Courtney, you and I have very differing outlooks on this. I fly because I love to do it. Happily people are stupid enough to pay me to do something I love.

On the other hand, you seem, from these posts, to be devoid of passion for this business. Hand flying isn't about ego, but increasing your skill or at least not losing it by relying on complex electronics that could fail.

Brand spanking new machines don't fail that often, but most of the world still flies things that require a good look at the MEL before you go.
Things break and you may have to improvise. Thankfully, there isn't a computer system or software program that does that as well as humans can.

IT or Flying....hmmm..tough decision...
 

I'm another IT geek who always dreamed of flying. Got a private license and tons of hours...in MS flight simulator. Give my right arm to have my time over, I would have sacrificed anything to have your job.

Next time you're trudging over to the gate to go to work, be aware that there are many, many SLF's watching who would trade places with you in a heartbeat.

It has changed..
 

It has become a button pushing job.... With the same benefits of tons of time from home, a wavering image of job security and a hostile public....It does get boring and the climate seems to be getting nastier in regards to management.. It was exciting for the first few years, but it lacks a continuing challenge, though that is a good thing, at least in an airplane...

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...s_with_an.html

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art...a_cockpit.html

i teach the boys to be as inefficient as possible!!! Heart the bottom line as much as possible. When we are treated as professionals again, and when the pay me accordingly, they will get what they pay for. Until then they get what they pay for

atb:)

A men YYzguy:D Its is always sad to hear of people that couldn't pass the Medical and even sadder to hear of people that did and now wish they hadden't, sorry chaps! A happy flying new year to all of you:ok:

Two different things in discussion: Flying Airplanes and the Flying Job.

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't trade my current job for a job in an airline, unless it was on a flag carrier or similar. All the rest seems pretty awful, regarding free time and pay. I love my family too much for that.

Now, the flying bit is what really matters, and that's what drives so many people towards becomming a pilot; all in all it's a great challenge anyway you look at it.

In my very own opinion flying cargo should be more interesting than PAX all day long; freight dogs are a very cool bunch of people :ok:. It would be my natural choice, if I would be really desperate to become a professional pilot, and didn't mind working when everybody is sleeping or didn't care to have a social life, nevermind a normal family.

If I get to win the lottery, I'll follow J. Travolta's example and would travel the world, with the exception of the plane choice: A319 private jet would suit me fine :E

Words Of Wisdom
 

A real pleasure to read this thread and a lovely perspective that captures the real spirit of transition in our aviation lives. I for one agree with the humble essence of the editorial.
As for some of the Airbus pilots that may feel a smiggen offended about their skills, should not see this thread as an attack on them. I reckon they have not read between the lines and have missed the spirit in which it is intended.
It does remain true with some of the younger group of pilots ,if you ask them to mentally calculate a rate of descent to meet an altitude restriction without the aid of the onboard flight managment devices,the deep space mission to Mars is scrubbed. True, there are laws of physics that govern flight ,I just think the art is fadding like a water colour in the rain.
All the best
jones:cool:

Hi Guys and gals (pc correct):)

I get the feeling (reading above posts) you all sound so despondent...CHEER UP!!!! Guess most of your inputs are 'slightly' negative from the Xmas break and now back to work.

From a pax point of view, you get me from a-b, take the time when pax are disembarking (open flight door) to say hi "enjoy your flight" you'll be very surprised as to the friendly response......Most want to say thanks.

CHEER UP!!!!!!!!!!

ps. Unless the f/o has done a real bummer

Winter blues eh?

While the profession may not be what it used to be, if you were to tally up every profession I'm pretty sure Airline Pilot will still be pretty high up. Even with the automation decisions still have to be made and great responsibility has to be taken. While it used to be one of the best and most respected, it is now a good respectable job. Nothing wrong with that.

I bet Pilots aren't the only group of professionals to long for the golden days back, but I guess it's just progression and eventually (in the distant future I hope) the only jobs to be had will be servicing the robots that have taken every possible occupation.

Even after reading all these doom and gloom outlooks, it's not going to stop me from doing what i've always wanted and if your children have the passion like me, why stop them?

There are much worse things they could do, and having a goal is only going to have a positive effect on their education.

