Buddy Spike

Don't forget blue suit and red tie. Or is it red suit and blue tie? I can never remember.

Wait.. Did you just change your name AND your gender?

Copy. None. A little friendly advice if you ever do get a pilot slot, kid: Shut your man pleaser and listen more than you speak. You're not as funny as you think you are and no one cares what you have to say.

Ok, who the fuck are you? Go with quals to make that statement.

Uhh.. No.. Most have offices and operate in their districts when they're not in D.C. It's not a PCS.

Yes, yes, and yes. If you love flying, it's the best flying you'll ever do. You'll make friends that will last the rest of your life in pilot training. You'll learn to do things in airplanes you never thought possible (regardless of what track you take). You will serve your country. It will be hard, but in the end you will be better for it. Pitfalls: Listen instead of speaking. Everyone has an urge to talk, explain, question, etc. Don't do it. STFU, don't make excuses, own your mistakes and learn from them. Don't dip your pen in the company ink, or if you're a chick, don't get dipped in. Bad things happen to good people. Find a nice civilian that understands the profession. Some people make it work, most don't. It's just excess drama. Try to keep a positive attitude. Keep the big picture in mind and don't let the system get you down. But remember, life is too short to be miserable. When your commitment is up and it stops being fun, go Guard as fast as you can and do something in the real world. You'll be highly marketable.

Microburst?

It's the least fulfilling job I've ever had in that respect. But at some point, you have to hang up the letterman jacket, put on your Jehovah's witness uniform, and work to live instead of living to work.

Buy an airplane or stay in the ARC then, because the magenta line isn't really "flying."

When I went through 737 school, my upgrading captain had just come off the 787. He called himself the most expensive food tasting, bed making walk around guy in the world. He only flew twice in 90 days and most of his time in the airplane was during IOE. He was a regular at the school house for landing currency, and got so bored at home he took a part time job as a golf caddy to play free golf. I have no earthly idea why he ever left that to put in a bid for NB CA. His life sounded awesome to me.

It's not always a choice in the short term, but I agree. Just injecting a little reality into the green grass on the other side.

Unless you are a commuter on reserve. Then it's 18 plus the added bonus of hanging out with the flying public in coach on your days off.

That would be awesome. No crappy layovers. No droning on autopilot while listening to a Captain's sob story about his 3rd divorce. No dealing with the entitled cattle in the back. Just show up, fly a few takeoffs and landings, and go home to your super model wife and Cadillac-a-month paycheck. Where do I sign up?

Sounds like you're going for fourth.

Don't forget Administrator on this prestigious forum. I think that's the real top line bullet.

Holy shit dude, what? It's not that complicated. In the 73, flights over 90 minutes we send position report updates through ACARS. Let's say the pilot fails to do that because he's incapacitated. Aircraft (or dispatcher) decides no one is flying and proceeds to the destination or alternate and lands via CAT III. As for see and avoid and all the other nonsense, this is emergency situation and it does not have to be 100% foolproof (although ADS-B will help). The technology already exists. I don't know what the RQ-4 has, but I'm not talking about drones. I'm talking exclusively about single pilot ops and addressing your "but what if" questions. Like it or not, these jets are easily capable of single pilot operations in the very near future.

PIC is incapacitated + aircraft reaches clearance limit fix or fails to make an ACARS position report = autopilot continues either to destination or nearest suitable divert and flies a CAT III autoland to waiting Fire/Rescue. I'm not sure why you think this is such a logical leap. You do realize that 90% of airline flying is all autopilot these days, right? And the savings for a single pilot fleet are basically cutting the pilot labor force in half. I'm sure AA or DAL or UAL would love to keep flying the same volume while cutting their labor costs. As an airline guy, I don't like it either, but to say it's not realistic is a bit short-sighted IMO. FOs are just not as important as we'd like to believe.

Yes. You're alone on plenty of sorties and lots of cross countries in a fighter (the exact mission we're talking about here). Even single pilot in an airliner, are you alone with ACARS and modern comms to call back to ops/mx?

No system is foolproof. The determining factor will be risk mitigation for the insurance nerds to say that the cost savings of half the pilot labor force outweighs the risk. My point being that the technology exists right now to have a redundancy in place in case the single pilot is incapacitated. It's not a stretch by any means.

How is it any different than a single seat fighter or an eclipse jet or other single-pilot jet? We're talking point A to point B in an aircraft that's already 85% automated . CAT III Autoland already requires dual autopilot certification. It exists now.

Single pilot? Cat III Autoland is the contingency. You mentioned a specific scenario in which the pilot is incapacitated. The technology exists now, and in some cases, is just a matter of coding.

And people said we'd always need navs or engineers too. Ask any fighter guy if he really thinks it takes two people to fly these aircraft. Most of the "crew coordination" is just busy work. I'd guess that Class 1 Medical standards would also be higher for such an environment, but isn't that the point of the ground datalink/operator in the event of an emergency? Or don't you think the software could handle it? How many aircraft already have autoland installed? Hell, look at the A350. I checked out the sim a few weeks back and was talking to one of the instructors practicing. He told me that in the event of a cabin pressurization event, the aircraft can set a timer and if no response by the pilots, it will automatically descend (using known terrain in the area) down and fly depressurization routes. It's not a logical leap that if the single pilot were to forget to do an ACARS update within a reasonable amount of time, the aircraft could squawk 7700, send a message to the company, and fly a Cat III autoland to a full stop where fire trucks and EMS would be waiting. More and more, that human body up front is just becoming an insurance policy vs the primary manipulator of the controls.

You don't need two assholes up front as it is. Half of the problem on a 73 is the terrible PVI and Boeing's insistence that "Pilots have to flip switches" and panels from the 1960s. You can fly and manage the plane from the left seat. (Oh the horror, the pilot flying might actually have to spin his own heading bug or raise the gear by himself!) I don't get why you think that extra seat would have to be converted to anything. Lots of aircraft have two seats up front but can be flown single pilot. It's not about adding another $150 on the flight, but reducing the labor costs of that extra pilot - which airlines would love. As for being a single point of failure, I think that's like the need for Navigators and Flight engineers. The automation has overcome the need. I think it's a lot more likely that we'll see single pilot ops than full autonomous drone passenger ops, though. People need that warm-fuzzy that some human is in control up front.

http://www.psaairlines.com/careers/cadet-program/ I saw a few of them (couple hot chicks too) at the Museum interviewing in November. It's a real program.

Don't forget the Legacy / Rhino Hornet community.