will waste extra money on extra sim?! Once regulators give up the fight, recurrent training will be halved and this is not a H.G. Wells scenario.
To come back to experience levels of the Playstation Generation. The only way I see it is MFF. Put pressure on the young ones, so the keener ones make it faster up the ladder. Not on the Captain, that frequently has to put up with the unbelievable pressure of combining inexperienced crew with bad SOPs, commercial issues etc... Even more so if he wants to give something for free to the young guys!
I also heard a rumor that on this particular flight, AF447, the Captain might have come under pressure to depart on time with the usual "BITE test ok" bulshiv due to the presence of some big shots (God bless their souls) up front in biz class...
So I am asking myself once again why and how did they got themselves in the kind of bad wx that all of us normally avoid by 20 nm at least...
