Salon :: Tech & Business

Ask the Pilot: You really think planes can fly themselves? Talk to somebody who flies for a living and has endured an airline training program

"Yeah, but these planes, they just fly themselves." <P>The next time I hear that -- and I hear it a lot -- he or she is getting a smack. <P>There's this commonly held, infernally irritating notion that cockpit automation has rendered the airline pilot all but redundant. We just sit up there, the mythology goes, reading the paper and talking about our investments, keeping an occasional eye on things "just in case," while the plane's high-tech gizmos do the actual work. As I overheard one smart-aleck passenger explaining to his seatmate, "You could train a monkey to do it." <P>Not quite. Admittedly, the monkeys-as-pilots prospect would have its benefits, such as better public address announcements and possible improvement of this column. Alas, technology still has a long, long way to go. <p>...</p><img src="http://feeds.salon.com/~r/salon/tech/~4/147547972" height="1" width="1"/>

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