When will AI make pilots obsolete or less critical?

[BillytheKid]

Hello all,
I’m considering entering flight school, but I’m still on the fence. I’m not yet 20, and I’m trying to assess whether the significant cost of flight training is a sound investment given rapid advances in AI—particularly the prospect of AGI.

We already see autonomous systems in other transportation sectors, and some experts suggest major disruption could occur within the next 5 years, with many saying sooner. With that in mind, I’m hoping to get perspectives from those already in the industry.

My questions are:

Is pursuing flight training still a reasonable long-term career choice given current and projected developments in AI?

Realistically, how far away is AI from becoming a major operational factor in airline cockpits?

Could airlines use advances in AI or automation as leverage in pilot contract negotiations?

More broadly, what do you see as the future of the pilot profession over the next 20–30 years?

Thanks in advance for any insight or experience you’re willing to share.

[cdnavater]

This is what I asked ChatGPT,

Are we closer to single pilot airliners or pilotless than two years ago?

“Short answer: we’re closer to increased automation and pilot-assistance systems than we were two years ago—but we aren’t much closer to commercial airliners flying with just one pilot, and fully pilotless commercial airliners remain a long-term future prospect rather than something imminent

How this compares to two years ago
Progress has been made in automation technology, regulatory study, and prototype autonomous vehicles. However:
Single-pilot commercial passenger flights are not significantly closer to reality than they were two years ago; regulators still haven’t set a timeline.
Fully pilotless commercial airliners (no pilots onboard) remain far off, with most experts and regulatory roadmaps pointing to decades, not years”


Pretty interesting read on advancements and some of the current capabilities but the bottom line is predictions seem to be further into the future than when you asked the same question a little over a year ago.
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/featu ... hatgpt.com

Curious, since you’re almost 20 now, what have you been studying in the meantime?

[digits_]

Autonomous airplanes already exist. The technology is there. Next step is to convince governments and the public that it's safe, and possibly optimize the ATC systems to deal with them. I would guess this will take at least 20 years. And we already have 60 year old planes flying around today.

The buzzword "AI" will have absolutely nothing to do with this.
Once you're willing to bet your life that chatgpt will give you 1000 correct answers in a row, we can talk about that again. The current "AI" will not improve much further than what you see today. It will never be in control of an aircraft. Never.

Next generations? Possibly, but also completely unnecessary. You don't need it to control aircraft or make them land. All this already exists.

[cdnavater]

Autonomous airplanes already exist. The technology is there. Next step is to convince governments and the public that it's safe, and possibly optimize the ATC systems to deal with them. I would guess this will take at least 20 years. And we already have 60 year old planes flying around today.

The buzzword "AI" will have absolutely nothing to do with this.
Once you're willing to bet your life that chatgpt will give you 1000 correct answers in a row, we can talk about that again. The current "AI" will not improve much further than what you see today. It will never be in control of an aircraft. Never.

Next generations? Possibly, but also completely unnecessary. You don't need it to control aircraft or make them land. All this already exists.

You should read the article I posted, it seems to imply that AI will be required, the autonomous aircraft can only deal with pre programmed responses, when x happens do y kind of thing.
What will the automation do when the ILS is off the air and solar flares knock out GPS signals, I have had two separate instances this past week where SBAS was not available for the entire flight.
Will it happen, I would say it’s a certainty but widely used with passengers, I think more likely 40 years from now it will be half of the airplanes flying around.
Some carrier will launch with older aircraft and charge a little more for having two pilots and all the 60 year old recently retired will happily pay for that!
Edit;
I should proof read a little better, the article I posted was actually from before the original poster asked this question the first time, I’m going to search more up to date information

[cdnavater]

Found some more recent information, I found this interesting and almost possibly the reason it might never be common.

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-7590/6/1/3

“with potential 10–15% operational cost savings offset by certification, cybersecurity, and infrastructure expenditures”

In other words no real cost advantage to get rid of the pilots!

