The year is 20XX, airlines have successfully gotten rid of pilots by remotely outsourcing the piloting of their planes to players of Microsoft Flight Simulator 20XX in the comfort of their homes. Call centers in India have converted themselves to pilot centers, and remote pilots are paid $2/hr on average.
Kinda.
In its most basic form, it's a way for interest groups that may be individually too small to afford travel to DC or would be easily ignored to pool resources in order to make legislators aware of common interests - say dairy farmers who want to let their legislators know that imported Martian feed is killing their cows or something. One farmer complaining, easily ignored. A lobbying group, more likely to get attention.
In practice however... Yeah, it tends to become legal bribery.
Edit: Cell phones make for typos.
That’s what I don’t get. Most operators even flying PC-12s fly two crew due to optics and insurance reasons. I can’t see how airlines will get away with this.
Planes will have to be 100% autonomous with no input from a person required at any phase of flight in order for this to make sense. Only when the human being in the cockpit *is* the backup redundancy can they remove the other human.
As it currently stands, emergency checklists are already task saturating for both human pilots to complete together. No one would want to be a pilot if you're 1 stuck gear or flaps away from having a shitty fucking day because you had to perform a full emergency landing by your goddamned self. And those scenarios aren't even terribly dangerous! Let alone the doomed shit that pilots were only able to salvage because of experience and CRM like Gimli, UA232, and the Hudson.
I’m not okay with a single point of failure considering a pilot died just this year while flying and his copilot had to turn the plane around and land.
Exactly. In an emergency it's usually one pilot checking the manuals, and the other flying the plane. WTF do they want them to do? Just trust the autopilot while not monitoring it??
Communication alone is one person's job. And that person had better be a pilot who can know exactly what the pilot is currently doing to minimize in-cabin miscommunication.
This is why we have the concept of a copilot to begin with, because we already had this problem and found out that having a single pilot is a really damn stupid idea.
1. Now, the stewardess has to take an online "crash-course" once a year to land the plane in the event of a single-pilot failure.
2. Or, we could have the baggage handler fly the plane with a single pilot overseeing several aircraft, via a black and white monitor at home.
3. Perhaps we could ask the passengers to have a go at it, and reduce the ticket by 2% if they willingly participate in the flight/operation.
I'm a great CEO!
I was just thinking that too. If they think they're saving money by reducing the pilots, they're about to be sad from the lawsuits of shit falling out of the air from easily preventable negligence.
I will NEVER fly on an airplane with only one pilot.
Edit: Oh and, there has been times of pilots being DRUNK! Imagine your one and ONLY pilot intoxicated...
>I will NEVER fly on an airplane with only one pilot.
If it happens, it will be all or nothing. You'll either never have to worry about it, or never fly commercial again.
I'd drive, take a train, a boat, WALK across a country rather than be in a deathtrap with a dude that might be taken out by something as simple as a bad meal.
Kind of off topic but I've been told that parts of the flight crew are given a special code they can use to enter the cockpit, but if the person in the cockpit hits some kind of 'cancel' button within 30 seconds the door stays locked. This way the pilots can keep people out, but if something happens to them the flight crew can open the door after 30 seconds or so.
There was a flight at some point in living memory where the suicidal pilot waited for his copilot to go the bathroom then took the whole plane down with him. Flight crew kept trying to enter the code and he kept locking them out.
I think if you’re going to off yourself that’s your choice. But what made that bozo believe he had the right to kill 150 others in the process is beyond me. Like, I get it. You want to end your life. Why involve others in your personal decision like this though? Guy was a psycho.
Maybe he wanted attention. Nobody would’ve cared if he just killed himself, but look at us, talking about him even 7 years later, because he killed many others. Now he won’t be forgotten so easily
Your understanding is correct.
Fundamentally, there is no way to design a system where a person who has absolute authority to maneuver the aircraft as they want to might use that authority in a bad way. Historically speaking, the overwhelming majority of threats to safety of aircraft posed by somebody on the plane have been posed by passengers, and in very rare cases non-pilot flight crew. Pilots are entrusted with flying the plane, so control mechanisms are focused on ensuring that they can do that safely despite potential external threats.
The case you are remembering was a 2015 Germanwings flight (flight 9525) where a co-pilot had been declared unfit to work because he was suicidal, but hadn't reported that to his employer, and there wasn't a mechanism where his doctor needed to. He waited until the captain left the cockpit and then locked everybody out while he drove the plane into the ground. Something similar is suspected to have happened with Malaysian 370.
As far as I remember (or I'm imagining it), as a consequence of that, a flight attendant has to be in the cockpit when one of the pilots leave temporarily. Was that only Lufthansa, or was that more widely adopted?
It's been that way in the US (at least two crew members in the cockpit at all times) since at least 9/11. I actually don't know if Lufthansa changed their policy or not, or if EASA changed theirs.
E: it looks like both the German airlines and EASA did impose a two-person rule after the Germanwings crash but have since repealed it
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-crash-germanwings-cockpit/german-airlines-scrap-post-germanwings-two-person-cockpit-rule-idUSKBN17U1R1
No, the cockpit door can be opened from the outside if necessary, just not if a person inside the cockpit doesn't want it to be.
In general, the locking mechanism for cockpit doors has three modes that are controlled by the pilots from the flight deck: unlocked, normal, and locked. Unlocked is exactly what it sounds like. Normal means that the door is locked, but can be opened from outside with the appropriate code. The code is on a 30 second delay, with a buzzer that sounds in the cockpit to alert pilots someone outside has requested entry. If there is no response at all within 30 seconds, the door unlocks briefly. This allows the remainder of the flight crew to address a situation where a lone pilot becomes incapacitated in the cockpit.
(In the United States, the FAA requires that the cockpit be occupied by at least two crew members at all times, so that this feature really isn't that necessary, but in other countries, at least until relatively recently, regulations do allow a single pilot to be left alone in the cockpit if the other pilot, for example, needs to leave to use the bathroom.)
If the people inside the cockpit want to deny external access, (including if a code to enter has been properly input), they switch the door control to lock. In this case, the door will not respond to outside unlock requests. This mode is itself time-limited to somewhere between a 5 and 20 minute delay (the exact value may be airline configurable or it may be required by regulation; I'm not sure what the driver here is). After the end of this time period, the door will automatically revert to normal mode, but people in the cockpit can reset the timer by toggling their switch back to normal mode briefly and then enabling lock again. The time limitation is again a backup for a situation where a pilot has become incapacitated.
Ok ok, if you don't want to fly on a plane with a single pilot, you can upgrade to a "pilot redundant flight" for $250. This perk is included if you get our Super Safe Visa Rewards card or our annual "reduced casualty subscription plan" which also includes a parachute in addition to your personal item on all flights!!
Would you press the button? You gain a couple 10 million USD but every so often 100-500 people die.
Airlines: YES YES YES YES YES YES! Can we hire someone to repeatedly press the button for us for 10$ an hour?
I have some experience with large machines run by small teams. The people were good enough that together they could handle any single problem.
The thing that was gonna get us was two or more problems happening at the same time. At that point the team would have to break up and each individual was on their own with nobody to observe or double check the work. That's the point where trouble started, because if any one individual made a mistake that was going to shut us down.
But a hundred people didn't have to die when that happened.
Agree , two pilots are a bare minimum , shit even with two planes still have accidents...
It's not even the critical case where one pilot becomes incapacitated that's the issue, it's that case that one pilot will miss some critical detail in a particular critical phase of flight leading to an bad outcome . Two pilots is much more than just a spare ,it's a second set of eyes, ears and brain to ensure safety.
