Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers

65% (High Risk)

High Risk (61-80%): Jobs in this category face a significant threat from automation, as many of their tasks can be easily automated using current or near-future technologies.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

User poll

Sentiment

The following graph is included wherever there is a substantial amount of votes to render meaningful data. These visual representations display user poll results over time, providing a significant indication of sentiment trends.

Wages

Very high paid relative to other professions

In 2023, the median annual wage for 'Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers' was $219,140, or $105 per hour

'Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers' were paid 356.0% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $48,060

Wages over time

Comments

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Mason Braswelle (No chance) 23 days ago

The amount of things pilots have to do in order to ensure safe flights is astounding, not to mention that if something were to go wrong, what would the robot even do?

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Jeremy (Low) 1 month ago

Although the actual flight operation can be managed by AI, there is always the chance that the AI will fail at controlling the plane. Also there is always different situations for landing and takeoff, AI won't always be able to predict and maneuver the next move.

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rorik 3 months ago

consider that nothing manufactured by humans are perfect, with such a reality, you cannot assume that a robot/ai could do it's job flawlessly. there are ethical decisions in emergencies that must be made in the cockpit that an ai simply cannot do. furthermore, redundancy is a core value in aviation, and until human manufacturing is perfect (arguably wont ever be), a pilot will always be needed in the cockpit as a form of redundancy in case the manufactured systems malfunction.

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dan (Low) 3 months ago

ask yourself this question, how would you feel if the most beloved person to you was on a plane controlled by a robot that could be hacked, glitch, or malfunction

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Anonymous 4 months ago

The technology exists, but is it socially acceptable? It’s similar to how self driving cars have been a thing since the late 90s (couldn’t believe it either), and have become more mainstream in the last few years. Pilots will probably lose their jobs when people become comfortable flying in fully autonomous aircraft. However, emergencies can still happen, so it will probably take even longer for machines to take over.

1 1 Reply

bob (Highly likely) 5 months ago

1 word autopilot

1 4 Reply

L 3 months ago

Who said that an autopilot is more reliable than a human captain?

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Anonymous (Moderate) 5 months ago

Because pilots even today have a sizeable portion of the piloting during flight cut out for them with autopilot and it is already so trustworthy and efficient that they can sleep around a half hour while autopilot is on before being woken up by an alarm. Though this is balanced out by takeoff and landing which is much more tricky to automate and there is still the need for pilot input during emergencies

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LBFEBNL (Moderate) 5 months ago

If wanted, the aircraft manufacturer could easily develop a computer to follow all the instructions that pilots need to follow too, like taxiing, departure (still needs human help), cruising (already taken over by autopilot but still needs human help if an emergency happens), and landing.

That is for the pilot. For the co-pilot, it is highly likely because the A.I. doesn't need to do all the instructions; they just do half of it, and the rest the pilot will handle.

For the flight engineer, I think it has a lower chance of getting replaced by A.I. or some sort of computer.

But this is overall just my opinion.

0 1 Reply

p 4 months ago

flight engineers arent a thing anymore... they havent been very common since like 90s

1 0 Reply

James (Moderate) 5 months ago

Yeah the 64% chance scares my freind who is a pilot

0 1 Reply

criag (No chance) 5 months ago

There are many airlines that want soft, silky landings and not slammy, hard, ai- landings

1 0 Reply

Josh (Low) 5 months ago

It is a very complex job that requires concentration and multitasking of witch a robot can't di

1 0 Reply

1 4 months ago

although i agree a robot cant do everything a pilot has to do robots are still much better at multitasking than humans ever will be

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. (Low) 9 months ago

you will always need humans incase something happened. its possible but not in the next 20 years

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Luca (Highly likely) 12 months ago

Automated flight is already a well-established reality, the pilot on board serves only to reassure passengers who are not yet accustomed to the idea of a completely automated flight.

0 1 Reply

Oxtin Poss 6 months ago

We are no where near completely autonomous flight. We barely have self-driving cars, which are normally confined to certain parameters. There are so many variables and things that could go wrong, that it simply isn’t viable yet.

1 0 Reply

boo (Low) 12 months ago

Automation has the ability to control events in a certain context, and wouldn't be able to handle an emergency or malfunction, considering the usual age of aircraft computers.

0 0 Reply

Harry (Low) 1 year ago

Landing and take off needs accurate readings and a lot of man power we also need to understand the runway so it my not be

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KickinTyres (Low) 1 year ago

The public's perception of safety is intrinsically connected to having human pilots in the cockpit.

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Ayden (No chance) 1 year ago

New plane can fly it self but they still need pilot or co pilot to make sure nothing is going wrong especially when it is landing

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Alneez (Moderate) 1 year ago

Airbus Project Dragonfly

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C.L.M. (No chance) 1 year ago

It is not a technological issue, it is a sociological, legislative, and regulatory one.

People are too anxious to get on a plane without another human being up front with their life and safety on the line. This will be even more true as we move through the inevitable accidents during automation of ground transportation. At least that's what I heard as an FAA research scientist working on future drone airspace research projects.

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Captam (Highly likely) 1 year ago

The “need for the human touch“ when things “go wrong“ with a flight is arguably correct However this function can be provided perfectly adequately from a remote control room. The human does not need to be sitting in the cockpit. The ability to fly precision drone operarions from control rooms thousands of miles away proves this. Flights can be totally automated but when an abnormality occurs, the controllers （who oversee multiple flights）can be alerted, and intervene renotely if necessaey.

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AJ 3 months ago

Those are heavy assumptions that there is strong two way communication between the aircraft and the ground station controlling it. Not a lot of the areas that airplanes are flying over will be able to maintain a constant communication (such as war zones, the arctic, or the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean) and before you say GPS keep in mind it works by sending low bit data so that doesn’t exactly work well when complicated or heavy computing conditions exist. Plus if you can control it remotely so can someone else looking to cause trouble.

1 0 Reply