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Freelance Pilots

romansnitko.com

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Re: Freelance Pilots

#21

Post by resu_nimda »

This makes little to no sense. Flight schedules are worked out months in advance, it's a carefully planned system where many pilots fly particular routes only, and often back and forth. There's no way it could work with pilots signing up for arbitrary flights to whatever destinations mere hours before takeoff, unless there was a huge surplus of pilots waiting at all airports who are willing to constantly go to random places and have no certainty about where they might be tomorrow. It would be massively inefficient. I doubt any current pilots have unplanned 15 hour downtimes because they have to wait around for the right flight to come along. I just don't believe that many pilots want to bounce around randomly, never knowing what's happening beyond the next flight. The article also seems to ignore the existence of short domestic flights.

Passengers more freedom in deciding what's safe for them

This seems to be creating a problem where one doesn't exist. Today most people accept that any pilot on an established airline will be considered safe, and you don't have to give it any more thought. I don't think any airline will want to advertise varying levels of safety...

And yeah the Bitcoin product placement seems totally unnecessary.

Re: Freelance Pilots

#22

Post by ubernostrum »

throwaway_exer wrote: post #16
sneak wrote: post #4

"Passengers more freedom in deciding what's safe for them" This makes it seem like reasonable defaults are absent; "safe for them" is a one-size-fits-all when we are talking about air travel.

The FAA has a policy of "one safety standard for all airlines" for passenger flights. Obviously that's nonsense, as regional and major airlines have totally different resources. I don't fly regionals, and I tell my family not to. Before August 2015, regionals used low-hour pilots sleeping at the airport, resulting in the Colgan accident. After August 2015 (post-Colgan), Congress increased pilot experience requirement…

Well, the other thing affecting the regionals is that while lots of people have the skills to be pilots and many even have the training, there are increasingly few who have the skills and training and are willing to put up with the wages and conditions of the regionals. And since the regionals are the only way to get funneled into the mainline structure of the big US carriers, we get the much-discussed "pilot shortage".

Re: Freelance Pilots

#23

Post by throwaway_exer »

ubernostrum wrote: post #22
throwaway_exer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FAA has a policy of "one safety standard for all airlines" for passenger flights. Obviously that's nonsense, as regional and major airlines have totally different resources. I don't fly regionals, and I tell my family not to. Before August 2015, regionals used low-hour pilots sleeping at the airport, resulting in the Colgan accident. After August 2015 (post-Colgan), Congress increased pilot experience requirement…

Well, the other thing affecting the regionals is that while lots of people have the skills to be pilots and many even have the training, there are increasingly few who have the skills and training and are willing to put up with the wages and conditions of the regionals . And since the regionals are the only way to get funneled into the mainline structure of the big US carriers, we get the much-discussed "pilot shorta…

If by "increasingly few" you mean "virtually none" in 2016, then you're correct.

Re: Freelance Pilots

#24

Post by mikeash »

snitko wrote: post #17
sneak wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing individuals to adjust the safety levers means more people will die, because the vast majority of individuals who use air travel are not qualified or informed enough to make good decisions about these things. More people will die unnecessarily than under the current system.

People don't need to make those decisions. Currently, safety decisions are made by the government, which really doesn't have any competition and thus is not incentivized to improve its set of regulations. If you had 2-3 companies providing market review for the passengers, I'm pretty sure the situation would improve, not deteriorate. Perhaps some regulations simply don't make any sense and do not improve safety, but…

Airline safety is currently in a state where it is nearly indistinguishable from perfect. Accident rates are so low that it's no longer possible to put an accurate number on the risk of taking a flight. And all of this has been done while keeping ticket prices at extremely low levels. It would be remarkable for any change to this to result in an improvement, since there's almost nowhere to go but down.

Re: Freelance Pilots

#25

Post by minimuffins »

Imagine how big the reserve army of pilots would have to be for this to work! Like half the world would have to be pilots. They'd make five bucks a flight.

Now imagine something better: Universal Basic Income.

Re: Freelance Pilots

#26

Post by Justin_K »

I have my certificate and know many career pilots. I can for aure say that pilots want a schedule more than anything. When they're on the road so much all they look forward to is getting home. Leaving that up to the mercy of a free market wouldn't work for a majority of career pilots. Many young pilots do charters and it's basically slave labor like this... The charter co's will only fly the jet home if the leg is paid for. So these guys end up spending a lot of time doing nothing while they wait for new legs to be booked. And those legs will turn into many stops before coming home. It's grueling work but pilots do it to build a lot of hours. Number one complaint is not knowing when they're going home.

Re: Freelance Pilots

#28

Post by partisan »

Uber for pilots! The next big unicorn!

I do think that pilots are commoditized, but not to the extent that they are interchangeable in this manner. The industry is way too heavily regulated for this to ever work, and for good reason.

Honestly, well before something like this would come to pass, there will be whole fleets of autonomous planes in the air, thereby avoiding this scenario altogether.

Re: Freelance Pilots

#29

Post by rdl »

I thought this was going to be a counterpoint about "so, pilots don't fly this way -- why should developers?" or something.

Re: Freelance Pilots

#30

Post by JamilD »

throwaway_exer wrote: post #18

The article was written by somebody who knows very little about airlines: - an airline has to have pilots at the gate on time, guaranteed - each airline has its own operating rules and checklists - planes and airports have unique combinations of Cat III landings - airline pilots are route-checked. they don't fly random routes. - most major airlines have unions, so freelancers are not allowed. However, he could be des…

To be fair, the author addresses some of these points at the end:

> The only two reasons this system is not widespread now are regulations and unions. I'm more than convinced had regulations allowed for such a system and had not the unions had so much power, you'd see this happening already.

…… of course, he's ignoring the fact that many of these regulations are there for very good reason.

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