[digits_]

Autonomous airplanes already exist. The technology is there. Next step is to convince governments and the public that it's safe, and possibly optimize the ATC systems to deal with them. I would guess this will take at least 20 years. And we already have 60 year old planes flying around today.

The buzzword "AI" will have absolutely nothing to do with this.
Once you're willing to bet your life that chatgpt will give you 1000 correct answers in a row, we can talk about that again. The current "AI" will not improve much further than what you see today. It will never be in control of an aircraft. Never.

Next generations? Possibly, but also completely unnecessary. You don't need it to control aircraft or make them land. All this already exists.

You should read the article I posted, it seems to imply that AI will be required, the autonomous aircraft can only deal with pre programmed responses, when x happens do y kind of thing.
What will the automation do when the ILS is off the air and solar flares knock out GPS signals, I have had two separate instances this past week where SBAS was not available for the entire flight.
Will it happen, I would say it’s a certainty but widely used with passengers, I think more likely 40 years from now it will be half of the airplanes flying around.
Some carrier will launch with older aircraft and charge a little more for having two pilots and all the 60 year old recently retired will happily pay for that!
Edit;
I should proof read a little better, the article I posted was actually from before the original poster asked this question the first time, I’m going to search more up to date information

The amount of inputs in airplane systems is relatively limited. Gps, ils, ins, flight insturments,.. you don't need AI to deal with hypothetical obscure failures. The amount of possible combined failures is limited.

[digits_]

Found some more recent information, I found this interesting and almost possibly the reason it might never be common.

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-7590/6/1/3

“with potential 10–15% operational cost savings offset by certification, cybersecurity, and infrastructure expenditures”

In other words no real cost advantage to get rid of the pilots!

That sounds absolutely plausible. Pilots can also fly broken planes, autonomous planes likely won't leave the ground unless perfect.

[Flight94]

The fact that the plane you train on will likely be equipped with a carburetor and magnetos should give you an idea as to the speed at which aviation adopts technology.

You'll be ok.

[CGFCK]

Hello,

I’ll offer a perspective that’s probably less comforting than what you’ll hear from people already invested in the profession.. but I think it’s important to be honest, especially given your age and the cost of entry.

1. Is flight training a sound long-term investment given AI and AGI?

If I were under 20 today, I would be very cautious about committing six figures and a decade of my life to a career whose core function—monitoring, decision-making, and system management—is exactly what AI is advancing toward most rapidly.

Aviation is often described as “too complex” or “too safety-critical” for AI. But that same argument was made about driving, surgery, financial markets, and industrial control systems—all of which are already seeing significant automation replacing human roles, not just assisting them.

We already have:
- Driverless taxis operating in dense, chaotic urban environments with unpredictable pedestrians, weather, and human behavior.

- Autonomous cargo operations in mining, shipping ports, and logistics hubs.

- AI copilots in military aviation performing sensor fusion, threat prioritization, and tactical decision-making faster than humans.

Commercial aviation won’t be immune simply because it’s regulated. Regulation historically lags technology—it doesn’t stop it.

2. How far away is AI from being a major operational factor in cockpits?

AI is already a major operational factor—it’s just framed as “automation” today.
The key misunderstanding is assuming progress will be linear. It won’t be.

Once AI systems can:
- perceive (vision, radar, LIDAR equivalents),
- model outcomes probabilistically,
- and improve through self-training and simulation,
progress accelerates non-linearly. That’s the part most people underestimate.

Driverless taxis already operate in environments far more dynamic than cruise flight, approach, or even most abnormal airline scenarios. Yes, aviation has edge cases—but AI excels at edge-case recall once trained at scale.

Within 10 years, it is very realistic to expect:
- Single-pilot airline operations as a baseline
- AI systems performing real-time monitoring, fault diagnosis, and decision support
- Human pilots increasingly acting as system supervisors, not operators
- Once that line is crossed, the long-term trajectory is obvious.

