I don't understand Howcome your bro making $250K/year with 16 years experience and pilots in the documentary making 10 bucks an hour. how is this huge jump in salary justified? I don't understand
Halfway through the vid, the lowest wage I've heard is $21/hour. Your talking about a brand new first officer hired by a contracted regional versus a captain for a large airline. What's so hard to understand? BTW, my bro doesn't have 16 years of experience. That's how long he's been at Southwest. He's 48 and he's been flying professionally since his early 20s.
As a computer programmer by profession I have worked with some incredible geniuses and some astounding morons, both directly and as contractors. I can honestly say that a pilot-less airplane controlled by computer with no human that can override instantly at a critical juncture scares the hell out of me. I will take an experienced, trained pilot over the sum output of the lowest bidding outsourcer in Pune or Tashkent anyday.
In the case of decade or two, the human might still be in the cockpit but won't be pulling in $250K a year. Computer will do all the flying and human will be the insurance policy for 'just in case' type of scenarios. Btw, actual pilots might want to correct me on this.....................but one source told me that in turbulence type situations, it is better to rely on the autopilot as the reaction time is much faster. So there goes the logic of human in the cockpit for the confidence of the passengers. An airline company having 600 big jets not paying $250K but $100K to its captains stands to save roughly $100M a year just in salaries. Also, one cannot compare airline flying to trading. Airliner flying is actually boring when seeing it from the mind of a trader. In trading, crash and near crash like scenario's happen everyday. If airline flying is the best job in the world then trading is the toughest job around.
Except when birds damage both engines and you have to land on the Hudson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549
'Except when birds damage both engines and you have to land on the Hudson.' In a decade or so, technology will catch upto such issues. I think USAF already has a fight plane named JSF-33 or X-33 something which is computer directed pilotless fighter.
A decade ago they thought the same thing...I seriously doubt they will have software sophisticated enough to handle "what-if" situations in 10-20 years but who knows you may be right..... of course at that point Skynet will have declared war on mankind and killed most of us so its a moot point.
aircraft with a capacity of 300 aren't flown by pilots who make $10/hr. can you stop making up comical shit like this? as for flying, there are two simple safety rules: 1. large aircraft (120 seaters and up) are flown by the most experienced pilots. they are safer than regionals 2. do not fly in bad weather!!!!!! this applies to all aircraft, but especially regionals where pilots are less experienced. modern aircraft are very reliable, unlike during the first few decades of passenger air transit where you had crashes due to mechnical problems all the time. these days, weather is a major factor in the majority of all accidents; mechanical problems and terrorism are secondary concerns.