Also lets not forget automation works great when everything is normal, the minute some critical sensors or actuators fail, its just a dumb machine that can't improvise. Usually the autopilot disconnects the minute the airplane goes outside some threshold, as is the case in adverse weather (Air France 447 , iced pitot tubes started a chain of events) or a mechanical/sensor fault (Mcas failures in max accidents)
Finally today they have a pretty clear rule of never having just one pilot in the cockpit , even when the other takes a restroom break, now they are lobbying for one ..wtf
And just a second workstream. For example, often one pilot will concentrate on flying the plane, while the other works through the emergency checklists. For example, in the Hudson River crash, the captain (Sully) focused on flying and communicating with emergency responders, but at the same time the first offer (Skiles) was trying to restart the engines. If Sully had had to spend any amount of brain power on the engine checklist, it likely would have been a much worse outcome.
I was on a training flight in the Navy. We were in a T47 Cessna Citation coming back to Pensacola... trying to beat really bad weather.
Bad idea.
Myself and another student Navigator were in the back of the plane on our own channel talking. Up front was a retired military pilot, with another student Navigator... and it was becoming very stupid and hectic in the last few moments.
This was a classic example of "pilot error" if we would have crashed. The older pilot had already talked about how he had friends coming in for the weekend and we had to make it back. He didn't want to divert to someplace like Meridian Mississippi... so the race was on.
Of course the student on these flights has to take charge of all radio comms and checklist. Approaching final the student was desperately trying to get the pilot to respond to prompts on checklist as we came in. There was a literal black wall of rain coming in about to cover the field. We were seconds from losing visual and the pilot was having to avoid the "wall" ... we were going substantially hotter than the normal approach.... the student next to me finally yelled out "JUST SHUT UP MAN!" over the closed circuit we were on in the back. Because we were all white knuckling as the pilot yanked and banked trying to get us lined up...
As if on cue, the pilot yelled out "SON! I'M TRYING TO FLY THE PLANE!"
We got it down on the runway and hydroplaned all over the place from the rain we landed into
...
The student in back next to me was pissed. I thought it was sort of funny, but yeah, in retrospect it was all sorts of stupid and we easily could have stalled/crashed in the turn to final. (Bank well over 70degrees with gear and flaps down. Etc)
The amount of stuff going on can easily overtask a single pilot in any situtaion that gets outside of normal ops.
And like I said, it didn't piss me off till later.
From way back in the rear of the Citation, looking up and out the front windshields it didn't seem too crazy... I mean we knew all the proceedures had been covered... gear were down, flaps in the proper setting... etc. We're just going damn fast trying to keep the field in visual...
At one point though... if became very apparent this was stupid...
From our required knowledge of the aircraft I knew the max angle of bank in the NATOPS manual was something like 40 or 45 degrees (this was 1990 so forgive my memory) with gear and flaps down.
While cranking the last left hand turn onto final I knew we were exceeding that.
"But those NATOPS manuals are written with some padding in them right? We're still cool!"
That was my attitude...
I was on the right hand side of the plane... the high side. The other student to my left reached across the aisle and hit me and said...
"Are you seeing this shit?"
He leaned back so I could look left and see out his little passenger window... and the tops of the pine trees looked like they were 30-40 feet of the tip of the port wingtip, and from my angle it honestly looked like I was looking straight down. It looked close to 90 degrees angle of bank.
In my mind I could clearly picture the 40-45 or whatever degree pic in our study guide for the T47 in landing configuration.
Now, I am sure we were more than 40ft over the pines. And I'm pretty sure we weren't in a full on 90degree left bank... but we were definitely outside what was "legal" and by the book. And we all know crap like that is exactly how you crash on final. A tight dirty turn
It was straight up seat-of-the-pants-Maverick-shit. Eventually that bites you in the ass.
At least that old contracted pilot entertaining us students made it home for his dinner guest! Phew!
You need the second pilot to remind you that you're still at 250 and clean 8 NM from the threshold on a visual approach. "Uhh cap, you want me to start putting some flaps in?" Also need another brain to ask "you sure you want me to do that right now?" as they call for flaps well above VFE.
The pilot flying/pilot monitoring schema works. My plane has 7 brains just for the flight controls. There need to be at least two on the flight deck.
I've seen so many of those accident reports where the root problem was one pilot had a mental assumption that didn't match reality and would start out making minor errors and end up with a crash as the errors keep compounding.
It's really hard to break out of your assumptions until someone challenges them.
This is true in all disasters. It's called the internal narrative, where people are picturing what's happening and deciding how to respond...but sometimes that internal narrative is completely wrong, and their responses to it are useless or even make things worse.
Doing the river visual into DCA and I'm pretty chuffed as it's going along real nice. F/O chimes in at a few miles final, "Would you like the gear?" Shit
I think you're allowed to have a single pilot in the cockpit during bathroom breaks, but not a single person. I.e. if one of the pilots need to leave, a stewardess etc. stays in the cockpit in there meantime.
Because of the Germanwings massacre/suicide.
Airlines don’t care.
Corporations have zero problem gambling with the safety of their customers lives if it’s more profitable.
We’re all just numbers in a spreadsheet to them.
It's not a gamble. They've had someone run the numbers. If every airplane flight drops a pilot salary they could afford to pay for whatever the consequences are and still have left over to bump executive bonuses.
Probably even more than 50% savings. All of a sudden the job market is over saturated with pilots since you have double as you need. You lay-off all your pilots and rehire from a different airline. The new pilots have to accept less than 100% current market salary due to that competition. The new pilot salary would fall between 50-100% of current let’s say 75% for math.
So you drop from 200% salary down to 75% salary with one pilot. A savings of of 1.25 pilot salary. Airlines pocket all that cash and don’t lower ticket prices.
It might even be more since the airlines can use their new stronger position to weaken the pilot union.
Honestly this is why federal regulations protect worker rights. Union negotiations can only go so far, and the shareholders will bitch and moan to be more efficient. They can’t if it’s the fucking law.
This leads to bigger problems the CEO & board of directors don't care about. Look at US railroads right now. They cut one engineer by combining trains up to 5 miles long under Precision Scheduled Railroading. That also means freight is delayed because trains cannot bypass one another at that size, rail companies refuse to upgrade their system, and throws a wrench into freight crew management.
No no no see we have this new AI auto pilot when somthing goes wrong is pops out of the steering wheel and blows up to take control, although sometimes it will deflate but can be reblown up manually
Why put the expensive pilot on the plane, when you can put the trainee there? That way, the pilot can use Zoom to "fly" multiple planes at the same time.
Don't give them ideas. Pretty soon we'll just have rooms of "pilots" remoting into plane after plane just to takeoff or land, flip on autopilot and jump into the next one.
Unbelievable that this is even being considered. Airlines that allow only one pilot in the cockpit should be banned from US airspace.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
> Aviation authorities swiftly implemented new recommendations from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that required two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times,[4] but by 2017, Germanwings and other German airlines had dropped the rule.
Don't worry they fixed it.
The germanwings tragedy was made possible by a 9/11 era rule that made the cockpit unable to be opened from the outside. Basically every safety rule that you institute makes other issues that you can’t always predict. You got to be careful. I think the US still follows the 2 in the cockpit rule cause I always see a stewardess go into the cockpit when one of the pilots goes to the bathroom.
For all the grief that Ryanair get, this was their SOP well before this incident, and still stands to this day- if a pilot steps out, someone else from the crew steps in.
I talk shit on Ryanair, but their safety record is excellent.
‘ In its 37 years of existence, there have been zero passenger or crew member fatalities.’
