[bambax]

Agreed! Learning how to fly alone is the easy part. The hard part is all the rest.

Also, this is inconsistent:

> large commercial airplane technology has developed to the point that the planes practically fly themselves

> We think stick and rudder skills are definitely a necessity for airline pilots flying hundreds of people on board for the extremely rare cases where emergencies do happen and many people's lives are at risk

So which is it? Do modern airplanes fly themselves or not? Pilots need to be able to fly. All pilots. Otherwise everyone's at risk.

Some of the worst recent accidents happenend when under-trained (AF 447) or misinformed (737 MAX) pilots didn't have a clear mental picture of what the airplane was doing.

It would seem this is solving for the wrong problem.

And the whole paragraph about "sexyness", aluding to sports cars and iPhones, seems very wrong to me. What makes flying sexy is the nerdiness, the skills involved, not shiny control surfaces.

[bigyikes]

There is no inconsistency.

The first quote is meant to highlight that commercial planes have autopilot while e.g. Cessnas do not.

The second quote emphasizes the importance of training despite autopilot.

There is no inconsistency in pointing out that commercial planes have auto pilot while acknowledging that it would be nice for non-commercial planes to also have auto pilot even though training is important.

[sokoloff]

Most GA aircraft used for travel have autopilots. Even most flight school aircraft used for IFR training have them, at least in my experience in the northeast.

[floam]

GA planes can’t land themselves, the autopilot they share in common is more like cruise control.

[wkat4242]

You can buy a full flight director autopilot on a G1000 Cessna 172.

The main reason it can't fully land itself is the lack of autothrottle and FADEC. But some GA planes do have even that. For example the Cirrus Vision (very light jet) is also a GA aircraft and has an emergency function where a passenger can trigger an emergency landing at the closest airport (as well as having a rescue parachute too)

[TimTheTinker]

> What makes flying sexy is the nerdiness, the skills involved, not shiny control surfaces.

Yaesu, Kenwood, and Icom 2-meter transceivers are not more desirable than an iPhone, and an iPhone generates far more economic value. Yes, some of the "wonder of radio" is lost when communicating over modern cell networks.

Similarly, sexy, easy to use planes and the resulting influx of new pilots could result in an "eternal september" for the community. "Flying cars" sounds amazing to most, but they do represent a death of what aviation was before.

These objections are largely emotional... progress happens.

[bozhark]

The airline design industry seriously needs some sexy

He ain’t wrong there

[calmbonsai]

Take a look at older designs from the '60s and all the Experimental aircraft.

It's not that the industry doesn't know or can't do "sexy" (e.g. Cirrus custom leather and carbon fiber interiors and paint colors such Mykonos Blue), but that anything related to the airframe, avionics, or powerplant MUST be FAA certified so that exponentially (I'm not kidding) adds to its cost and time-to-market.

With such high fixed costs and high liability, manufacturers are forced be very conservative to earn very slim margins.