I’m not especially concerned as I’ve had no reason to fly commercial for yours, and probably won’t for more years. But… the idea certainly doesn’t appeal to me anyway.
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Remote piloting coming!
I’m amazed by the lack of creative thinking by business people. They have a few simple tools in their box – cut employees (pay, benefits), and don’t pay taxes (while enjoying the benefits and infrastructure that taxes provide). If these business people are so great, why can’t they find a way to “Make it Work” or “Find a Solution” – as they tell their employees to do. They don’t have enough pilots in the pipeline? Maybe they should take some responsibility in helping that pipeline. High operating costs/ Maybe they need some new creative business ideas to make airlines more cost-effective. I have really come to believe that business people aren’t that smart or creative, except when it comes to enriching themselves.
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The problem with costly pilots is very similar to the problem with costly doctors.
In a capitalist economy, If you place an individual in a mission-critical position they will demand more and more compensation until they threaten to break the mission due to costs.
It’s why we in the US pay so much for health care. And NO… I am not a socialist, I’m just exposing the problem for what it is.
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I am not a fan of the proposal…I like redundancy in critical positions. Isn’t this just a function of all of the buyouts of pilots by the airlines during Covid ?
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But compensation of executives doesn’t affect costs?
I’d also be interested in companies that failed because workers demanded higher compensation. Sincerely asking, since I’m not a business person.
My point in my previous post is that business people and the capitalist model seek to enrich shareholders/owners/executives, and pass costs of their business onto consumers / taxpayers – in pollution, disposal of goods, low pay/no benefits requiring the govt or charities to help people, and more if I sat and thought about it. There doesn’t seem to be any innovation in business thinking other than ways to enrich executives, avoid taxes, monopolize, take over, undercompensate workers, send jobs overseas. Why is there no creative thinking about how to make business sustainable, business as a part of the community (instead of just taking tax breaks and running a United Way campaign), …
Science, technology, the arts have lots of creative thinking and things change (some good some bad). But business is just about giving money to the already-wealthy and screw the workers, the community, the country, the environment.
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When remote pilots come, so will remote passengers!
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I kinda feel the same way concerning self-driving autos. Driving assistance is fine, but complete automation strains my credulity.
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Speaking of
Our founding fathers took a chance when they settled on our then-unique form of government, a democratic republic.
The advantage of it is that it OFFERS a balance of satisfying personal self-interests while applying agreed-upon limits for the good of the whole.
The disadvantage is that success of the system REQUIRES a balance of satisfying personal self-interests while applying agreed-upon limits for the good of the whole.
Maintaining that balance has always been a challenge because the center of gravity is always teetering to one side or the other. If you start messing with the fundamentals that underpin the machinery responsible for that balance you endanger the entire system. Balance requires cooperation, and cooperation requires compromise. Those things have been pretty hard to find lately.
I think the flood of information, amplified, contorted, sliced and diced via the Internet has brought us to a point where that balance between personal and community interests might fail
I don’t have an opinion on one or two pilots in the cockpit because it depends on a lot of variables. Some airplanes are relatively simple to operate while others might be many times more complex.
An interesting side note on the pilot/copilot relationship is that who is in charge and what happens in an emergency varies a lot depending on where the people piloting the airplane come from. Their cultural backgrounds can make a huge difference in an emergency.
American copilots are trained to take over the controls if they decide the pilot is wrong about a life-threatening decision. Many cockpit crews from other cultural backgrounds would never question nor argue with the pilot-in-command regardless of the situation, negating part of the advantage of having a co-pilot at all.
In some of the incidents of suicidal pilots-in-command nose-diving their aircraft into the ground the flight recorder data showed no attempt was made by the copilot to intervene. So, in some cases, the advantage of having someone sit in the right seat doesn’t exist anyway.
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It’s not only doctors there is so much drag and inefficiency from insurance companies. And our drug prices subsidize world drug R&D just like we carry NATO and Pacific Rim military security. It happens because executives and politicians get paid for it to happen
People making lots of money attracts people wanting some of it for themselves.
I have known specialty doctors who make obscene amounts of money, in excess of $1M a year, because the can deliver scarce medical care. For their patients it is often a matter of life and death. For the the doctors in question it is a matter of providing critical care to the highest bidders.
When others observe this cash-rich environment they want to get their share, and the thing blossoms into a still larger cash feeding frenzy. The ones at the feeding trough represent industries like pharmaceuticals, medical equipment mfgrs, insurance, legal, etc.as well as investors and administrators.
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Yes, we live in a democratic republic. = political system
But the business practices are capitalism, not democracy/republic. = economic system
Must a democratic/republic be capitalistic? Would citizens vote on or agree that companies pursuing the bottom line by polluting is OK?
The US when founded happened to be a new country with land and resources to exploit, hence capitalism evolved.
But our political system was designed and agreed upon.
The US is not a capitalistic country. It is, in general terms, a free country. The role of government is to provide an environment conducive to free trade activity among it’s people.
As such US commerce consists of varying models of commercial enterprises to make trade efficient, convenient and effective while not impinging on the rights of any citizen. The role of government is not to dictate the business models used to facilitate commerce, it is to ensure the rights of all citizens are not trampled upon by others.
The reason that so many private enterprises have settled on the capitalist model is because it has proven to be the best at meeting the needs of the people who support that business model. It’s kinda like Darwin’s law of Natural Selection.
The rub comes when the for-profit provider occupies an exclusive niche of critical need which strains the resources of the person with that critical, and possibly life-saving need.
We as a people of a free country have to continually adjust that balance of the exercise of a freedom vs the exposure of infringing on the rights of others.
If one citizen spends all of their resources and multiple years of their life in the discovery a life-saving cure, should the government demand they share it with their fellow citizens at a monetary loss? Should the government step in and force them to do so?
Money is substitute for human endeavor, it is compensation for human work, is it fair to deprive the person responsible for providing a life-saving product or service compensation for their work? What example will that make for the next the future Jonas Salk or Orville & Wilbur Wright?
We control the government, and we must decide.
Glad I’m about at the end of my flying days.