I wouldn't get on one.

By definition!

That's a good one jj!

This is some weird stuff. If it's pilot humor, it's pretty lame. The next time a pilot asks you if the engine is running, tell him to take a look at the N1 indicator, or the N2 indicator....or the EGT indicator...or the fuel flow indicator.

Would you get in a driverless car? If yes why not a pilotless plane (assuming it had gone through very rigorous testing).

No.

Old man yells at cloud dot jpg

1) I'm so thrilled to get to the end and W0X0F still answering! Great thread, humorous, well-written replies. Props.

2) Thanks partly to this thread: my wife was booking a cruise recently. She asked whether it's safer to have a cabin fore or aft. Without missing a beat, I replied "aft." When asked why, I deadpanned "because the icebergs are up front."

3) It's been briefly mentioned in the last thousand posts, but what apps/IFE can I use to follow our track? I'm a geography nut, and I'd love to match the view to a map. Is using GPS on my phone not practical?

4) you guys got into a discussion of birdstrikes around post 4000 or so, but I never really got the answer that satisfied me. At what point is a birdstrike inconsequential? A common sparrow or dove? Something bigger like a seagull or goose? (Turkey? Ostrich?)

5) in my previous life in the air freight biz, the cargo manager (back when CVG was still a DL hub) told me that the priority for belly loading was: 1) US mail, 2) pax bags, 3) human remains, 4) NFO packages, 5) priority cargo, 6) standard cargo. True?

6) finally: why does my flight CVG-LAS take only an hour going there but takes seven hours coming back, when both are non-stop? (Last time we went with friends and one of them actually asked that )

As a former cargo guy I will try to answer #5.
Yes, that is correct not only for belly load but also ULD loads. Mail has top priority with one exception: SAM (space available military mail) has a lower priority.

7) what would happen if: you saw a UFO, while flying over the Bermuda Triangle, on September 11?

The US Navy is moving away from piloted planes: http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/17/84...drones-instead

Huge difference between adopting pilotless warplanes and pilotless passenger planes. The former would be a huge increase in safety even if an individual flight is much more accident prone while an increased accident rate for the latter would obviously be disastrous.

I've used FlightAware and I'm sure there are other apps out there that do the job.

It's going to depend on two factors: the size of the bird and where it hits. A wren impacting the wing leading edge isn't going to be a problem. A goose going in the engine might cause some issue. (If you can get an ostrich airborne, that would be a nightmare.)

I'm not at all familiar with cargo priorities, although I know that US mail leads the list. I see someone else (with experience) has chimed in on this.

I can't imagine where you came up with those times. The flight eastbound (LAS-CVG) is almost always going to be quicker than the flight westbound. Seven hours coming back? I think the actual flight time would be about half that. Maybe you're also including the time change? CVG is in the eastern time zone, so if the flight from LAS is four hours, you'll be getting in at a time seven hours later than the time you departed. Same for the flight to LAS; if the flight time is four hours, you'll arrive at a time that's only one hour later than the time you departed (but it's Pacific vs. Eastern time),

I know mail is most important to the bottom-line, but I'll say that (at least at my company) from the crew perspective an HR is always going to ride first.

Endnote:I have witnessed cases of a body actually being "late to its own funeral".

There is no doubt that the technology for pilotless planes exists, and the military has made extensive use of drones, but SenorKeed points out an important distinction.

Everything is great when the flight goes well. What happens when there's an emergency? For military warplanes, we accept some level of attrition as a cost of warfare/defense, and with drones we've removed the human being so that any loss is limited to the airframe itself.

With passenger flights, you can't accept this attrition and I certainly don't want to be on a pilotless plane when things go south, as they do every day in this country in minor situations that never make the news. Why? Because the humans on board exercised skill and judgment in dealing with the issue.

Look at Sully's landing on the Hudson. What would have been the outcome if that had been a pilotless airplane?

Sorry W0X0F, I guess the joke didn't translate well. The 1 hour and 7 hour times were accounting for the time zone differences. I was having fun with our friend that didn't account for that. The flights are approximately four hours each way.

LOL!! No, I should have realized you were kidding...I was just in a literal frame of mind when I was typing that response.

(feeling a little dumb right now)

Just to play devil's advocate, you could use a similar argument for accidents involving pilot error, or even worse, deliberate crashes.

With regard to Sully's landing, it seems obvious that at this point the plane is designed to be piloted in such an instance. Were the decision to be made to go pilotless they would surely have some code in place that would kick in in case the engines fail.

If you are paired with a FO that maybe you don't particularly like, does that make for a long flight and/or trip? I have a friend that's a pilot for one of the majors and he said the pilot groups from the merged airlines don't get along and when he flies with one of them, the conversation is kept to business only. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Do the Delta and former Northwest pilots stick together for trips?

Surely.

The Delta/Northwest merger has got to be one of the best in aviation history, in terms of minimum friction and rancor. The USAirways/America West merger has probably been one of the worst. There is clear animosity between the two groups and they never were integrated. Now that it's all part of American, I can't imagine how those problems just go away. (I guess the Sky Nazis* will just force them into line.)

But to get to your first question: yes, it can be a long trip if there is friction in the cockpit. I've experienced that on only a handful of occasions in all of my airline flying. In those cases, conversation is at a minimum and we fall back on SOP.


*"Sky Nazis" is not my creation; it's long been the industry appellation for American.

I don't think that's a given at all.

Do you prefer the red-eye when flying several time zones west to east? I do as a passenger, because it gets me an extra day in Vegas without an extra day's hotel cost (I'm not balla enough for comped, only discounted, rooms).

How do you feel about the red-eye when working?

Best cure I know of for jetlag is to sleep outside. Pitch a hammock in the back yard, on the roof, whatever, just sleep outside for a day or two and you're golden.

American took over Useless/America Worst? I don't fly much these days and I'm behind the curve a bit.