Some airlines have started training pilots to go easy on the brakes in emergency high speed/heavy landings, because so many have jumped on the brakes at high speed, and ended up stopped with flaming brakes half-way down the runway. Unnecessary destroyed wheels and gear, emergency evacuation, blocked runway, possible…

In peacetime, all military planes must at all times have enough fuel to make it to an airport. Over the middle of the ocean the fighters stay topped-off, refueling frequently off the tanker. That means they have to have a tanker flying with them, not waiting for them in orbit. They can part ways when close to land.

So why does TSA have to "process" the pilots anyway? To make sure they aren't carrying something they could use to take control of the aircraft?

"Last manned long-range combat aircraft". I would expect it to be able to fly unmanned as well, for a much greater range of mission capabilities.

It was "just a pilot pay shortage", but that naturally ends up causing an actual pilot shortage eventually, and that day has come. There are very few Americans in commercial pilot training, the system will produce only a few hundred per year and dropping, while Boeing and ALPA say North America will need an average…

Crash statistics have steadily improved as many things in aviation have made huge leaps forward over many decades. Automation is only one of those leaps, and cannot alone be credited. The fact that automation has improved dramatically while we still kept two or more experienced pilots in the cockpit certainly counts…

I've worked in military and airline aviation, and in industrial automation, for many decades now. Automation is only as reliable and capable as the human designers and programmers make it, and thus automation will never eliminate human failure. It does tend to greatly reduce the ability of a system to compensate for…

The airlines have spent the past 15-20 years demoralizing their pilots to get them to accept lower compensation and higher workloads, and it has worked extremely well.

The airlines want advances that reduce costs and increase revenue. They are cutting fuel costs where possible, I expect them to come up with ways to cut labor costs. Automation has allowed airlines to cut pilot training, like Air France cut out stall recognition and recovery until they lost Flight 447. They might…