It will of course be replaced by the fear of the remote connection being hacked by terrorists.
Fear? That’s a reality! With remotely controlled aircraft the hijackers don’t even have to be aboard the aircraft. That is a really, really, really bad idea.
Just to put a few things to bed about the latest changes in the airline SOP ‘s and policy’s.
Mentioned above has been the Helios accident, in this case the the cabin crew had been very slow to enter the cockpit, the reason for this is most likely to be the Authority gradient between the flight crew and cabin crew, the further south you go the greater this gradient gets and the more the cabin crew are prevented from questioning the flight crew because of social conditioning, this is why the cabin crew did not enter the flight deck until no contact had been made for a long time and all the passengers had been unconcious for a long time ( the cabin crew would have been on the O2 walk around bottle). By this time the cabin crew realisation that something was so wrong that it overcame their reluctance to question the flight crew. I doubt that such an accident would happen in Northern European or Scandinavian airline because of the much flatter authority gradient.
It seems to be that the “two crew in the cockpit rule” has been misinterpreted in some places with people thinking that the cabin crew member sits in one of the pilot seats, this is NOT the case, the cabin crew member sits in a seat within easy reach of the cockpit door so that if required the door can be opened or after checking the peep hole it is kept closed should a security issue arise while one of the pilots is out of the cockpit.
The last thing we need is airliners that can be remote controled, at the moment it takes a highly motivated individual to hijack an airliner who will have the knowlage that it is highly likely the outcome will be a chest full of 9mm from a man in black, start remote controlling aircraft and it opens the airlines to to all sorts of Internet crime from those too remote to be caught.
Talk of psychological yearly checks is true, that friendly chat with the AME when doing your annual medical is much more than a friendly chat, upon discovering that my wife was in the final stages of a terminal illness I had quite a long talk with the AME, no doubt to probing for clinical depression as apposed to my unhappiness with the situation. Also some good advice was given especially about dealing with the situation and not reaching for the bottle when you get low. With this in mind I found that if I did feel like a drink I reached instead for the tea pot and my alcohol intake ( that was always low) fell to nil if I was alone and not much in social situations.
I an quite lucky the the people who a fly for have been supportive but not intrusive during this time but one airline has had a very serious incident with its lack of care of a flight crew member following a bereavement.
Some of the attitudes to pilots, pay to fly, big training debts, long hours, and the agresive, hostile attitude of security staff ramp up the pressure on pilots do not help matters, EASA should be utterly ashamed of its self for the latest FTL rules , how they have the cheek to keep the word “safety” in their title I will never know.
Coming back to this old thread (because the title is just right) how many here would fly (light GA) with a total stranger i.e. a “blind date”?
I was talking to someone about this today and IMHO very few would actually do exactly that.
It puts a damper on the many seat sharing websites that are popping up everywhere, now that the cost sharing rules have been relaxed.
Peter wrote:
how many here would fly (light GA) with a total stranger i.e. a blind date?
I’ve done a lot of that in the US. Just hang out at the airfield, walk up to Joe and flatter him and a few minutes later he asks “want to go for a short flight with me?”. I do the same after a cursory look at the guy. If you eliminate all risk in your life then you are guaranteed to have the most boring life possible 
Peter wrote:
t puts a damper on the many seat sharing websites that are popping up everywhere, now that the cost sharing rules have been relaxed.
This feels like a déjà-vu. I believe we had an exchange about how those share economy sites that all have the same problem (Uber, AirBnB etc.) establish trust — a transparent rating system. You don’t pre-pay an eBay seller that has 10 ratings with 40% positive…
