Preview of what we’ll cover today:

🛫 AI in aviation: Enhancing systems, not replacing pilots anytime soon

👨‍✈️ Pilot demand: Shortage continues to drive pay and workload changes

🤖 AI in society: Creating winners and losers across industries

📈 Investing impact: Diversification matters more in uncertain environments

🧠 Human element: Judgment and experience still critical in flying and planning

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More About This Episode:

AI is changing everything right now, and aviation isn’t going to be immune to that. The question is… what does it actually mean for you as a pilot? Ryan breaks down what AI is really going to do to the cockpit, what parts of the job might change, and why he doesn’t see pilots going anywhere anytime soon. But there are some shifts coming, and they’re worth paying attention to. We also zoom out and talk about how AI is impacting the broader economy, what that could mean for your portfolio.

Go Deeper Into The Episode:

0:00 – Intro

0:46 – AI’s Impact on Pilot Jobs

2:28 – Demand for Pilots

4:27 – AI’s Role in Aviation

7:26 – The AI Bubble

8:05 – AI’s Limitations and Human Element

Resources:

Retire Pilots – https://retirepilots.com

Get your FREE Retirement Toolkit – https://bit.ly/3ZmZsaX

Pilot Tax – https://pilot-tax.com/

The Pilot’s Advisor Podcast is also on video. Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3EIEBW2

Connect with Pilot-Tax: https://pilot-tax.com/

Episode Transcription:

(Note, this is an automated transcription. Please forgive any errors.)

Walter Storholt  00:00

On today’s episode, we’re going to have a quick conversation about AI as we get ready for our two part series about AI. The next one that we’re going to talk about, we’ll dive into the top searches about AI and retirement. What are people, maybe even pilots, searching about AI and their concerns about how it’s going to impact them, not just from a job standpoint, but in other ways as well. But today we’re going to specifically focus on the job question, and specifically in the pilot space. So should pilots be worried about AI replacing them or maybe just affecting them in great ways, and how the job looks in the coming years? We’re going to talk about that with Ryan coming up on today’s show. Stay tuned. You. Is a good little episode today, Ryan, I’m kind of intrigued to just kind of get your thoughts a little bit on AI and what it’s going to do to pilots. We teased this in a previous episode and joked a little bit about people not quite being ready for AI to fly their planes for them without a pilot being present. But I think I feel like we’d be silly to not think AI is going to have some impacts in the coming years on at least how the job is done, and probably other ways I’m not even thinking about about how it’s going to impact the industry. First of all, are you getting questions about this or concerns, or you yourself? Are you worried a little bit about what AI is doing to the industry? I feel like I’m

Ryan Fleming  01:18

having more and more conversations about AI and just overall, how it’s going to truly change our world. And I feel like we could go down so many rabbit holes with this that it might be a couple different episodes, so we’ll see where this takes us. But as far as looking at the industry, I’ve even asked AI this myself, okay? Because, you know, I think more of us, we’re starting to realize that if we’re not tapping into the power of AI and learning how to use it, we’re going to get left behind as far as AI and looking at airline pilots, well, we know the automation and the technology is there. I think that it’s going to change the aviation industry. Maybe at some point in time they might start trying to pull pilots out of the cockpit. I still feel like that’s pretty far off. I think AI is going to change the cockpit. It’s going to change how we do business. It’s going to change how we maybe flight plan or handle things, but even AI realizes the critical thinking acting when something happens that we have to have pilots in the cockpit. So I don’t think, I don’t think it’s anytime soon, I still think that there’s careers out there for pilots that’s going to last a while. The other side of it, where these two things that I think are going to collide is, if you start looking at the demand for pilots, it’s going up, and there’s a huge pilot shortage. It’s getting worse. So is that pilot shortage and technology and AI going to have a collision course where we need to pull people from the cockpit just to spread them out. You know, to for the demand. The pilot career alone, pay is continuing to increase and go up because of the demand. And you know, if you’re a free market person, supply and demand. Well, guess what? The supply is getting lower and lower, and the demand is higher and pay is going up.

Walter Storholt  03:07

Somewhat funny, a pilot friend of mine just the other day was not complaining, but just had a little comment about, like, Ah, I worked way too much this last month, and I was hoping to get a few more days off this month, but they need me so bad. My schedule is way overloaded. I don’t want to fly this much.

Ryan Fleming  03:23

But there’s, there’s a lot of and it’s chasing the carrot, you know, like, I mean, are you going to try to grab those dollars now? And, you know, with pilots, or anybody, really, it’s greed and fear, and pilots are greedy, man, I’ve watched it happen. There’s, there’s lifestyle pilots, ones that are only going to work there eight to 10 days and be at home with our family. And then there’s others that are total.

Walter Storholt  03:43

He’s, yeah, he’s the former. He wants to let me check the boxes and live the lifestyle. And so he’s like, no, no, this is, this is too much flying.

Ryan Fleming  03:53

There we go. I got my hat on here representing, and I’m not.

Walter Storholt  03:56

So here we go. I got my match. Well, you have the logo behind you so it works out, yeah, there we go.

Ryan Fleming  04:01

And, you know, my father in law tells me this all the time. He goes, and he’s 80 something, and you know, he goes, I never have sat here and said, I wished I would have worked more like when he thinks back on his life. And he was a DEA agent and traveling a lot and working cases and and was in the DEA for 30 some years. And that’s his biggest thing. He keeps telling me is, you know, enjoy family, enjoy being around, because you’re never going to wish you worked more.