In due course we will see a fatal, hull loss, accident caused by two pilots demonstrating their inability to fly an aircraft by hand in slightly demanding circumstances (the clues are aleady there - have a look at medium twin jets flying on standby instruments in Europe in recent years). We won't see the non-accidents which this change in the industry has produced, but it will be a hollow excuse. :uhoh:

This is a VERY COMPLEX matter and one which goes unaddressed by industry and regulator alike. :cool:

Hell in a handcart? Yes, slowly and steadily, but in a manner symptomatic of the whole world modern man has created. ;)

What a fascinating topic for proper study... :sad:

In due course? Take a look at the Gulf Air 320 crash in Bahrain.

Not quite what I was thinking, but a fair point... :)

How about the TAM A320 crash at CGH. Two captains, . . . but neither remembered to retard the No2 throttle [reverser inop] after touchdown. Temporary insanity? Or just total stupidity?

This one is for Courtney.

I'm just curious as to what you would have all these pilotless aircraft of yours do when a solar flare knocks out the satellites they are relying on to navigate?

Remember one of the things keeping aircraft safe is something called redundancy. When one system fails another takes over. I see no redundancy in a pilotless aircraft.

Furthermore the flying environment is a highly dynamic environment. Do you honestly think that it is possible to program an autopilot to handle every combination of factors that could be thrown at it? As an example how do you think it would interpret weather radar returns?

How would it decide when and where to go in the event of it being unable to reach its destination? Remembering that weather is also highly dynamic. You seem to forget that pilots are not only there for their handling skills but also, and I would say more importantly, for their decision making abilities.

And lastly, when would you be prepared to send your family off on a fully automated flight?

This is the dilemma, is not it? Many lay people have this impression that everything is automatic! Great surprise is often expressed when I inform such people that 99% of landings are manual!

NASA established a long while ago that human beings are poor monitors of automation - if anything the automation should be monitoring the humans!

In my opinion we are decades away from fully automated flight with no pilots.

After arduous sectors (one comes to mind in the last year dodging all the CBs on the way inbound to a German airport) I often remark "And they think it's all automatic!"

Freight...will be the first non pilot plane
 

all you cargo pilots...the first planes without pilots will be without passengers as well.

hmmmmm

fireflybob;

Yes, it is indeed. And the mythology does not stop with lay people. Such magical thinking can extend right into the upper echelons of management who may know a lot less about aviation and what keeps it safe than they do about marketing, managing share price and negotiating.

Everytime we bring false modesty to a conversation about our profession and what we do in the cockpit we do ourselves a disfavour. While being a professional aviator has had a very rough ride from the corporations beginning with the bean-counters and going all the way to the top in terms of a blasé dismissal of what professional aircrews do everyday for their employer, the skills, professional ethic and resources we bring first to our passengers and then to our company have not changed either in importance or in necessity. They are just hidden behind a veil of partially intentional misconceptions and a populace otherwise largely informed by television.

Once in a while in occasional cocktail conversations when the subject of jobs, salary and working conditions comes up I say, "airline pilots earn $100,000.00 dollars a minute but you'll never know which one. The rest is for free." The remark is of course intended to elicit comment and we go from there, often ending with a bit more understanding, at least until the glass empties and the eyes glaze over...Public support for airline pilots extends as far as "avoiding crashing" but without the comprehension of what that costs or how it's done. Ignorance can be forgiven but not pronouncement from ignorance.

In the end however, we need never apologize for the time off, the salary, (such as it is at the beginning of the profession), or what remains of the prestige and respect at least in the public's mind, (because it certainly isnt' elsewhere).

Automatic flight has been demonstrated with the B707 fuel-gelling experiment, so it can be done. It just can't be done with weather, terrain and 4000 other transport aircraft sharing the same domestic sky at any one time. To me, something like the "natural biological size" principle comes into play when imagining such systems of control and it might be expressed as a "natural limit to human-managed complexity". Now if machines can carry on an extremely rich conversation with one another regarding the usual factors such as position and speed and they can do that with the predictive power of the same machines which helped the Genome Project along then perhaps true automatic flight will be possible, even right to the parking of the aircraft. Thing is, by that time, other technologies may have obviated the need to use airplanes to travel at all.

An impression strengthened, no doubt, by some of the scarier posts I see right here on PPrune. Manual flying = ego massage, etc....

