Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers
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Automation 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
Our visitors have voted they are unsure if this occupation will be automated. However, the automation risk level we have generated suggests a much higher chance of automation: 65% chance of automation.
What do you think the risk of automation is?
What is the likelihood that Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?
Sentiment
The following graph(s) are 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.
Sentiment over time (yearly)
Growth
The number of 'Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers' job openings is expected to rise 6.0% by 2032
Total employment, and estimated job openings
Updated projections are due 09-2023.
Wages
In 2022, the median annual wage for 'Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers' was $211,790, or $101 per hour
'Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers' were paid 357.3% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $46,310
Wages over time
Volume
As of 2022 there were 89,580 people employed as 'Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers' within the United States.
This represents around 0.06% of the employed workforce across the country
Put another way, around 1 in 1 thousand people are employed as 'Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers'.
Job description
Pilot and navigate the flight of fixed-wing aircraft, usually on scheduled air carrier routes, for the transport of passengers and cargo. Requires Federal Air Transport certificate and rating for specific aircraft type used. Includes regional, national, and international airline pilots and flight instructors of airline pilots.
SOC Code: 53-2011.00
Resources
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Comments
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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.
Complex decision making
Unknown and unforeseen circumstances requiring reactions not programmed
In addition, the ATC lines are done through phone or broadband, so integrating an AI would require a continent-wide overhaul in the infrastructure necessary to actually integrate the AI. This would be needed even if one that was commercially viable as a pilot were to start existing.
Furthermore, testing the AI would involve crashing planes, as well as making planes that had fully modified hardware to accommodate an AI. It's not impossible for certain, not by a long shot, but the steps to get there are noticeably less cost-efficient than just training more pilots.
So, it probably won't happen for a while.
I could see cargo aircraft being fully automated well before passenger flights. Modern aircraft are largely automated from a systems perspective. However, the decision-making, particularly during emergencies or edge cases (where information can be conflicting or confusing), is where human pilots are still definitely required.
I think the chance of passenger flights being fully automated within 20 years is slim.
In the event of an emergency, people trust in other people. Automation will happen to a degree with pilots, but it will require massively improved AI and other systems to be stress-tested extensively before the two-body system used today is replaced with a no-body system.
The cost of the technology at the beginning will also be really high, so it will take a while for it to become widely used after the price comes down.
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