It's not strictly because of suicidal pilots that we should have two pilots. I remember a foreign airliner crashed because one pilot was rushed through training and he wasn't qualified yet they approved him. Then there were a lot of communication failures between the pilots that led to mechanical failures and the crash. There's a video of it flying lopsided over a freeway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 It was actually the copilot on that flight. Locked the captain out of the cockpit while he went to the lavatory.
Same in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
Forgot one more in Africa. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAM\_Mozambique\_Airlines\_Flight\_470](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAM_Mozambique_Airlines_Flight_470)
That Germanwings one always fucked with me.
Far as they could tell he had researched suicide methods prior to that flight but there was no direct indication he'd planned to crash that one in particular. Supposedly in the flight recorder he has a seeming change of attitude, shortly after locks the pilot out, then immediately began the descent to crash the plane and never said or did anything until it hit the ground. Just steady breathing, cold as ice.
Scary to think he may have just decided mid-flight to do it and almost roboticly went through with it. Wonder if he was just waiting for the opportunity for the year or so he was co-piloting flights and that was the first chance, or if he genuinely did it on impulse.
There was a discovery that he was practicing extreme settings on the auto pilot on the flight just prior to the fatal one. I think it was earlier that day.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32604552
Wow that changes everything about my perception of it if the way the article words it is true. He practiced programming the autopilot to do the decent he did same day he committed the act? Damn.
It's like people who dive or drive into oncoming traffic. Or that one guy who dove off a Disneyland parking garage in front of some kids.
Like I get being on the brink, I do. In 2006 I was right there. But there's a difference between being depressed and committing homicide and the line is drawn at just being inconsiderate. Even if you don't kill those people, you've just traumatized perfect strangers. They didn't ask to be a part in this. They didn't do anything to you. They were just going about their day and now they have to spend the next decade or so in therapy because some random person turned into asphalt paste in front of them.
I was there too. The thoughts were that I wanted to end my suffering and not have the people I loved have to be stuck dealing with me; that I was such a huge disappointment that they’d be better off without me.
The thought was never “let me take them out with me.”
I saw a story where the captain had a heart attack after takeoff, if there wasn't a copilot that plane would be done for. Two people in the cockpit should remain standard
Don’t forget the time when one pilot left the cockpit and the other pilot, who was hiding the fact that his doctor had said he was not fit to fly due to suicidal ideation, crashed the plane killing 150 people.
Especially with doors that can't be open from outside.
Small plane single pilot deaths leaving untrained passengers to land have been an issue. Not to mention [this incident](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/22/envoy-air-says-pilot-who-was-reported-incapacitated-during-flight-has-died.html)
You get a skeleton crew, YOU get a skeleton crew, EVERYONE GETS A SKELE-AAAAHHHHHH WE’RE GOING DOWN IS THERE A DOCTOR OR A PILOT ONBOARD LORD HAVE MERCY
Ford did a cost-benefit analysis on the Pinto. When it was found out that they had done it, awards for lawsuits skyrocketed, invalidating the assumed “cost per death” assumption in the analysis.
I thought that happened with the Bronco II? They knew it wasn't wide enough to prevent it from rolling over during tight turns, but to fix that would have forced them to delay it's release by a couple years and cede market share to their competitors.
Edit: damn, Ford did this with BOTH the Pinto and the Bronco!
Check it, bleed. Bro... was ON! Didn't trip. But the folks was freakin', Man.
Hey, and the pilots were laid to the bone, homes. So blood hammered out and jammed jet ship. Tightened that bad sucker inside the runway like a mother. Shit..
“Good afternoon passengers, we’re cruising at about 32,000 ft and should be arriving in Dallas right on time. In other news, do you think my mother in law should have to pay for her own hotel room when she visits because she can’t stop snooping through our bedroom, or should I, quote, ‘just get over it, it’s only 4 days’? Push your call button now to vote for hotel.”
Every now and then on red eyes when I make the first announcement I'll just say something like "you guys wanna hear me right now about as much as a loud bang, so we'll keep the announcements to a minimum if you remain safely buckled in.
I think the main issue is the pilot shortage. It takes a lot of work to become an airline pilot, something like 1500 flight hours before you can fly a commercial plane, on top of mandatory retirement at 65.
Pilots are a commodity, and it’s expensive to become one.
Pay more. Attract talent. People will want to become pilots if the pay is better. Profits will suffer and that is the only reason it hasn’t happened yet
What they need to do is sponsor more apprenticeships and trainings full stop. Some smaller airlines are already doing this. The barrier to become a pilot is an astronomical amount of time
And money.
Lock them in a 6 year contract and give them
A full ride. But that requires money and the CEO needs a new yatch :(
This is the solution, airlines need to start training new pilots. Hire qualified people and get them apprenticed and trained to fly. This usually has an advantage of locking them into lower salary rates for a while to recover the losses during paid training periods. My company has to do this as it’s extremely rare to hire someone already trained in our field.
Train employees? Noooo. The plan was for every field to abolish training, and entry level roles, and require that all employees have 5-10 years of relevant professional experience. Because that will be sustainable.
Yeah, honestly, outside of being a former Air Force pilot, I have no idea what the process for getting certified, and logging the hours to get those certifications for a commercial jetliner is, but I can't imagine it's cheap given how much it costs to get training hours in much smaller aircraft.
If there is a shortage, it has to do with the market laws of supply and demand and airlines don't feel like paying market price for pilots (training included) so they go crying to the regulators instead. Which brings me back to my original comment. Tits. Up.
Yes, but that’s not as insurmountable a problem as everyone makes it out to be. United has already [started flight training](https://atpflightschool.com/airlines/united-airlines-aviate-pilot-program.html?gclid=CjwKCAiA-dCcBhBQEiwAeWidtXfoPP1NNrJfN4VzLmXXEWAMKuM-iIIiIt_gXgayFS7Dccf9Z6Jc6hoCnOEQAvD_BwE) as a means of solving their own staffing shortage. It’s a very straightforward program with tuition reimbursement and a clear path to being a commercial pilot. For the problems it solves the airline, the cost is probably minimal.
The airline's argument is *initially* for cargo planes.
Let me ask you this: Does it being a cargo plane keep people on the *ground* safe? If the single-pilot dies, you now have what is effectively a giant flying bomb that could crash *anywhere*, and what happens when one falls into the middle of a high density area like a major city?
Pilots are rightly protesting this, but honestly everyone who just doesn't want aircraft falling out the sky randomly should be protesting this. Absurd idea that only benefits the airlines who created the pilot shortage by their nearsightedness and stupidity, and now they're asking us to all sacrifice our safety to save them. Screw that. Screw them.
All it takes is someone going through a divorce, debt, mental health, etc and suddenly you have a multi ton bullet careening into down town.
Another person can spot the signs before it’s a problem.
We seriously need to do something about the goddam airlines. It's a necessary mode of transportation, and the only changes they ever make reduce passengers' comfort and convenience. Remember when the government granted them billions in covid relief funds on the promise they'd make things better, and what did they do? Buy back their own stock! Fuck these guys! Flying these days is torture.
They actually bought their stock back before the covid relief payments, which i find to be pretty rich, if i spent all my money then why cant i just ask the government for a couple billion?
If the government has to bail out a company because it’s so vital that it can’t be left to fail, then it should be done in the form of that company’s stock. US government now owns a majority of your company? Tough shit, should’ve managed your finances better like the rest of us have to do.
Remember when baggage fees for all passengers were introduced in 2008 in order to help airline companies ~~survive the recession~~ make even more money without having to actually cut costs or compensate for rising fuel prices? And they just never went away, even when the recession passed and fuel prices dropped? $5.8 *billion* in luggage fees were collected in 2019, it's a core feature of the system now.
