Actually, some of us DO follow roads! 
And railroad tracks and rivers and…
Of course, you still have to look out for other aircraft that AREN’T following roads and landmarks. There are no roads in the sky but you are allowed to use them for navigational purposes.
I disagree.
I’d say the simplest, easiest aircraft I’ve ever flown was still more effort than driving a car. That doesn’t mean flying is impossible, and as pointed out the effort is different, but I still feel more fatigued by an hour of even the easiest flying than I do by two hours of driving a car.
I do.
While I have taken longer trips, I prefer not to be actually in the air much longer than an hour or so. Cockpits tend to be small spaces and I’m not moving my body parts nearly as I much as I normally do. Add into that the fact that I fly very small airplanes which frequently do not carry vast quantities of fuel, which makes frequent refueling prudent. Many of the airplanes I fly in fact do NOT have modern instrumentation like GPS. Some, in fact, do not even have radios. Not only can I take advantage of a break every 60-90 minutes to pee, drink water (thin, dry air at altitude can suck the water out of your body), and refuel, I can check the weather either on the local airport’s computer set up (becoming more and more ubiquitous) or make a phone call to get an update. I can also double check notes regarding estimated and actual times and route of travel a little more thoroughly at a table in a relatively quiet room than I can in a noisy cockpit that might be bouncing in rough air while also flying an aircraft. Did I mention that I also fly open cockpit? Add windy to the above on some days.
There have been times when I’ve brought someone else along to help with the workload of either flying the airplane or just helping to look outside for navigational landmarks and other air traffic.
How much attention is required minute-to-minute will vary with the type of airplane, the weather, and the sort of flying one is doing. Laps around a deserted field on a calm summer day are quite, quite different than a cross-country trip in bad weather requiring full IFR start to finish. The stripped-down minimal aircraft I fly sometimes are vastly different than fully-loaded, all the latest avionics model just delivered from the factory. Also, pilot skill comes into play - the first few times I flew with a GPS I brought someone along to help out with the flying since I was unfamillar enough with the GPS that operating took much more thought than using my old map-and-compass system. But then, I had hundreds of hours with maps and none at all with GPS.
There are systems that will play a CD during flight, also designed to interrupt the music when there is a radio call or an aural warning. There are times when it is safe use such a system. There are other times it is not and they should be turned off.
It was wonderful to fly a new plane, with leather seats, airbags (honest), and just for once, have everything work*. Yes, I’ll admit to keying in several Carribean destinations… just curious ya know? 
I actually got to spend 3 days with it (at the Cessna factory). I needed to take their course on the G1000 system (each day was half ground / half air). At the end of the 3 days, I flew it to its new home and, reluctantly, turned over the keys to the new owner. It was quite an experience, since the owner had given me power-of-attorney to sign and accept the new plane, Cessna treated me as if I were actually someone who could afford one. I got my own meeting room (with my name on it), got to participate in the “rollout ceremony” where I was presented with the Airworthiness Certificate, amid flashing camera bulbs (they have an onsite photographer for these events), and in general was treated like visiting royalty. When I was headed back to my hotel the first night, one of the Cessna reps gave me his business card and told me to just show it at the restaurant(s) and my meals would be comped. It was hard to return to reality.
Johnny LA: Got a spare $254,000 laying around?
*You renters know what I’m talking about.
On edit: Added link
On jetplanes, you need to think about what you place in the toilet:
Oh look, I know it’s not all that relevant. But, well, I like the guy’s writing. And it’s a funny story.
Somewhere in his archive, he does tell the story of being about 19 and trying to impress a punk chick in a short skirt (“Hey, that guy’s got a good car? Come see my airplane, babe!”)
He nearly killed both of them in a midair collision over Nantucket Sound. And he didn’t even get laid. Probably, pilots should not look at the legs of their passengers. I can imagine that this could be difficult sometimes, so I would probably suggest pilots should carry only ugly passengers with repulsive legs.
Heh. They’ve gone up a bit. I thought they were around $200,000. It’s very pretty, but there’s no way I’d pay a quarter-megabuck for a Skyhawk. Actually, I really like the 172K (1970). I just like the way it sits. (And you could buy five for the price of a new one!) If I were to spend a couple hundred kilobucks on a plane, I’d go for something like a T-34.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/octalcode/2186247452/
These guys are NOT paying attention.
Dang!!!