3. Will airlines use AI as leverage in contract negotiations?

Absolutely...and they already are, implicitly.
Corporations don’t need full pilot replacement to gain leverage. They only need reduced staffing requirements,
expanded duty limits “because AI reduces workload,”
or regulatory permission for smaller crews.

This has happened before in other industries:
- Railroads used automation to eliminate conductors.
- Shipping reduced crews from dozens to a handful.
- Call centers replaced entire departments with AI in under five years.
- Warehousing and logistics replaced union labor with robotics at scale.

From a corporate standpoint, AI is a wet dream scenario: lower labor costs, fewer collective bargaining constraints, and greater operational flexibility. There is no reason to believe airlines are philosophically different.

[digits_]

AI is already a major operational factor—it’s just framed as “automation” today.

No, these are 2 extremely different concepts. With automation X happens and Y will be executed, decided within milli or microseconds.

With (what we refer to today as) AI when X happens, sometimes Y will happen, sometimes Z will happen and sometimes something completely random. And it takes much longer to come up with a solution.

You need 'AI' to recognize patterns and other real life data, such as with driving cars dealing with pedestrians and obstacles. Airplanes are designed to be flown by numbers (IFR procedues). You don't need the pattern recognition, you don't need AI for that.

[5degrees]

Hello,

I’ll offer a perspective that’s probably less comforting than what you’ll hear from people already invested in the profession.. but I think it’s important to be honest, especially given your age and the cost of entry.

1. Is flight training a sound long-term investment given AI and AGI?

If I were under 20 today, I would be very cautious about committing six figures and a decade of my life to a career whose core function—monitoring, decision-making, and system management—is exactly what AI is advancing toward most rapidly.

Aviation is often described as “too complex” or “too safety-critical” for AI. But that same argument was made about driving, surgery, financial markets, and industrial control systems—all of which are already seeing significant automation replacing human roles, not just assisting them.

We already have:
- Driverless taxis operating in dense, chaotic urban environments with unpredictable pedestrians, weather, and human behavior.

- Autonomous cargo operations in mining, shipping ports, and logistics hubs.

- AI copilots in military aviation performing sensor fusion, threat prioritization, and tactical decision-making faster than humans.

Commercial aviation won’t be immune simply because it’s regulated. Regulation historically lags technology—it doesn’t stop it.

2. How far away is AI from being a major operational factor in cockpits?

AI is already a major operational factor—it’s just framed as “automation” today.
The key misunderstanding is assuming progress will be linear. It won’t be.

Once AI systems can:
- perceive (vision, radar, LIDAR equivalents),
- model outcomes probabilistically,
- and improve through self-training and simulation,
progress accelerates non-linearly. That’s the part most people underestimate.

Driverless taxis already operate in environments far more dynamic than cruise flight, approach, or even most abnormal airline scenarios. Yes, aviation has edge cases—but AI excels at edge-case recall once trained at scale.

Within 10 years, it is very realistic to expect:
- Single-pilot airline operations as a baseline
- AI systems performing real-time monitoring, fault diagnosis, and decision support
- Human pilots increasingly acting as system supervisors, not operators
- Once that line is crossed, the long-term trajectory is obvious.

3. Will airlines use AI as leverage in contract negotiations?

Absolutely...and they already are, implicitly.
Corporations don’t need full pilot replacement to gain leverage. They only need reduced staffing requirements,
expanded duty limits “because AI reduces workload,”
or regulatory permission for smaller crews.

This has happened before in other industries:
- Railroads used automation to eliminate conductors.
- Shipping reduced crews from dozens to a handful.
- Call centers replaced entire departments with AI in under five years.
- Warehousing and logistics replaced union labor with robotics at scale.

From a corporate standpoint, AI is a wet dream scenario: lower labor costs, fewer collective bargaining constraints, and greater operational flexibility. There is no reason to believe airlines are philosophically different.