It's because their own lives are never the cost. They have been shielded, protected and kept away from their own expenses, thus they never HAVE any risk or cost for what they do.
Even when they commit crimes, it "was the company" and they get to laugh off into the sunset while some 1.6 million dollar fine totally teaches them **a** lesson about raking in billions for slaughtering peasants.
As long as the costs and risks are not carved into their own flesh, as long as they are protected from all accountability, why would they ever stop?
I mean, it used to be illegal for twin engine planes to fly long haul overwater flights. Now those rules have been loosened significantly because engines are more reliable.
That’s one of the reasons why 3 and 4 engined planes are so rare these days.
That being said…the plane ain’t gonna fly itself if the single pilot has a failure. Doesn’t leave much margin for error.
Not a pilot myself so I don’t know if autopilot or remote piloting has the degree of reliability required to have a single pilot…
What I came here to say. Rail companies have been trying to do the same thing. So when a train 1.5-3 miles long going 55 mph, has its only operator pass out because they refuse to give him sick days, the train can derail tanks of chlorine gas that are capable of wiping out a few blocks of the surrounding cities population. But at least they save a few bucks in the process.
https://thehill.com/homenews/3539221-how-often-do-trains-derail-more-than-you-think/
"From 1990, the first year the BTS began tracking derailments and injuries on a yearly basis, to 2021, there have been 54,539 accidents in which a train derailed. That’s an average of 1,704 derailments per year."
That's a few.
Corporations are fucking sociopathic man. No sane human being makes that choice, but introduce profit motive, and suddenly they're like "okay but how MUCH of a risk?"
Germanwings Flight 9525 has entered the chat
In all seriousness this is a good way to get American airliners banned from flying internationally if this isn't only domestic.
As an airline pilot, I think we’re more likely to go from two to zero than we are from two to one, at least as far as large commercial airliners are concerned.
Perhaps (just maybe) going from needing two pilots in the flight deck during long-range cruise to one (low workload phase), but again, there are limits and other challenges. Thunderstorms happen. System malfunctions happen. You need to understand that one professional making unilateral decisions is inherently riskier. Computers also don’t need to be perfect. They just need to be better than humans. There will come a time when that’s definitely true. Just not yet.
That will likely be some kinda far-off point in the future, a decade or two (no idea) after mass adoption of full self-driving cars, etc. where zero pilots will make sense. There is also a ton of tech in airplanes now that does things automatically, **if it is programmed/set-up correctly.** Route changes happen. Weather needs to be avoided. There are bugs in the system as things are updated. Based on the small (and big) malfunctions I’ve seen so many times in my own career, I’m confident that the more complex/larger you go, the harder this challenge will be.
Consider all the variables there are on the road, with a fixed surface with the ability to just stop if something goes wrong, and carmakers are still having such a hard time getting it right. That gives me confidence for the short to medium term that my job will still be around for a while longer. You can’t just pull over or stop in the sky. In the long term, **absolutely**, there will be no “pilots”, or at least not in the traditional sense. Yes there are drones and remotely piloted aircraft, that are already near fully-autonomous, but these operate in some very controlled circumstances, under pre-defined routes, don’t need to interact or play nice with other aircraft or air traffic control, and can be “sacrificed” if things go really sideways, with the loss being mostly financial.
We already have single-pilot airplanes. Smaller planes or cargo, etc. They **are** higher risk. Not only for the chance of incapacitation (medical, physiological, etc) but because when someone is operating an aircraft independently, they are more likely to take more little risks, or cut corners. Sure it might be recorded and they are reprimanded later, but human psychology is a funny thing. We are less likely to do something stupid, when we know we have another professional sitting right beside us, who knows better, and doesn’t want their own license (or lives) on the line. They might grumble and complain, but they’ll say let’s go around and make another stabilized approach/landing, rather than trying to salvage a kinda bad/unstable one, for example.
Would you feel ok if someone on the ground (or a computer) was in remote control of your life in the air? They don’t really have as much of a vested interest in your (or their) survival, do they?
Anyone can make an error, especially when they are tired. Having two sets of eyes and two sets of hands monitoring flight is a very important safety feature. I will seriously rethink flying if they move to this model.
The year is 20XX, airlines have successfully gotten rid of pilots by remotely outsourcing the piloting of their planes to players of Microsoft Flight Simulator 20XX in the comfort of their homes. Call centers in India have converted themselves to pilot centers, and remote pilots are paid $2/hr on average.
As someone with many hours in MSFS… terrible idea. 400 people lost their lives from my recent run in with a bug.
My plane plummeting to the ground at 700kts because I dropped my controller while reaching for a dorito and the stick is pushed up.
Flying into a category 5 hurricane just to check out the live weather effects.
So, did the Dorito survive?
No but it was the last survivor.
Software bug or was there a spider on your keyboard?
What airlines are advocating this so I can avoid them!?
If it works for one, then eventually all.
Yea but who is spearheading this turbo bullshit?
Lobbying is generally done by a group or groups they all pay into to deny culpability.
Does lobbying politicians = legal form of bribing? Not from the US, hence the question.
Kinda. In its most basic form, it's a way for interest groups that may be individually too small to afford travel to DC or would be easily ignored to pool resources in order to make legislators aware of common interests - say dairy farmers who want to let their legislators know that imported Martian feed is killing their cows or something. One farmer complaining, easily ignored. A lobbying group, more likely to get attention. In practice however... Yeah, it tends to become legal bribery. Edit: Cell phones make for typos.
You know United is one of them.
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As a pilot in a two pilot aircraft, I think this is a terrible idea.
As a pilot in a single pilot aircraft who operates under regulation and SOP that we will always fly two pilot, I also think this is a terrible idea.
That’s what I don’t get. Most operators even flying PC-12s fly two crew due to optics and insurance reasons. I can’t see how airlines will get away with this.
Planes will have to be 100% autonomous with no input from a person required at any phase of flight in order for this to make sense. Only when the human being in the cockpit *is* the backup redundancy can they remove the other human. As it currently stands, emergency checklists are already task saturating for both human pilots to complete together. No one would want to be a pilot if you're 1 stuck gear or flaps away from having a shitty fucking day because you had to perform a full emergency landing by your goddamned self. And those scenarios aren't even terribly dangerous! Let alone the doomed shit that pilots were only able to salvage because of experience and CRM like Gimli, UA232, and the Hudson.
I’m not okay with a single point of failure considering a pilot died just this year while flying and his copilot had to turn the plane around and land.
It's not just that, in an emergency there is A LOT that must be done in a short period of time. One person just isn't enough.
There’s a lot of buttons and switches in these planes
And a shitton of manuals which they do sometimes have to consult in an emergency.
Exactly. In an emergency it's usually one pilot checking the manuals, and the other flying the plane. WTF do they want them to do? Just trust the autopilot while not monitoring it??
I’d like to know which airlines are calling for this change, so I know which ones to avoid.
My guess would be the one that rhymes with spirit
Ah Fear-it Airlines!
>Just trust the autopilot while not monitoring it?? Is tesla making planes now?
“How do you expect me to switch all these switches and push all these buttons?”
Don't worry, the airlines are talking to Staples. They're just going to get them to mount an "EASY" button in the cockpit.
Communication alone is one person's job. And that person had better be a pilot who can know exactly what the pilot is currently doing to minimize in-cabin miscommunication.
There's a reason every critical system on a plane has at least one backup. And *pilots are absolutely a critical system*.
This is why we have the concept of a copilot to begin with, because we already had this problem and found out that having a single pilot is a really damn stupid idea.