And I just bought the Sopranos series.
It’s an instrument that reports nearby traffic with a transponder that’s responding to Air Traffic Control inquiries. Most versions of this system not only report the traffic, but provide maneuvering advice as necessary to avoid the possibility of a collision.
The problem is that there are plenty of aircraft that don’t have transponders, and thus aren’t detected by TCAS. Pilots who put too much trust in it tend not to look out the window (as they are required to do).
I’ve heard that TCAS isn’t very expensive at all. Should it be on all new planes? If all planes did have it, would that crowd the system?
Well, a simple TCAS that shows only range costs $635. A more advanced one plus the installation kit costs $8,889. As Xema points out, a lot of aircraft don’t have transponders. Some don’t have electrical systems. Most of my flying has been in high-traffic areas (L.A. Basin/The Valley). I’ve never used TCAS, and I’ve never had trouble finding traffic. But a lot of people fly in less crowded areas. Some aircraft don’t have a lot of excess panel space (thought a TCAS can replace another instrument). I think that requiring TCAS on all new aircraft might put an undue burden on the majority of owners.
Thanks, Johnny.
I think what I meant was a transponder. That would let others know you’re there, right? Shows you what I know about flying.
Yes. A transponder is a radio that sends out a signal that allows the aircraft to be seen. Typically they also broadcast altitude information. They’re required in high-traffic areas. I’m not sure if you can get a waiver to fly through Class B airspace without one because every aircraft I’ve flown has been transponder-equipped.
ETA: To expand on that, ATC will send out a signal. When it is received by a transponder, the transponder sends a reply basically saying ‘Here I am!’ Aircraft may send a general ‘squawk’ code, or a code may be assigned to individual aircraft.
This T-34?
Wow!
That one’s a little small. I was thinking more along the lines of this one. 
I think I’m going to disagree a little bit with some of the other pilots here. It may be more to do with the environments we fly in though. It also depends a lot on the phase of flight.
I fly over the open ocean for seven hours at a time at 1000’ in a multi crew aeroplane. In the cruise there is very little to do. We have a position report to do every 30 minutes and about 5 minutes of associated paper work. This is done by the non-flying pilot. The flying pilot monitors the flightpath. This just means checking that the autopilot is doing what it’s meant to be doing. I’d say that it requires constant awareness of what is happening but not constant attention.
I can quite happily read a magazine while flying however I wouldn’t normally read a novel as a novel tends to distract you more where’s a magazine can be browsed while keeping some attention focussed on the aeroplane.
As far as traffic goes, there just isn’t any. I’m talking about being hundreds of miles out to sea at low level. No-one else is out there except for a few helicopters that service the local oil rigs, they are IFR and make their own position reports that we monitor. ATS also give us traffic information on them. We also have a search radar that can pick up primary returns from an aircraft which means we can see it regardless of whether it has a transponder or not.
So we read, we chat, we eat, we wander to the back of the aeroplane for half an hour to have some lunch and maybe a nap (one at a time of course, there is ALWAYS a pilot in the cockpit monitoring the aircraft.)
This cruise phase requires more overall awareness than when driving a car in terns of knowing what our fuel state is, where we are in the world, and when we will have to go home. But it requires much less physical attention.
On the other hand during approach, and to a lesser extent departure, we are very busy directly controlling the autopilot (or hand flying if we feel like it), completing checklists, talking to ATC and other aircraft etc. I’d liken it to the attention required to parallel park a car while having an important phone conversation except instead of doing it for 2 minutes, we’re doing it for half an hour.
Edit: And if you cock up the parallel parking, you die.
Yeah, I went back and looked. Kinda small, alright. 
Is that a TCAS or something different? TCAS doesn’t have anything to do with ATC radars which makes me think it’s something different.
Mangeorge I personally wouldn’t be keen on having anyone watching a DVD in the cockpit because it requires the use of too many of your senses. Listening to a radio quietly is ok IMO, and light reading is ok in certain circumstances, but something that captures your audio and visual senses doesn’t leave you with much else.
I’ve flown non-transponder equipped airplanes, so I will elaborate on this. I am also going to paraphrase the regs and hope I don’t leave anything out or remember the regs incorrectly, because I don’t think Mangeorge really wants chapter and verse on this and my aviation stuff is packed away at the moment.