Within 10 years is not a serious timeline. Airlines are currently receiving brand new aircraft with 2 + crews that they're going to retire by 2036 ?Meanwhile AC just retired a 35 year old A320...

I love that corporate wants to eliminate every other role but who's gonna be left to buy anything when no one has any income ?

[Bede]

If it doesn’t happen, it won’t be because of the typical system reliability arguments- it will be because of economics. Pilots are a small fraction of costs. The manufacturers won’t offer this service for free. Can/will they deliver for less than the cost of pilots?

[cdnavater]

If it doesn’t happen, it won’t be because of the typical system reliability arguments- it will be because of economics. Pilots are a small fraction of costs. The manufacturers won’t offer this service for free. Can/will they deliver for less than the cost of pilots?

I basically said as much already, but I do see companies using this as a bargaining chip, if you get too expensive we’ll replace you with single pilot airliners and then phase two pilotless.
It will likely happen eventually but not widespread for another 40 years or so, of course it will start with cargo and maybe un-augmented long haul flights, thankfully I’ll be long retired and perhaps not around to see it.
I can say for absolutely certainty, I won’t be one of the first to try it, I’ll be paying more to fly with humans up front if I have to.

[Red_Comet]

If it doesn’t happen, it won’t be because of the typical system reliability arguments- it will be because of economics. Pilots are a small fraction of costs. The manufacturers won’t offer this service for free. Can/will they deliver for less than the cost of pilots?

Exactly. To add to this, we're also a very cheap redundancy system for this futuristic advanced auto-land/auto-pilot AI. I always love comparing the hourly rate for pilots to the plane. I believe Dash 8s cost about 8k an hour? Even the most expensive Dash captains are a rounding error compared to that on an hourly basis.

One more thing: a pilot's job is actually quite unique in that it is a combination of rapid decision making, domain knowledge and manual dexterity. I will promise you the day pilots are fully replaced, every other job will have long been automated. We will be the last to go, and I for one will be the first to apply to Starfleet (or the first to be MAIDed by Skynet...)

[digits_]

manual dexterity

huh?

Autoland has already existed for a long time. Autopilots too. Manual dexterity is probably the issue that has been most reliably solved for airline flying.

[Red_Comet]

manual dexterity

huh?

Autoland has already existed for a long time. Autopilots too. Manual dexterity is probably the issue that has been most reliably solved for airline flying.

You should call Delta and tell them the good news, would've saved them a perfectly working CRJ! If only they had just known!!!

[co-joe]

Hello all,
...
Is pursuing flight training still a reasonable long-term career choice given current and projected developments in AI?

Realistically, how far away is AI from becoming a major operational factor in airline cockpits?

Could airlines use advances in AI or automation as leverage in pilot contract negotiations?

More broadly, what do you see as the future of the pilot profession over the next 20–30 years?

Thanks in advance for any insight or experience you’re willing to share.

These are good questions to consider. AI is definitely going to be coming for pilot jobs, the question is when. Hardware is a massive hurdle. The 737 has an 8 bit processor, with almost no automated systems that don't require nearly continuous human intervention to be functional, and Boeing doesn't have a replacement on the drawing board at all. So for the time being, domestic air travel is totally safe from AI. Airbus is working on single pilot cruise, and guaranteed they will be the company that makes the attempt to eliminate pilots first, but they are a long way off.

My guess is that the move away from manned flight will not come from the USA, and as long as the US stays the largest market for aviation in the world we're safe. Period. As the US influence declines over the next few decades and other players take over maybe. I think it will take one or two generations of people becoming accustomed to AI in their daily lives to start to accept it in air travel. When the majority of people use autonomous cars, busses, snow plows etc, and have robots for nannies raising their kids, yeah aviation will be seen as a logical step.