1. Now, the stewardess has to take an online "crash-course" once a year to land the plane in the event of a single-pilot failure. 2. Or, we could have the baggage handler fly the plane with a single pilot overseeing several aircraft, via a black and white monitor at home. 3. Perhaps we could ask the passengers to have a go at it, and reduce the ticket by 2% if they willingly participate in the flight/operation. I'm a great CEO!
Didn’t we seal up the cockpits so they can only be opened from the inside? If the only pilot dies, how does the steward get in?
I was just thinking that too. If they think they're saving money by reducing the pilots, they're about to be sad from the lawsuits of shit falling out of the air from easily preventable negligence. I will NEVER fly on an airplane with only one pilot. Edit: Oh and, there has been times of pilots being DRUNK! Imagine your one and ONLY pilot intoxicated...
>I will NEVER fly on an airplane with only one pilot. If it happens, it will be all or nothing. You'll either never have to worry about it, or never fly commercial again.
I'd drive, take a train, a boat, WALK across a country rather than be in a deathtrap with a dude that might be taken out by something as simple as a bad meal.
I love travel, but I might have to be prepared for that tough call.
I'll feel bad for the people who have to travel for work.
If all the pilots on a flight die then you can chalk it up to an act of god and avoid the insurance fees!
Kind of off topic but I've been told that parts of the flight crew are given a special code they can use to enter the cockpit, but if the person in the cockpit hits some kind of 'cancel' button within 30 seconds the door stays locked. This way the pilots can keep people out, but if something happens to them the flight crew can open the door after 30 seconds or so. There was a flight at some point in living memory where the suicidal pilot waited for his copilot to go the bathroom then took the whole plane down with him. Flight crew kept trying to enter the code and he kept locking them out.
That Germanwings flight is so sad :( You could also be talking about the Air Egypt flight but Germanwings sounded more accurate.
I think if you’re going to off yourself that’s your choice. But what made that bozo believe he had the right to kill 150 others in the process is beyond me. Like, I get it. You want to end your life. Why involve others in your personal decision like this though? Guy was a psycho.
Maybe he wanted attention. Nobody would’ve cared if he just killed himself, but look at us, talking about him even 7 years later, because he killed many others. Now he won’t be forgotten so easily
Except nobody remembers his name or anything about him personally.
I remember that he's a sack of crap! He's got that going for him!
Your understanding is correct. Fundamentally, there is no way to design a system where a person who has absolute authority to maneuver the aircraft as they want to might use that authority in a bad way. Historically speaking, the overwhelming majority of threats to safety of aircraft posed by somebody on the plane have been posed by passengers, and in very rare cases non-pilot flight crew. Pilots are entrusted with flying the plane, so control mechanisms are focused on ensuring that they can do that safely despite potential external threats. The case you are remembering was a 2015 Germanwings flight (flight 9525) where a co-pilot had been declared unfit to work because he was suicidal, but hadn't reported that to his employer, and there wasn't a mechanism where his doctor needed to. He waited until the captain left the cockpit and then locked everybody out while he drove the plane into the ground. Something similar is suspected to have happened with Malaysian 370.
As far as I remember (or I'm imagining it), as a consequence of that, a flight attendant has to be in the cockpit when one of the pilots leave temporarily. Was that only Lufthansa, or was that more widely adopted?
It's been that way in the US (at least two crew members in the cockpit at all times) since at least 9/11. I actually don't know if Lufthansa changed their policy or not, or if EASA changed theirs. E: it looks like both the German airlines and EASA did impose a two-person rule after the Germanwings crash but have since repealed it https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-crash-germanwings-cockpit/german-airlines-scrap-post-germanwings-two-person-cockpit-rule-idUSKBN17U1R1
My moms been a flight attendant for 30 years, she can not fly a plane
No, the cockpit door can be opened from the outside if necessary, just not if a person inside the cockpit doesn't want it to be. In general, the locking mechanism for cockpit doors has three modes that are controlled by the pilots from the flight deck: unlocked, normal, and locked. Unlocked is exactly what it sounds like. Normal means that the door is locked, but can be opened from outside with the appropriate code. The code is on a 30 second delay, with a buzzer that sounds in the cockpit to alert pilots someone outside has requested entry. If there is no response at all within 30 seconds, the door unlocks briefly. This allows the remainder of the flight crew to address a situation where a lone pilot becomes incapacitated in the cockpit. (In the United States, the FAA requires that the cockpit be occupied by at least two crew members at all times, so that this feature really isn't that necessary, but in other countries, at least until relatively recently, regulations do allow a single pilot to be left alone in the cockpit if the other pilot, for example, needs to leave to use the bathroom.) If the people inside the cockpit want to deny external access, (including if a code to enter has been properly input), they switch the door control to lock. In this case, the door will not respond to outside unlock requests. This mode is itself time-limited to somewhere between a 5 and 20 minute delay (the exact value may be airline configurable or it may be required by regulation; I'm not sure what the driver here is). After the end of this time period, the door will automatically revert to normal mode, but people in the cockpit can reset the timer by toggling their switch back to normal mode briefly and then enabling lock again. The time limitation is again a backup for a situation where a pilot has become incapacitated.
Ok ok, if you don't want to fly on a plane with a single pilot, you can upgrade to a "pilot redundant flight" for $250. This perk is included if you get our Super Safe Visa Rewards card or our annual "reduced casualty subscription plan" which also includes a parachute in addition to your personal item on all flights!!
^^^*cums...* CEO here, are you interested in an unpaid internship?
Seems more economical to set up an Indian call center and let them fly the plane remotely when there is an issue. - Spirit CEO aspirant
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I’ve played MS Flight Simulator, I’m totally a pilot now!
Elon, please don’t buy an airline
Companies will spend millions of dollars to re-learn the mistakes they already learned, if they think they can save a buck fifty an hour.
If the second pilot is only "necessary" one every X flights, they'll save money in the end. They know what X is.
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Would you press the button? You gain a couple 10 million USD but every so often 100-500 people die. Airlines: YES YES YES YES YES YES! Can we hire someone to repeatedly press the button for us for 10$ an hour?
Not just the airlines. Basically everybody who is in charge of a company at the top of their industry got there by being this way.
Even just letting one pilot be alone in the cockpit is a bad idea.
"Safety regulations are written in blood." No matter how many times you tell a child a stove is hot, they just HAVE to touch it to be sure.
Virtually every regulation is written in blood. Just things like cancer or food poisoning are less dramatic than plane crashes.
Like the Germanwings flight where the pilot went to the restroom and the copilot locked him out and flew the plane into a mountain.
I have some experience with large machines run by small teams. The people were good enough that together they could handle any single problem. The thing that was gonna get us was two or more problems happening at the same time. At that point the team would have to break up and each individual was on their own with nobody to observe or double check the work. That's the point where trouble started, because if any one individual made a mistake that was going to shut us down. But a hundred people didn't have to die when that happened.
Two is one. One is none.
Protocol one: link to Pilot. Protocol two: uphold the mission. Protocol three: protect the Pilot.
Shut up. I’m not crying.
God I loved that game
I’ve seen plenty of movies where you can just tell a passenger what to do, I’m sure we are fine
They'll just institute Otto Pilot. Stewardess has to inflate him first, though.
