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Would you choose a plane with a pilot or without a pilot if a plane without a pilot is 5% cheaper? 20% cheaper? 50% cheaper?

• vkou 6y ago
  Would you choose it if it were 0.5% cheaper? Keep in mind that when you have a human pilot on board, they ultimately make all decisions about safety. And they have skin in the game. They are the ones who push back if they do not feel confident in weather conditions, or in the mechanical state of the aircraft to fly it. Would you prefer that those decisions be made by beancounters in a corporate office, who are more concerned about not having to refund people's tickets, than getting the plane safely from one destination to the other? Compare the safety-obsession culture of commercial flight, versus, say surgeons - who, as a profession, aggressively push back on even trivial safety improvements - like checklists. If the surgeon were killed every time they made a serious surgical mistake, you'd probably see a much better safety culture in that profession.
• numpad0 6y ago
  Would an airline choose a plane without a pilot if it’s 10% more expensive but 0.5% more likely to operate predictably on schedule?