Normally, if you don’t have a transponder (and for all practical purposes these days we’re talking about a Mode C transponder, with location and altitude reporting, although there are still a few older models out there still flying) you can’t enter airspace that requires one.
Normally.
There are a couple of such airplanes that have been in the Mode C airspace around O’Hare since before that airspace existed and they have been granted permission to transit between their home base airport (non-towered, on the border of the Mode C) and airspace outside the Mode C, but only for that purpose - they can’t go hang around turning circles over the Loop.
ANY aircraft without a transponder CAN request a waiver to fly into any airspace. You just have to ask in advance. In some cases, this can be as simple as calling an airport tower, explaining you have a non-transponder plane you’d like to fly into their airspace/to their airport (you also do this when you don’t have a radio and want to enter airspace that normally requires a radio). The tower will either say “yea” or “nay”. In other cases you have to ask well in advance, in writing, and contact both the airport tower and/or the local Flight Standards District Office. In some cases permission is quickly granted. In others much more information may be required.
As an example, I know of a group of ultralight flyers who wanted to attend a fly in at Meigs Field in downtown Chicago (obviously, this was some time ago since Meigs no longer exists). Not only did none of them possess a transponder, most of them had no radios either. Ultralights are so small and slow air traffic radar doesn’t always track them very well (ATC systems edit out certain things, like birds, based on size and speed - a very small, very slow aircraft may be mistaken for a bird by the system unless it has a transponder). Obviously, this is a concern when they are requesting permission to transit some very, very busy airspace. They were required to detail very specifically their proposed flight plan, including planning for emergency landings, a very specific time window in which to fly, at least one of the two pilots who had private licenses were required to lead the group and carry a hand-held aviation transceiver (about the size of a walkie-talkie - I own one myself, as do a lot of other pilots), calling the controlling air traffic control agency via cellphone just prior to take off and just after landing, and so on and so forth. And they were granted permission and did succsessfully fly in and out.
Quite a few of the antiques you see in airshows, such as Stearman biplanes, may be without radio or transponders and may need to frequently request such permission to participate in airshows such as Chicago’s annual Air and Water Show.
Damaged airplanes may also request an exception to the rules as part of a ferry permit when being transported to a place for repairs.
In other words, there is a mechanism for waiving the requirements, but you have to have a reason. Depending on where you’re going and what you’re doing it can range from “I want to attend the pancake breakfast sponsored by your local flying club” to “I am being paid a gazillion dollars to perform outside loops at an airshow.” Different locations will have different requirements based on traffic, safety, and yes, sometimes local politics (sigh). Reasons for flying into O’Hare International without a radio or transponder will have to be a LOT more creative than requesting permission to fly into, say, Gary airport in Indiana.
It’s referred to as TIS (Traffic Information System). It depends solely on transponder equipped aircraft which are detected by ATC radar (usually approach radar). Somehow, the range, rate-of-change, and reported altitude are collected, transmitted to XM satellites, and downloaded to the aircraft in-flight to be interpreted as moving symbols positioned relative to the “ownship” on the map display. The system usually has a 1-minute lag (latency is transmitted as well). I believe it’s currently only available in high traffic areas (usually Class C or higher). Three of our flight school aircraft have this feature (along with realtime NEXRAD). It’s a boon to safety, but not a replacement for moving eyeballs.
If I can toss out a slightly-sorta-hijacking question to you 1920s SDR: You appear to be operating relatively close to shore and I was wondering… Is Australia implementing any of the new ADS-B systems for aircraft tracking? (as opposed to radar and position reports). Here in the US, we’ve started installing ADS-B systems near-shore on the oil platforms. Apparently the early users are the crew-ferrying helicopters. I believe the plan is to gradually implement the new system on the East coast, then work slowly westward (most of this is just a WAG from reading trade journals, don’t quote me). I’m pretty sure the current plan is to install the recievers on existing cellphone towers here in the US. The TIS capability I mentioned above is one of the early features of ADS-B.
I watched a program a year or two with a pilot and reporter in a modern passenger jet in which the pilot allowed (with hands at the ready) the plane to land itself. Totally without intervention. I’m sure he said that a plane equipped with the technology could fly itself from one airport to another. Again, without direct human intervention.
Here’s a short mention. Scroll down a little, to “Cargo Drone In The Works”.
I know for sure that a supertanker, or container ship could sail the ocean without a crew, only needing a pilot crew at each end of the trip.