Walter Storholt  04:27

Yeah, it’s a great point. I actually asked AI what some of the big changes might be in the cockpit and to the the pilot, you know, career field, which feels a little bit like asking the enemy for its strategy. And is it going to really tell you the truth? But it obviously mentioned smarter cockpits is one thing. Better weather and turbulence prediction, kind of interesting. Decision support in emergencies, maybe being able to reduce the number of pilots in the cockpit, so maybe you don’t have a co pilot at some point in the future, a. Is your is your co pilot, in a way, predictive maintenance, so detecting problems before they become issues, things like that.

Ryan Fleming  05:09

I personally think that it’s going to be much. It’s going to have a much greater effect on our just society in general. I think that, and it’s scary. I hate to even bring this stuff up, but I could see so many jobs going away in the next five years, and that’s why, if you’re not embracing AI or getting into a career field, that you could use that. And how does that affect our overall society, companies, stocks that we invest in, there’s going to be huge winners and losers. I mean, I think we’re already watching the tsunami of layoffs starting to happen because AI can do so many jobs, but it’s going to create a ridiculous amount of profitability for a lot of these companies too. So if you own those particular equities and have money invested, you’re going to reap the benefits of it, but, but there’s also going to be the losers. I think we’re going to have a lot of companies that fail because of AI. So being very, very diversified in your portfolio, I think that’s going to be a major factor going forward, because it’s really unpredictable to know who’s going to win and who’s going to lose, right? Yeah, I mean, I don’t know how this is all going to play out.

Walter Storholt  06:21

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Ryan Fleming  07:47

And even then, what’s their argument about the AI bubble? I mean, all these AI companies that were doing great, and then there was a 30% pullback, and everybody’s panicking. And you know, if you were too heavily invested in those tech stocks, you just had a massive pullback, and it’s time to talk about that short term noise. Yes, big time.

Walter Storholt  08:05

Well, this is my final, final thought here. You know how AI does its little like at the end, a little wrap up. It goes. The bottom line is that over the next five years, pilots won’t be replaced big X pilots won’t be their role will shift from manual operator to Systems Manager plus decision maker, basically strong oversight skills will be what’s valued in five or so years. Feel like you could say that about pretty much any job though AI is going to do all the manual work and the labor and every single job just going to require somebody that has the know how to make sure it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. I don’t know if that’s exciting to you as a pilot, to have so much of it taken out of your hands and just be an oversight manager, but

Ryan Fleming  08:49

a lot of a lot of it’s managing the automation anyway, especially at cruise. And then the exciting parts are taken off and landing. Yeah, and I can even tell that a lot of a lot of my clients are using AI to generate questions. I can tell I start getting these weird questions. It’s like, you and it becomes very obvious more and more that it’s just AI generated them asking some random question. And the power of AI is you get massive amounts of information all at once. Yeah, but I can tell how much it misses just in those questions because it’s, it’s bridging the gap between facts, or, you know, these expense ratios versus that and, and, and it really misses out on the overall picture. Yeah, in many, many cases. So is powerful as AI is. It still has major flaws. And I think that no different than flying airplanes, the human elements still going to have to be there. For sure. It kind of reminds me of the robo advisor that we were talking about five years ago, like, you know, robo, robo investing and all this. And it was supposed to be something that drastically changed the whole environment, and it really hasn’t. I think, yeah,

Walter Storholt  09:53

if any, if anything, the advisors are using a little bit of the robo more than, I think that they thought it was going to be where it would be. Individuals just talking with a bot giving them a financial plan, ended up being the industry itself that’s utilizing some automated trades and automated rebalancing and some of the stuff that the robots can do very efficiently and well, for like, day to day tasks, kind of funny how that?

Ryan Fleming  10:14

Yeah, well, it really changed it from the operation side. I mean, you used to have your stock broker out there, right? And they’re writing out on a pencil, or what, you know, making trades or, yeah, well, now we’re now we’re able to scale a little bit because we’re able to rebalance portfolios, we’re able to use algorithms and automated trading. And so it’s make making things happen a lot quicker, a lot more efficiently. So the

Walter Storholt  10:36

technology didn’t replace the advice giving.

Ryan Fleming  10:39

It did not. It did

Walter Storholt  10:40

not, and the ability to give somebody comfort and confidence that that human touch is very much still needed.

Ryan Fleming  10:46

I firmly believe, like, you know, getting better and better, finding better investments, portfolios, algorithms, protection, the ATM byline. There’s so much of that there. But at the heart of it all, at the heart of it all, I still feel like I’m a financial counselor, talking people through the ups and downs of life events that are happening, or making sure that they’re not going to make a short term emotional decision with their money, which happens all the time. And so I didn’t realize it getting into this profession, but the far majority of it is talking people off the ledge or having conversations about finances, yeah, with when life happens?

Walter Storholt  11:23

Yep, absolutely. Well, good conversation. Good breakdown. Today, on the next episode, we’re going to expand this conversation a little bit. Not just talk about kind of the job security and the job change part of the equation for AI, but other things as well. We’ll cover some of the top searches related to AI and retirement. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about Ryan and how he helps pilots all over the world plan for their retirement, all you have to do is click the link in the description of today’s show order your retirement toolkit. It’s packed with Ryan’s book special resources and more information to help you learn more about retirement planning, and it qualifies you for a free portfolio analysis, which is a one on one meeting with Ryan to talk about your specific situation. So take advantage of that no cost or to the toolkit. Just click the link in the description of today’s show, Ryan. We’ll talk some more. Ai next time around.

Ryan Fleming  12:10

Sounds good. Walter, have a good one. You too.

Speaker 1  12:17

Information is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute tax investment or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified investment legal or tax professional before taking any action.