My feeling as a Gen Xer that used his first computer at the age of 12, is that we are 2-3 generations away from the last pilot. You'll see it in the cargo world first, but cargo operators are still flying 1960's airliners and are just in the process of deciding if the MD11 will ever fly again with is a variation of the DC10 first produced in 1968, very few cargo carriers are investing in the latest and greatest tech at all.

[CaptDukeNukem]

Embraer has a auto takeoff. Apparently it can reduce pilot errors during performance take offs quite a bit.

Going to red comets comment on delta’s endeavor landing hard and everyone walking out alive: good on you to have never had a bad landing. God forbid you never have to use the orange card. But hey, trash talk all you want.

Automation is coming, two crew will still be a thing for years to come. I don’t think the public will ever be okay with a single dude or dudette at the controls

[philaviate]

Have you ever had a phone or computer that hasn't crashed or glitched, probably weekly, ever?
Have you asked AI a question and been given total nonsense, often completely opposite to reality, as an answer?

If you answer yes to these, then you'll know why AI won't be replacing us anytime soon.

If they are solved, then it won't matter. We will either be living in blissful utopia with robots doing everything for us, or we will be dead from the machine awakening judgement day.

[Red_Comet]

Embraer has a auto takeoff. Apparently it can reduce pilot errors during performance take offs quite a bit.

Going to red comets comment on delta’s endeavor landing hard and everyone walking out alive: good on you to have never had a bad landing. God forbid you never have to use the orange card. But hey, trash talk all you want.

Automation is coming, two crew will still be a thing for years to come. I don’t think the public will ever be okay with a single dude or dudette at the controls

I was referring to the fact that pilot stick & rudder skills are not in fact as easily automated as we like to believe. Everyone has bad landings, but to wave it away and say automated landing is a "solved problem" is delusional. ILS Autoland is the only system I'm aware that has been certified for commercial use. The emergency Autoland by Garmin is just that, and emergency system. And as the poster above states, what is the reliability/uptime of these systems? There's a reason we have to get medicals every year. Our uptime has to be 100%, and even then there's redundancy due to two crew ops.

As the poster above states, pilots will be the last humans to be automated for a plethora of reasons. We have much bigger problems in the short term, like Canada not existing in a few months time.

[goldeneagle]

Have you ever had a phone or computer that hasn't crashed or glitched, probably weekly, ever?

As a matter of fact, yes, I have. I was looking at one of the machines in the data center that just sits there endlessly processing data, it sent me an alert this morning about potential update requirements. It's last update was slightly over 2 years ago, and it's been running rock solid since then. Prior to that it ran for 4 years non stop, no hiccups. Will have a meeting with some of my compatriots later today, we'll discuss the schedule for when we will take it offline to do updates some time soon.

Have you asked AI a question and been given total nonsense, often completely opposite to reality, as an answer?

You are doing like many, confusing the LLM (Large Language Model) stuff with purpose built and trained networks. The LLM that you ask questions of is simply a glorified internet search engine that tries to present internet search results as normal language. That is a world of difference from a purpose designed and trained ai model meant to accomplish a specific task.

[philaviate]

Have you ever had a phone or computer that hasn't crashed or glitched, probably weekly, ever?

As a matter of fact, yes, I have. I was looking at one of the machines in the data center that just sits there endlessly processing data, it sent me an alert this morning about potential update requirements. It's last update was slightly over 2 years ago, and it's been running rock solid since then. Prior to that it ran for 4 years non stop, no hiccups. Will have a meeting with some of my compatriots later today, we'll discuss the schedule for when we will take it offline to do updates some time soon.

Have you asked AI a question and been given total nonsense, often completely opposite to reality, as an answer?

You are doing like many, confusing the LLM (Large Language Model) stuff with purpose built and trained networks. The LLM that you ask questions of is simply a glorified internet search engine that tries to present internet search results as normal language. That is a world of difference from a purpose designed and trained ai model meant to accomplish a specific task.

