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Pilots are expensive to train, expensive to maintain in terms of salary and cost a lot afterwards with regards to pensions. I am sure airlines are doing everyt
by smackay 8y ago
Pilots are expensive to train, expensive to maintain in terms of salary and cost a lot afterwards with regards to pensions. I am sure airlines are doing everything they can to reduce these costs and as a result competence is suffering. It used to be the case that air force pilots retired to become commercial pilots. Now commercial pilots are trained straight out of high school. (I'm not sure this is entirely true but bear with me as it supports the point I want to make).
Airlines are the final customers of Boeing, Airbus, etc. I am sure they want as much automation on a plane as is possible to reduce the training requirements and so decrease the cost of having pilots on the balance sheet.
The problem I think is that the abstraction that is the modern flight deck is not quite up to the job of dealing with poorly trained pilots or pilots with little experience of unusual situations. That gap was nicely addressed by having military trained people in the cockpits where unusual situations are somewhat more "routine".
So what we are seeing is the mismatch of cost-constrained customers and the failings of technology in a situation where failures are less forgiving. It's the same story with automation that is being played out everywhere. The only difference, if you exclude x-ray machines, is that the impact is higher.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago> and cost a lot afterwards with regards to pensions I'm going to jump on this in particular; please don't go full late stage capitalism and make people feel guilty for a retirement plan they've invested part of their lifetime salaries into.
- smackay 8y agoYou misunderstand. I am not making a value judgement on the cost of pilots. I absolutely want somebody who is highly trained flying the plane. However whenever strikes hit airlines it's because of poorly paid flight crews so clearly the airlines are wringing costs out of their operations and safety is being compromised as a result - from scanning the comments here that point is not being made. Instead Boeing are being blamed for not delivering systems can can deal with incompetent pilots. Nobody is stopping to think why the problem is occurring in the first place.
- macintux 8y ago> Instead Boeing are being blamed for not delivering systems can can deal with incompetent pilots. That's not the impression I'm taking out of this discussion. It sounds like they're being blamed for not giving competent pilots the information they need to fly safely.
- andruby 8y agoAre you sure? According to https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/654/whats-the-typical-cost-and-its-breakdown-for-a-long-haul-commercial-flight https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/654/whats-the-t..., flight deck salary costs are about 1~2% of total flight costs