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The price of a plane/train is astronomical compared to what you have to pay for a pilot. I mean, you could literally buy a pilot for a millenia for the price of
by sannee 9y ago
The price of a plane/train is astronomical compared to what you have to pay for a pilot. I mean, you could literally buy a pilot for a millenia for the price of a jetliner (100M$ for jetliner / 100k$/year for pilot). There just isn't a very large economical incentive to automate that job out.
- ceejayoz 9y agoIt's not one pilot, though. It's two pilots, times two shifts a day, plus some extras to cover vacation, sickness, etc. There was enough pressure to engineer away flight engineers, navigators, and radio operators in cockpits. I wouldn't expect them to pass on potential savings in the low-margin world of airlines.
- throwawayjava 9y agoAnd still, the pilot portion of the cost of operation for planes is in the single digits. You barely scrape into the double digits (maybe 20% MAX, closer to 10 I think) if you count all labor.
- ceejayoz 9y agohttp://www.cnn.com/travel/article/how-airlines-make-less-than-6/index.html http://www.cnn.com/travel/article/how-airlines-make-less-tha... > "With a net profit margin of just 2.4%, airlines only retain $5.42 per passenger carried," said Tony Tyler CEO of International Air Transport Association (IATA) at the group's 70th AGM in Doha, Qatar. I suspect they're interested in single-digit cost reductions.
- btian 9y agoAirlines will kill to get another 10% in margin.
- throwawayjava 9y agoSo are flight attendants impossible to automate/do without? Or are there perhaps other forces -- beyond technical ones -- keeping humans in the plane?
- ghaff 9y agoAFAIK, the FAA requires a certain number of flight attendants for safety reasons.
- throwawayjava 9y agoRight, that's my point.