Ok. So we can find a few small examples, of presumably low load computing, that is reliable for a couple of years. I presume it is doing a routine task repeatedly?

Now throw it into the unknown of the real world, like the examples I was highlighting, with multiple different interactions, and failure is much more likely.

Complex computers fail all the time. And things like a LLM reasoning is what would be required to be close to perfect to fill in all the gaps outside of the routine.

Plus then we have the whole philosophical arguments which even humans can't resolve, that's why we have laws around negligence etc. So to get someone to agree what a machine should do in scenario XYZ will keep practical ethicists employed for decades.

[goldeneagle]

Ok. So we can find a few small examples, of presumably low load computing, that is reliable for a couple of years. I presume it is doing a routine task repeatedly?

You would presume wrong. In reality it's a very busy machine processing near real time data from close to a thousand locations scattered around North America, doing preliminary analysis on that data as it arrives

I know most here are somewhat unaware of how fast this part of the industry is progressing, but here is a short clip that demonstrates just how fast the development is happening, pay particular attention to the difference between 'last year' and 'this year' in terms of capability.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hpf5NLmwKQU

Now ponder where things go with another 5 years of development at this pace...

[philaviate]

Ok. So we can find a few small examples, of presumably low load computing, that is reliable for a couple of years. I presume it is doing a routine task repeatedly?

You would presume wrong. In reality it's a very busy machine processing near real time data from close to a thousand locations scattered around North America, doing preliminary analysis on that data as it arrives

I know most here are somewhat unaware of how fast this part of the industry is progressing, but here is a short clip that demonstrates just how fast the development is happening, pay particular attention to the difference between 'last year' and 'this year' in terms of capability.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hpf5NLmwKQU

Now ponder where things go with another 5 years of development at this pace...

I didn't really presume wrong. It is a dedicated task machine. Not a generalist. It does one job, analyse data.

That's what I mean, when you get a generalist, like a phone, or PC or whatever that is trying be a jack of all trades, it becomes inherently more unreliable.
Can we build an auto land. Yep. Can we build a general AI that knows the correct decision to make when something massively out of the ordinary occurs? Less likely. That's where best human judgement comes into play. And that's why human judgement is ultimately tested against the will of the people through laws and punishment.
The computers need to be programmed by humans, and some of the things we need it to decide we can't even decide for ourselves in a general format. For instance the trolley problem in ethics.

Also, the point of failure is significantly different for general computers than something running a single task all day. A human is the ultimate general computer.

[digits_]

Ok. So we can find a few small examples, of presumably low load computing, that is reliable for a couple of years. I presume it is doing a routine task repeatedly?

You would presume wrong. In reality it's a very busy machine processing near real time data from close to a thousand locations scattered around North America, doing preliminary analysis on that data as it arrives

I know most here are somewhat unaware of how fast this part of the industry is progressing, but here is a short clip that demonstrates just how fast the development is happening, pay particular attention to the difference between 'last year' and 'this year' in terms of capability.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hpf5NLmwKQU

Now ponder where things go with another 5 years of development at this pace...

I didn't really presume wrong. It is a dedicated task machine. Not a generalist. It does one job, analyse data.

That's what I mean, when you get a generalist, like a phone, or PC or whatever that is trying be a jack of all trades, it becomes inherently more unreliable.
Can we build an auto land. Yep. Can we build a general AI that knows the correct decision to make when something massively out of the ordinary occurs? Less likely. That's where best human judgement comes into play. And that's why human judgement is ultimately tested against the will of the people through laws and punishment.
The computers need to be programmed by humans, and some of the things we need it to decide we can't even decide for ourselves in a general format. For instance the trolley problem in ethics.

Also, the point of failure is significantly different for general computers than something running a single task all day. A human is the ultimate general computer.

And on the opposite side we have simple failures or finger trouble that have brought down human piloted aircraft that would likely have been saved if a computer was flying.

You seem to be demanding 100% perfection from computers while humans don't even achieve that.