Tower Dog - CA's do fly aeroplanes, they have to go for the full frontal labotomy first of course. Loony, good point on the Souix City, unfortunately more aircraft are lost through CFIT and cockups on re-fuelling etc. The simple fact is that you are not making a case for a pilot up front but a manager, the automatics will look after the three dimensional guidance. It will not be possible to fly future generation aircraft as the Souix City DC10 was flown i.e. manually, and pilots are not more professional these days, quite the opposite, the aircraft and systems are just making it much easier by doing it for them.