As for PJ2's post, above - spot on. The freight trains that rumble by my house every day have a crew of three. In one hundred years they will still have a crew of three. And aircraft will have a crew of two. Why? Same reason people still fly C-130's after 50 years. "Cost effectiveness."

Don't blame th ebean counters
 

The human race has had to adapt to more new technology in the last forty years than in the three thousand before it. We are relying on things that we can see working, because for centuries that is how we knew they were real. We as a people have not learned to be cautious about implementing new systems because things have changed too much for our perceptions to adjust. We see it working and we believe it will continue to work. Like lemmings, we march down to the computer shop and buy Microsoft windows, despite all the security flaws and bugs we hear about. Of course, it is the bean counters that want to implement cost-saving measures in the first place, but their managers are wowed by technology that appears to promise all and let them get away with it.

We are a quick-fix society. If there is something invented last week, we gleefully rely on it if it stops us having to think about the problem. Yes, we rely on governments to keep manufacturers in check, but peple who work for them are humans too, still in techno-culture shock themselves some of the time.

I am not a professional pilot, and usually stay quiet here as my mere PPL demands, but I feel that as an engineer I may have something useful to add. I once had the pleasure of flying an Aztec YYZ-YUL with a former Red Arrow in the right seat to get some instrument time. He couldn't understand why I flew it manually all the way. Now you know.

After taking post-graduate security and software engineering courses, I made a couple of rules: don't fly unnecessarily, don't live near a Nuclear Generating Station, and always keep the backup system running in parallel and well-exercised (that's the aircrew in this case).

Only the paranoid will survive. Keep vigilant!

dazdaz
 

"From the pax point of view"
"ps. Unless the f/o has done a real bummer"

Maybe I should shed some light to you, CAPTAINS DO BUMMERS TOO

lowbypass:
In which case you send the f/o out to meet the pax... :}

What a coincidence, was at a 'party' the other night, and was unfortunate to enough to be accosted by a drunken nitwit who proceeded to tell me why my job was so easy... went along the lines of: " it must be really hard pressing the autopilot button on the runway and then pulling back on the stick and landing at the other end".... I refused to justify the moron with a sensible response. However the next day it got me thinking (rarity i know), what has led to this universally accepted idea that we press a takeoff and land button? and more importantly, so that I can effectively counter future pea brains, what is your standard response when people you socialise with come out with such tripe? I mean, we have all had these questions.... "its all automatic nowadays though isnt it' Or 'Do you ever actually land it then'???? etc...

Happy (auto)landings all and may I be the first to wish you a happy easter.

Tacho

It happens everywhere
 

Our industry is no different to any others in that change takes place and the challenges faced by the people at the coal face change as well, this has always been the way of the world. In a previous life I was in the Merchant Navy and as a 17 year old was often reminded that I had missed the "good old days" with the implication that things were now so easy that any idiot could do the job. The job was changing as it always had done; I'm sure the transition from sail to steam was viewed as a bad thing. Our industry is bound to change even more in the coming years and we have to accept that but also ensure we can adapt as well. Basic skills will always be a requirement and it's up to training departments to ensure that they are not lost and that practising in line operations is not seen as something non-standard. As regards the amount of pay anyone gets for a particular job then it is market forces that dictate the level of remuneration. We are not paid for being on standby to deal with an emergency or critical event but to take people (or goods) from A to B etc. The world does not work on people being paid pro-rata for their skill or responsibility; how could you equate a transplant surgeon to a premier-league footballer in the way they should be paid and there are many different examples of where the pay does not seem to have a relationship to real responsibility.
If someone asked me my opinion of wether it was a good job to try to get into then I would still say yes and certainly more varied than being a Dentist. That being said neither of my sons have shown any inclination to follow my path and that's fine with me as well, they should make their own way in life. The job is different now to what it was twenty years ago and will be quite different in another twenty but you will still see things from the cockpit that will make you turn to your colleague and say "That was worth getting up for".

Gee!

I worked so hard all these years to avoid the "**** hitting the Fan"!

...and now I am being told because the "**** didn't hit the Fan", that the job must have been easy!

How do I go about trying to explain that to the loved-ones of my mates that didn't make it?

Hold the phone
 

Ive wanted to be a pilot for a few years now, however i still have to finish college so whatever i end up doing is still a couple years away. This post has deffinately helped me open my eyes, for the better. In recent times i began to face the fact that the being a pilot may not be half as good or job satisfiying as i thought.

