Almost everyone requires the same "kind of currency", but that doesn't stop salaries from being different.
> The person flying all the time will be much more capable than the person watching the plane fly, and acquiring experience only in specific training.
If the plane can be piloted mostly automatically, that doesn't necessarily matter. What matters only is if the emergency person can handle the emergencies that do occur.
To be clear, I don't have any strong belief that human pilots will disappear any time soon; I just don't think the arguments people are making here are that compelling, because they seem to be assuming that the skill level of flying a plane is much too high for an automatic pilot. As someone who's been skeptical of fully automated driving for a long time now despite popular opinion seeming far more optimistic about it in the short term, it's kind of ironic to see "humans will always be better at flying" presented as axiomatic.
"Person there just in case to take over in the rare case of emergencies" might not be as well paid as "person who's responsible for the plane at all times". Plus, if you're concerned about malware, you'll probably want a person still involved in vetting the code outputted by some hypothetical AI, so there would still be at least some engineering jobs.