[gkiely]

I take a contrarian opinion on this, the price of a flight in the US outside of major hubs is egregious. Especially during peak times or holidays.

What is the long term plan here? Will there still be duo pilots in 2040? 2060?

Surely long term it will be automated with remote supervision/override and a cabin crew who have basic training to emergency land.

Do the testing on mail delivery, get it good enough, introduce it into domestic with pilots still present, slowly phase out pilots to be remote.

I would fly domestic automated flights if the automation was proven as safe, the above conditions were met, and the price was 40-50% cheaper.

I don’t see why a company hasn’t gone all in on this yet, but would love to hear why it’s a dumb idea/not feasible.

* Edit: based off this link it seems that staffing is only 12% of costs which would not address my criteria of significantly cheaper flights. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33770/how-much-...

[mym1990]

You're never going to see the price of airline tickets fall by 50% due to eliminating pilots, or likely any other reason. The companies will just use the increased margins to pad their own pockets while probably raising prices under the guise of innovation or other additional features.

With the exception of a few markets that have price volatility, deflation is a really rare thing. What people get instead are products that are packed with either more performance or more features(whether useful or not) and that is justification for the slight price increases that we see from year to year.

[sebzim4500]

If airlines are so good at padding their own pockets why do they keep going bust? The whole industry is running paper thin margins.

[rsj_hn]

> I would fly domestic automated flights if the automation was proven as safe, the above conditions were met, and the price was 40-50% cheaper.

You believe pilot salaries are 40-50% of airline ticket prices? A pilot makes ~130K per year and flies, say, 2 trips a day, so ~500 trips a year. So on a plane with 200 people, they are each paying about $1.30 per pilot. Two pilots, round it up to $5 per trip. That's how much you'd save if the automation system was free.

But, hey, I'd also fly an automated flight that was proven safe for a 50% discount. Even a manual flight.

[V99]

Experienced captains at the major ("legacy") airlines make considerably more than you think. Up to ~$350 per hour (plus benefits, retirement, etc.)

On the other hand, salaries are VERY back-loaded towards the end of their career. A first-year first officer ("copilot") is maybe $90/hr. And if you switch employers, you start all over again at the bottom of the ladder. A strange world compared to hopping around tech companies like most of us here are familiar with.

Also pilots do not work 40hrs/week, and the more common airframe variants are maybe 150 seats on average. Those all somewhat cancel out, but it's probably more like double your estimate. Still not a huge fraction of ticket price.

Part of the problem with a single pilot is how a new person gets the experience in the real world of big boy planes. You need 1500 hours of flight time before airlines will hire you. New pilots often get most of those hours as CFI's tooling around teaching others how to fly a 4-seat Cessna 172. Ready to get in a 737 with them at hour 1501?

[gkiely]

I didn’t phrase this well, good call out.

Now that I’ve thought about it what I’m actually trying to ask is…

What would it take to drop flight prices 50%?

Automated flights, a change in fuel technology, 0 marketing spend, reduced maintenance?

More specifically, what is the bare bones cost to transport a human from point a to b, safely, in the same or less time it takes a flight.

[meibo]

The 737 MAX crashes were in 2019. These companies don't have our safety as a top priority anymore and things being "proven safe" obviously is not something that can be held high. I don't see how I could trust an automated flight, if even the biggest aircraft producer in the world cannot make automated systems that won't kill 200 people in one go, in a matter of minutes, in 2019, without the pilot's knowledge.

[nanidin]

Fuel is responsible for most of the cost of a flight.