Agree , two pilots are a bare minimum , shit even with two planes still have accidents... It's not even the critical case where one pilot becomes incapacitated that's the issue, it's that case that one pilot will miss some critical detail in a particular critical phase of flight leading to an bad outcome . Two pilots is much more than just a spare ,it's a second set of eyes, ears and brain to ensure safety. Also lets not forget automation works great when everything is normal, the minute some critical sensors or actuators fail, its just a dumb machine that can't improvise. Usually the autopilot disconnects the minute the airplane goes outside some threshold, as is the case in adverse weather (Air France 447 , iced pitot tubes started a chain of events) or a mechanical/sensor fault (Mcas failures in max accidents) Finally today they have a pretty clear rule of never having just one pilot in the cockpit , even when the other takes a restroom break, now they are lobbying for one ..wtf
And just a second workstream. For example, often one pilot will concentrate on flying the plane, while the other works through the emergency checklists. For example, in the Hudson River crash, the captain (Sully) focused on flying and communicating with emergency responders, but at the same time the first offer (Skiles) was trying to restart the engines. If Sully had had to spend any amount of brain power on the engine checklist, it likely would have been a much worse outcome.
I was on a training flight in the Navy. We were in a T47 Cessna Citation coming back to Pensacola... trying to beat really bad weather. Bad idea. Myself and another student Navigator were in the back of the plane on our own channel talking. Up front was a retired military pilot, with another student Navigator... and it was becoming very stupid and hectic in the last few moments. This was a classic example of "pilot error" if we would have crashed. The older pilot had already talked about how he had friends coming in for the weekend and we had to make it back. He didn't want to divert to someplace like Meridian Mississippi... so the race was on. Of course the student on these flights has to take charge of all radio comms and checklist. Approaching final the student was desperately trying to get the pilot to respond to prompts on checklist as we came in. There was a literal black wall of rain coming in about to cover the field. We were seconds from losing visual and the pilot was having to avoid the "wall" ... we were going substantially hotter than the normal approach.... the student next to me finally yelled out "JUST SHUT UP MAN!" over the closed circuit we were on in the back. Because we were all white knuckling as the pilot yanked and banked trying to get us lined up... As if on cue, the pilot yelled out "SON! I'M TRYING TO FLY THE PLANE!" We got it down on the runway and hydroplaned all over the place from the rain we landed into ... The student in back next to me was pissed. I thought it was sort of funny, but yeah, in retrospect it was all sorts of stupid and we easily could have stalled/crashed in the turn to final. (Bank well over 70degrees with gear and flaps down. Etc) The amount of stuff going on can easily overtask a single pilot in any situtaion that gets outside of normal ops.
Holy shit that is a scary story.
And like I said, it didn't piss me off till later. From way back in the rear of the Citation, looking up and out the front windshields it didn't seem too crazy... I mean we knew all the proceedures had been covered... gear were down, flaps in the proper setting... etc. We're just going damn fast trying to keep the field in visual... At one point though... if became very apparent this was stupid... From our required knowledge of the aircraft I knew the max angle of bank in the NATOPS manual was something like 40 or 45 degrees (this was 1990 so forgive my memory) with gear and flaps down. While cranking the last left hand turn onto final I knew we were exceeding that. "But those NATOPS manuals are written with some padding in them right? We're still cool!" That was my attitude... I was on the right hand side of the plane... the high side. The other student to my left reached across the aisle and hit me and said... "Are you seeing this shit?" He leaned back so I could look left and see out his little passenger window... and the tops of the pine trees looked like they were 30-40 feet of the tip of the port wingtip, and from my angle it honestly looked like I was looking straight down. It looked close to 90 degrees angle of bank. In my mind I could clearly picture the 40-45 or whatever degree pic in our study guide for the T47 in landing configuration. Now, I am sure we were more than 40ft over the pines. And I'm pretty sure we weren't in a full on 90degree left bank... but we were definitely outside what was "legal" and by the book. And we all know crap like that is exactly how you crash on final. A tight dirty turn It was straight up seat-of-the-pants-Maverick-shit. Eventually that bites you in the ass. At least that old contracted pilot entertaining us students made it home for his dinner guest! Phew!
You need the second pilot to remind you that you're still at 250 and clean 8 NM from the threshold on a visual approach. "Uhh cap, you want me to start putting some flaps in?" Also need another brain to ask "you sure you want me to do that right now?" as they call for flaps well above VFE. The pilot flying/pilot monitoring schema works. My plane has 7 brains just for the flight controls. There need to be at least two on the flight deck.
I've seen so many of those accident reports where the root problem was one pilot had a mental assumption that didn't match reality and would start out making minor errors and end up with a crash as the errors keep compounding. It's really hard to break out of your assumptions until someone challenges them.
This is true in all disasters. It's called the internal narrative, where people are picturing what's happening and deciding how to respond...but sometimes that internal narrative is completely wrong, and their responses to it are useless or even make things worse.
Doing the river visual into DCA and I'm pretty chuffed as it's going along real nice. F/O chimes in at a few miles final, "Would you like the gear?" Shit
I think you're allowed to have a single pilot in the cockpit during bathroom breaks, but not a single person. I.e. if one of the pilots need to leave, a stewardess etc. stays in the cockpit in there meantime. Because of the Germanwings massacre/suicide.
Yeah but think about the money savings for the big airlines. We can risk the lives of 100+ people just to save $150k a year.
Airlines don’t care. Corporations have zero problem gambling with the safety of their customers lives if it’s more profitable. We’re all just numbers in a spreadsheet to them.
It's not a gamble. They've had someone run the numbers. If every airplane flight drops a pilot salary they could afford to pay for whatever the consequences are and still have left over to bump executive bonuses.
Probably even more than 50% savings. All of a sudden the job market is over saturated with pilots since you have double as you need. You lay-off all your pilots and rehire from a different airline. The new pilots have to accept less than 100% current market salary due to that competition. The new pilot salary would fall between 50-100% of current let’s say 75% for math. So you drop from 200% salary down to 75% salary with one pilot. A savings of of 1.25 pilot salary. Airlines pocket all that cash and don’t lower ticket prices. It might even be more since the airlines can use their new stronger position to weaken the pilot union.
Honestly this is why federal regulations protect worker rights. Union negotiations can only go so far, and the shareholders will bitch and moan to be more efficient. They can’t if it’s the fucking law.
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This leads to bigger problems the CEO & board of directors don't care about. Look at US railroads right now. They cut one engineer by combining trains up to 5 miles long under Precision Scheduled Railroading. That also means freight is delayed because trains cannot bypass one another at that size, rail companies refuse to upgrade their system, and throws a wrench into freight crew management.
Yep. Railroads are so deregulated they barely function. Airlines want to do the same now. It's so dumb.
Biden should have threatened to nationalize the railroads. They would have blinked first.
Ceo fly private jets and will continue to use two pilots
If this passes, I hope there's a way to tell which airlines and which flights are staffed by a single pilot.
No no no see we have this new AI auto pilot when somthing goes wrong is pops out of the steering wheel and blows up to take control, although sometimes it will deflate but can be reblown up manually
Of course they are. Next there will be a pilot trainee on a Zoom call to a real pilot, and two dogs with trays tied to their backs for attendants.
Why put the expensive pilot on the plane, when you can put the trainee there? That way, the pilot can use Zoom to "fly" multiple planes at the same time.
Don't give them ideas. Pretty soon we'll just have rooms of "pilots" remoting into plane after plane just to takeoff or land, flip on autopilot and jump into the next one.
Unbelievable that this is even being considered. Airlines that allow only one pilot in the cockpit should be banned from US airspace. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
Germanwings story still scares me whenever I fly.
> Aviation authorities swiftly implemented new recommendations from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency that required two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times,[4] but by 2017, Germanwings and other German airlines had dropped the rule. Don't worry they fixed it.
The germanwings tragedy was made possible by a 9/11 era rule that made the cockpit unable to be opened from the outside. Basically every safety rule that you institute makes other issues that you can’t always predict. You got to be careful. I think the US still follows the 2 in the cockpit rule cause I always see a stewardess go into the cockpit when one of the pilots goes to the bathroom.