For a start i'd have to leave home for a few a couple of years to train, leaving behind my friends, family and all sorts of unfinished business in my life. Not to mention even if i did get a flying job, after who knows how long, i'd still have to pay 100,000k plus back to my parents (who are willing to loan me it). And all for what, a monitoring job? hmmm.....

I still have some years left to decide so i'll keep my eyes open for any changes in the future. The military (not the irish one anyway:p) will soon be making their fighters pilotless, i shudder to think civil aircraft arent so far behind.

Working in a bank doesn't seem so bad anymore, my dad did it and he's doing very well. Good pay, holidays, social scene etc..... why not?:ok:

rhm

Despite what many would like to think, an increase in automation is not necessarily an increase in safety.

This is entirely speculation on my part but I imagine that if it were possible to graph safety vs automation for flightdeck operations you would get something roughly resembling an inversely exponential curve ie. it is highly worthwhile to a point, after which it gives a reducing increase in safety for a given increase in automation.

The bottom line is that an automated machine makes "decisions" based on parameters and rules. Once reality decides to step outside the machine's parameters the automatics are redundant. For example last week on passing 400 feet on departure a heron appeared in the flightpath. Does this mean we start fitting aircraft with bird avoidance technology?

With regard to the public perception of pilots being the cause of many crashes and wanting "biggles to sit on his hands", it should be remembered that we are one of the few industries that washes its laundry in public. Unfortunately TV programmes on butchers and food poisoning don't rank highly on TV producers to-do lists.

sr

"I build, what, two thousand breedges - and do they call me Pierre the Bridge Builder? No! But you b@gger ONE goat...."

speedrestriction:
I think it has been shown that having the flight crew baby-sit the automatics causes more accidents than the other way around. Let the crew fly the aircraft and let the computer prompt them if they're getting close to a cock-up.

A lot of PPRuNers indulging in a pastime of trollfeeding - me included. High school dropouts in cockpits, earning more than PM? What a cheap provocateur.

Am entering this topic to perhaps stop the nagging reminder to me with “no postings”

A little about myself

At 16 I had an ambition to enter the RAF. A flying or non flying role was not important but my academic achievements to date seemed to impress someone and was selected to go to Cranwell for flight crew selection. Medical was the first and the last of my dreams. Failed the colour blindness test.

My future eventually took me through an IT career which was financially rewarding but the yearning for the skies never left me. OK I got a PPL followed by a simple aircraft eventually moving into aerobatics but still look up at those big shiny things and think “if only”.

I have 2 commercial pilot friends who like to join me occasionally and throw it around a bit so I get first hand earache at times regarding their lives but what impresses me most is their dedication to the job. They both seem to still regard it as a great privilege despite both having gone through divorce

I try to understand the auto vs. manual arguments but obviously not qualified to make a judgment but as a passenger my vote would be in favour of the pilot who could ultimately bring this heavy lump of metal safely onto terra firma when the “chips” are down.

It could be worse
 

"Give me some clouds to look at rather than a desk any day. "

Well said bmi.

Guys ( and girls) you are talking to a chap who till date regrets not getting good enough marks in school to qualify for flying school ( not that I could afford to even if I had)
And what did I become ? " Senior middle management" in one of my country's top 5 insurance companies after being " middle management" in an equally famous MF after being an equity analyst.
Even now when I hear the whine of a 737-X00 blazing across the skies I look up and mentally salute those magnificient men (and women) in their flying machines !
You are right. It could be worse.
You could be like me - an insurance salesman !
So chin up guys, you're doing a fantastic job keeping those birds ( and us) in the air and there are people like me who appreciate:D


Joles

Human touch
 

Seems to me hands on experience in the job wins every time over automatic brain disengaged mode, also in most professions that I can think of.

With respect to professional status , commercial pilots will retain the respect of lay people regardless of how they fly , because people generally appreciate the specialised job and the big responsibility that comes along with it.

Job satisfaction would be vastly improved with some direct contact with the passengers , what's clearly lacking is some positive feedback from the clients . Sadly don't know how that's possible in this day and age.

My background ; GA pilot :ok: and practising dentist :eek:

TACHO;
I ask them how safe their car (and they) would be if they "pushed the speed control button" in the driveway and left the car on it's own to drive downtown to work.

