Could have been a good article promoting awareness about horrendous quality of life for most air crew but the editor just couldn't resist the horrible title and

Could have been a good article promoting awareness about horrendous quality of life for most air crew but the editor just couldn't resist the horrible title and cliches about dangerous humans interfering with autopilot systems. Automated flying isn't as cut and dry as is commonly thought, or as some of the other comments might indicate. Human error is definitely a problem and it's compounded by the realities of pilot working conditions which, unless you're a senior pilot at a major airline, means long hours and low pay. Pay (and most hours counted by regulations) is usually only counted from push-back to the gate and doesn't count hours pilots have to spend commuting, briefing, etc. This is difficult to change with the weight airlines have with the FAA and an industry where an unlimited supply of people who will suffer through anything to fly for a meager living, or in some cases even pay to work (see: "Shiny Jet Syndrome"). Autopilots fly and land extremely accurately [in the US at least, in visual conditions most landings are hand flown, and 'autolands' are done just enough as to keep up with periodic test regulation], but aren't feasible for a complete airline flight. I'm not convinced there is an automated flight management system with sufficient robustness to handle all the contingencies that have to be accounted for on a passenger flight. Drones are a completely different story. They're expendable, and get performance savings from not having life support. An airliner needs a pressurized cabin anyway, so you might as well shove a few pilots inside. And what if the guy remoting into the plane from North Dakota falls asleep? Or the network goes down, for that matter. How long before onboard autopilot figures that out, and has the plane going into survival mode looking for an airport to land (better hope they had great QA), and creates cascading delays throughout the airspace system. Or, hate to say it, another earthquake-tsunami occurs and takes out a couple airports, leaving dozens if not hundreds or airplanes looking for alternates within range. Now you're talking about a total integrated ATC automation. I'm just not convinced we're there yet, or it's coming any time soon. Leave the pilots be and give them some sensible rest/fatigue regulations instead. The best analogy I have seen is that autopilot isn't flying the plane any more than robots in a modern operating room perform surgery while the surgeon sits back and takes a nap. Maybe they'll write an article about how that might be safer for us tomorrow. Disclaimer: pilot. Also, I stole a lot of my information from Patrick Smith, who blogs frequently and crusades against common air travel misconceptions on http://www.askthepilot.com/ http://www.askthepilot.com/