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Why can't there just be a code to get in that only pilots know
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For all the grief that Ryanair get, this was their SOP well before this incident, and still stands to this day- if a pilot steps out, someone else from the crew steps in.
And there's a good chance there's a pilot flying jump. They may not be certified for that particular plane, but they know way way more than you do.
I talk shit on Ryanair, but their safety record is excellent. ‘ In its 37 years of existence, there have been zero passenger or crew member fatalities.’
It's not strictly because of suicidal pilots that we should have two pilots. I remember a foreign airliner crashed because one pilot was rushed through training and he wasn't qualified yet they approved him. Then there were a lot of communication failures between the pilots that led to mechanical failures and the crash. There's a video of it flying lopsided over a freeway.
"I'm going down and I'm taking all of you with me."
Yeah OK- or how about fucking NOT?? Good lord- maximizing profits is one thing but this has 'catastrophe' written all over it.
Next year's headline: Airlines rethinking single pilot flights after 210 killed in plane crash when pilot suffers heart attack
Or nose dives because suicidal. That happened.
That is the most selfish way to commit suicide I’ve heard of to date
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 It was actually the copilot on that flight. Locked the captain out of the cockpit while he went to the lavatory. Same in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
and the recent flight in China
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Eastern_Airlines_Flight_5735
Forgot one more in Africa. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAM\_Mozambique\_Airlines\_Flight\_470](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAM_Mozambique_Airlines_Flight_470)
I’ve already been scared of flying. I didn’t know suicide by commercial pilot was a thing.
Don't forget SilkAir 185. Which performed a maneuver that was impossible without manual control.
That Germanwings one always fucked with me. Far as they could tell he had researched suicide methods prior to that flight but there was no direct indication he'd planned to crash that one in particular. Supposedly in the flight recorder he has a seeming change of attitude, shortly after locks the pilot out, then immediately began the descent to crash the plane and never said or did anything until it hit the ground. Just steady breathing, cold as ice. Scary to think he may have just decided mid-flight to do it and almost roboticly went through with it. Wonder if he was just waiting for the opportunity for the year or so he was co-piloting flights and that was the first chance, or if he genuinely did it on impulse.
There was a discovery that he was practicing extreme settings on the auto pilot on the flight just prior to the fatal one. I think it was earlier that day. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32604552
Wow that changes everything about my perception of it if the way the article words it is true. He practiced programming the autopilot to do the decent he did same day he committed the act? Damn.
In the U.S. a flight attendant goes in the flight deck when a pilot needs a bathroom break, they need to try that.
IIRC, that rule became a thing because of the Germanwings flight.
…and was rescinded in 2017.
This is one of the most prevalent theories for the disappearance of MH370. It's saddening and sickening if the theory is true, to be honest.
It’s pretty much the only theory that makes any sense at all in the context of MH370.
It's like people who dive or drive into oncoming traffic. Or that one guy who dove off a Disneyland parking garage in front of some kids. Like I get being on the brink, I do. In 2006 I was right there. But there's a difference between being depressed and committing homicide and the line is drawn at just being inconsiderate. Even if you don't kill those people, you've just traumatized perfect strangers. They didn't ask to be a part in this. They didn't do anything to you. They were just going about their day and now they have to spend the next decade or so in therapy because some random person turned into asphalt paste in front of them.
I was there too. The thoughts were that I wanted to end my suffering and not have the people I loved have to be stuck dealing with me; that I was such a huge disappointment that they’d be better off without me. The thought was never “let me take them out with me.”
"Airline lobbyists push for limitations on liability lawsuit payouts."
I hate that this is probably true.
A far more believable headline...
I saw a story where the captain had a heart attack after takeoff, if there wasn't a copilot that plane would be done for. Two people in the cockpit should remain standard
Don’t forget the time when one pilot left the cockpit and the other pilot, who was hiding the fact that his doctor had said he was not fit to fly due to suicidal ideation, crashed the plane killing 150 people.
Especially with doors that can't be open from outside. Small plane single pilot deaths leaving untrained passengers to land have been an issue. Not to mention [this incident](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/22/envoy-air-says-pilot-who-was-reported-incapacitated-during-flight-has-died.html)
You get a skeleton crew, YOU get a skeleton crew, EVERYONE GETS A SKELE-AAAAHHHHHH WE’RE GOING DOWN IS THERE A DOCTOR OR A PILOT ONBOARD LORD HAVE MERCY
"Um, excuse me. We prefer softer language than that. Let's tell the people that this team runs lean." - McKinsey Consultants
McKinsey- as bad as Jones and Day.
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Ford did a cost-benefit analysis on the Pinto. When it was found out that they had done it, awards for lawsuits skyrocketed, invalidating the assumed “cost per death” assumption in the analysis.
I thought that happened with the Bronco II? They knew it wasn't wide enough to prevent it from rolling over during tight turns, but to fix that would have forced them to delay it's release by a couple years and cede market share to their competitors. Edit: damn, Ford did this with BOTH the Pinto and the Bronco!
Check it, bleed. Bro... was ON! Didn't trip. But the folks was freakin', Man. Hey, and the pilots were laid to the bone, homes. So blood hammered out and jammed jet ship. Tightened that bad sucker inside the runway like a mother. Shit..
Trust me you do not want me alone in the flight deck. I'll start making so many useless announcements just because I've got no one to talk to
“Good afternoon passengers, we’re cruising at about 32,000 ft and should be arriving in Dallas right on time. In other news, do you think my mother in law should have to pay for her own hotel room when she visits because she can’t stop snooping through our bedroom, or should I, quote, ‘just get over it, it’s only 4 days’? Push your call button now to vote for hotel.”
Honestly yep
I wish so much that things like this happened for real
Every now and then on red eyes when I make the first announcement I'll just say something like "you guys wanna hear me right now about as much as a loud bang, so we'll keep the announcements to a minimum if you remain safely buckled in.
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Let's talk about my current contract negotiations
Here I was thinking “it’ll be a nightmare trying to deal with ATC and the aircraft at the same time” but this seems way worse
‘Can I talk to you about your cars extended warranty’
If airlines are not able to operate with enough crew to manitain safety, just let them go tits up
I think the main issue is the pilot shortage. It takes a lot of work to become an airline pilot, something like 1500 flight hours before you can fly a commercial plane, on top of mandatory retirement at 65. Pilots are a commodity, and it’s expensive to become one.
Pay more. Attract talent. People will want to become pilots if the pay is better. Profits will suffer and that is the only reason it hasn’t happened yet
What they need to do is sponsor more apprenticeships and trainings full stop. Some smaller airlines are already doing this. The barrier to become a pilot is an astronomical amount of time And money. Lock them in a 6 year contract and give them A full ride. But that requires money and the CEO needs a new yatch :(
This is the solution, airlines need to start training new pilots. Hire qualified people and get them apprenticed and trained to fly. This usually has an advantage of locking them into lower salary rates for a while to recover the losses during paid training periods. My company has to do this as it’s extremely rare to hire someone already trained in our field.
Train employees? Noooo. The plan was for every field to abolish training, and entry level roles, and require that all employees have 5-10 years of relevant professional experience. Because that will be sustainable.
Yeah, honestly, outside of being a former Air Force pilot, I have no idea what the process for getting certified, and logging the hours to get those certifications for a commercial jetliner is, but I can't imagine it's cheap given how much it costs to get training hours in much smaller aircraft.
If there is a shortage, it has to do with the market laws of supply and demand and airlines don't feel like paying market price for pilots (training included) so they go crying to the regulators instead. Which brings me back to my original comment. Tits. Up.