If speaking to a professional, say a lawyer, I suggest they send their own version of "autoflight", their legal secretarial staff (who after all, really do all the work, don't they?), in to do the actual criminal trial. After all, it should be easy when all the work is done for them, right?

If speaking with a doctor or a dentist, I bring up the notion of CAM - Computer Assisted Manufacturing, and suggest that if such machines can mill exquisitely detailed machine parts and weld cars together surely with sufficient sophistication (automation), these marvelous machines can open the patient up, follow the program that some desk-doctor has previously entered, R&R and then close?

And surely, with the same brilliant automatic technologies, any machine can drill and fill or in today's "preventative" mode, clean teeth according to standard programming of such tasks? Easy..., morceau d'gateau.

These are rough comparisons with some minor faults but are sufficient to make the point. If they border on cheekiness, so be it. The initial suggestion that our profession is "easy" is about as cheeky as you can get without the suggestion being an outright disrespectul one and appearing stupid.

:}Been there, done that.... a couple of years you say... oh heaven forbid. you tell me good job that doesnt require I fair bit of time comittment at the very least. There isnt a day when I wake up and think Sh!t I have to go to work, not one, never, even on my birthday. Monitoring job? get out of here. Dont knock it til you've tried it sonny.:}

PJ2 nice post btw, yeah will have to try that one. with regards to them being 'cheeky', would rather say downright rude. Nothing.... and I do mean nothing, gets my back up more than the unknowledgable making sweeping statements about subjects they know little about, hence my semi-rant above. := The point I was getting at more than anything is to question why, all of a sudden people have this blind faith that all we do is sit monitoring, granted when I am in the cruise We do just tend to sit and watch the autopilot, that said it is because it is a low stimulus phase of the flight where to fly straight and level would be too tiring. However like most computers, the autopilot is no different.... sh!t in...sh!t out... I tell the autopilot what I want it to do, not vice versa.

Tacho

Maybe i wasnt clear. I meant that perhaps soon a few years down the line in the job pilots may become nothing more than monitors, im not disrespecting (any) current pilots at all. Ive loved aviation all my life and think being a pilot would be very demanding job etc and i would hate to see the pilot become less and less important.

And of course time commitment is needed to get into any job, but its not measured in years. . . .

rhm

Missed the point
 

Maybe all you bored Jet Jockies missed the point along the way. If you wanted to become an airline pilot because you like flying then the best flying you will have ever done was on those singles and twins at flight school.

All the hands on stuff on big jets is actively discouraged these days.

I remember fresh new F/O's coming onto the 727 straight from a light twins.

All keen at first but once on line most wanted to move on to more "advanced " types. The 727 was an aeroplane you could pole around the sky and I told them to enjoy every minute of this classic airliner.

When I saw some of them later they agreed that the word pilot is stretching it a bit on modern equipment. More of an operator!!!

I do think that all jet pilots should be made to fly GA to remain qualified. Stick and rudder training never did anyone any harm!!


Coop & Bear

Why justify yourself to idiots?
 

Nah.....got fed up with trying to explain the finer intricacies of my job to buffoons when I realised most of them were either jealous or after some sort of reaction.

Now when I hear 'Your job is so easy. You get paid ££££££ to do :mad: all.' I just smile and tell them they are exactly right & thats why I love it! Beats sitting at a desk hoping your cartoon tie might impress the office temp :p
Usually gets the desired result :ok:

the bit I like about the original post is:
"social incompetence in any setting outside aviation. " Never has a truer word been spoken.

Man do I get pissed off talking about planes planes and more planes.

you sound like one of my skippers... you know the sort... "the good 'ol days on the trident" (and the inevitable trip down memory lane and the days without glass).

I love my job. Many have asked don't you get bored. Thats why I don't put the Telegraph away to TOD :)

Be a pilot, IT-guy or an engineer...

At the end of the day when you go to bed to get some sleep, if you are thinking about tomorrow and feel excited; just want to get up as soon as possible to get back to your work, then that is what I would call "working".

But if you go to sleep and never want to get up and go to work tomorrow, that is what I would call "earning".

A wise guy once said:

"When you are young you give up on your health to earn good, as you get older you give up on your earnings to live good."

And that just explains my thoughts; you can't get anything without giving up on something...

my 2 cents...:8