[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.

[stevepeg]

I think the GP comment you're replying to nailed the reason why:

> 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.

Highly-engineered tubes that fly 10km above the ground at very high speeds, have absolutely amazing reliability and long-term safety, and can navigate all over the world are, unsurprisingly, very expensive. But people still want to hop in one and pay less than a train ticket.

[mym1990]

United Airlines is posting anywhere from 15-30 billion in gross profit for each of the last 4 years, AA and Delta are on somewhat similar trajectories adjusted for size. The airlines going bust operate in the only space that they can be competitive in, which is the one with razor thin margins. You can guarantee that prices will never come down if there are only 3 major players in a $140 billion size domestic market.

[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?

[bombcar]

You can’t just jump into a 737 from your CFI hours on a 172; you still do need a type rating.

The required hours are a problem; the solution is not to go to one pilot but to go back to three, so the third pilot can build actual flight hours in type without issue.

[quickthrower2]

Hopefully a single pilot law change wouldn’t also mean this. Scary.

[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.

[rsj_hn]

> What would it take to drop flight prices 50%?

1. Free fuel. Fuel is the biggest cost of flights. For domestic flights, about half the ticket cost.

2. No taxes/government mandated fees (including fuel taxes). These are the second biggest cost, and for international flights, can easily be half the ticket price, but for domestic flights, about 20% of the ticket price.

3. Free planes. Planes are the third biggest cost.

4. Free administration. The Airline bureaucracy is the fourth biggest cost.

5. Free Stewardess labor. Fifth biggest cost.

6. Free Pilots.

[bombcar]

Reducing convenience - replace as many possible flights between city pairs with as few giant jumbos as possible. Instead of many many flights between LAX and CHI just have a few A380s in cattleclass.

Saves a bit on fuel and a bunch on other costs. But people would be unhappy about it.

[rsj_hn]

Larger planes are more efficient, but then ridership drops off when you make things less convenient so it's harder to fill the planes. I'm pretty sure the airlines are already maximizing this and are not optimizing for passenger convenience :)

[Ekaros]

What about airport slots and fees?

[rsj_hn]

I rolled that into mandatory fees, assuming the airport was owned by the government. I know there are for-profit private airports, but I was keeping things simple. And yes, airports have to be paid for, as do planes, labor, administration, and fuel :) But we are assuming magical powers here, or the ability to provide all of these services for half the cost.

[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.