Yes, but that’s not as insurmountable a problem as everyone makes it out to be. United has already [started flight training](https://atpflightschool.com/airlines/united-airlines-aviate-pilot-program.html?gclid=CjwKCAiA-dCcBhBQEiwAeWidtXfoPP1NNrJfN4VzLmXXEWAMKuM-iIIiIt_gXgayFS7Dccf9Z6Jc6hoCnOEQAvD_BwE) as a means of solving their own staffing shortage. It’s a very straightforward program with tuition reimbursement and a clear path to being a commercial pilot. For the problems it solves the airline, the cost is probably minimal.
I'd rather see a law saying if any air accident occurs because only one pilot was in the cockpit the CEOs go to prison for life without parole.
The airline's argument is *initially* for cargo planes. Let me ask you this: Does it being a cargo plane keep people on the *ground* safe? If the single-pilot dies, you now have what is effectively a giant flying bomb that could crash *anywhere*, and what happens when one falls into the middle of a high density area like a major city? Pilots are rightly protesting this, but honestly everyone who just doesn't want aircraft falling out the sky randomly should be protesting this. Absurd idea that only benefits the airlines who created the pilot shortage by their nearsightedness and stupidity, and now they're asking us to all sacrifice our safety to save them. Screw that. Screw them.
Plus we have seen planes being used as weapons.
All it takes is someone going through a divorce, debt, mental health, etc and suddenly you have a multi ton bullet careening into down town. Another person can spot the signs before it’s a problem.
Cargo planes can also be *huge*.
We seriously need to do something about the goddam airlines. It's a necessary mode of transportation, and the only changes they ever make reduce passengers' comfort and convenience. Remember when the government granted them billions in covid relief funds on the promise they'd make things better, and what did they do? Buy back their own stock! Fuck these guys! Flying these days is torture.
They actually bought their stock back before the covid relief payments, which i find to be pretty rich, if i spent all my money then why cant i just ask the government for a couple billion?
If the government has to bail out a company because it’s so vital that it can’t be left to fail, then it should be done in the form of that company’s stock. US government now owns a majority of your company? Tough shit, should’ve managed your finances better like the rest of us have to do.
I’m so on board with this. Also, Corporate officers need to start being imprisoned for fraud & defrauding government & taxpayers
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Privatization of profits, sozialization of losses :)
Remember when baggage fees for all passengers were introduced in 2008 in order to help airline companies ~~survive the recession~~ make even more money without having to actually cut costs or compensate for rising fuel prices? And they just never went away, even when the recession passed and fuel prices dropped? $5.8 *billion* in luggage fees were collected in 2019, it's a core feature of the system now.
High speed rail at least through the populated corridors.
I’m just tired of CEOs “cutting costs” at the expense of human lives. Ever since Covid, I’ve been tired. We’re too far gone.
It's because their own lives are never the cost. They have been shielded, protected and kept away from their own expenses, thus they never HAVE any risk or cost for what they do. Even when they commit crimes, it "was the company" and they get to laugh off into the sunset while some 1.6 million dollar fine totally teaches them **a** lesson about raking in billions for slaughtering peasants. As long as the costs and risks are not carved into their own flesh, as long as they are protected from all accountability, why would they ever stop?
Most twin-engine jets can fly with only one engine, so should we do that to save a few bucks too?
Lol possibly in the future... switch off one engine once reached cruising altitude.
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I mean, it used to be illegal for twin engine planes to fly long haul overwater flights. Now those rules have been loosened significantly because engines are more reliable. That’s one of the reasons why 3 and 4 engined planes are so rare these days. That being said…the plane ain’t gonna fly itself if the single pilot has a failure. Doesn’t leave much margin for error. Not a pilot myself so I don’t know if autopilot or remote piloting has the degree of reliability required to have a single pilot…
Our safety be damned all for the almighty dollar
People are temporary. Money is forever. -Reebok or Nike idk
If this happens I will not fly on those flights
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What I came here to say. Rail companies have been trying to do the same thing. So when a train 1.5-3 miles long going 55 mph, has its only operator pass out because they refuse to give him sick days, the train can derail tanks of chlorine gas that are capable of wiping out a few blocks of the surrounding cities population. But at least they save a few bucks in the process.
https://thehill.com/homenews/3539221-how-often-do-trains-derail-more-than-you-think/ "From 1990, the first year the BTS began tracking derailments and injuries on a yearly basis, to 2021, there have been 54,539 accidents in which a train derailed. That’s an average of 1,704 derailments per year." That's a few.
There’s a reason flying has become safer and safer decade after decade, especially in the United States. Let’s not go backwards here.
Some number cruncher trying to calculate the savings vs the inevitable lawsuits.
Airlines that requested that should be audited for safety. WTF.
Corporations are fucking sociopathic man. No sane human being makes that choice, but introduce profit motive, and suddenly they're like "okay but how MUCH of a risk?"
What could possibly go wrong?
Pay your pilots more you fucking massive piles of shits.
I want to know which airlines.
No need to cross check your instruments with your copilot on final. God has a plan.
Germanwings Flight 9525 has entered the chat In all seriousness this is a good way to get American airliners banned from flying internationally if this isn't only domestic.
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Two is one. One is none.
As an airline pilot, I think we’re more likely to go from two to zero than we are from two to one, at least as far as large commercial airliners are concerned. Perhaps (just maybe) going from needing two pilots in the flight deck during long-range cruise to one (low workload phase), but again, there are limits and other challenges. Thunderstorms happen. System malfunctions happen. You need to understand that one professional making unilateral decisions is inherently riskier. Computers also don’t need to be perfect. They just need to be better than humans. There will come a time when that’s definitely true. Just not yet. That will likely be some kinda far-off point in the future, a decade or two (no idea) after mass adoption of full self-driving cars, etc. where zero pilots will make sense. There is also a ton of tech in airplanes now that does things automatically, **if it is programmed/set-up correctly.** Route changes happen. Weather needs to be avoided. There are bugs in the system as things are updated. Based on the small (and big) malfunctions I’ve seen so many times in my own career, I’m confident that the more complex/larger you go, the harder this challenge will be. Consider all the variables there are on the road, with a fixed surface with the ability to just stop if something goes wrong, and carmakers are still having such a hard time getting it right. That gives me confidence for the short to medium term that my job will still be around for a while longer. You can’t just pull over or stop in the sky. In the long term, **absolutely**, there will be no “pilots”, or at least not in the traditional sense. Yes there are drones and remotely piloted aircraft, that are already near fully-autonomous, but these operate in some very controlled circumstances, under pre-defined routes, don’t need to interact or play nice with other aircraft or air traffic control, and can be “sacrificed” if things go really sideways, with the loss being mostly financial. We already have single-pilot airplanes. Smaller planes or cargo, etc. They **are** higher risk. Not only for the chance of incapacitation (medical, physiological, etc) but because when someone is operating an aircraft independently, they are more likely to take more little risks, or cut corners. Sure it might be recorded and they are reprimanded later, but human psychology is a funny thing. We are less likely to do something stupid, when we know we have another professional sitting right beside us, who knows better, and doesn’t want their own license (or lives) on the line. They might grumble and complain, but they’ll say let’s go around and make another stabilized approach/landing, rather than trying to salvage a kinda bad/unstable one, for example. Would you feel ok if someone on the ground (or a computer) was in remote control of your life in the air? They don’t really have as much of a vested interest in your (or their) survival, do they?
Anyone can make an error, especially when they are tired. Having two sets of eyes and two sets of hands monitoring flight is a very important safety feature. I will seriously rethink flying if they move to this model.