I remember the promotion they ran with dollar fuel, 100LL priced at $1/gallon. I still have my receipt, and the tee shirt. Of course it was super busy during the promotion, but I wondered how such a large facility was constructed or could survive in such a small market.
Difficult business. What happened to the C172 “Redhawk” with the Continental’s 135-hp, 2.0 liter turbodiesel? Small market? Impractical? Irresponsible or gullible media hype?
A simulator can be effective for a couple of things for example instrument scan, learning GPS or autopilot buttonology. But learning basic flying skills - I don’t think so. It can never simulate the feel of the airplane. Since I started flying in 1975, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen a simulator sitting unused in a flight school - speaks for itself.
That’s bad news. They are great folks.
Unfortunately GA flying seems to gets more complicated, more expensive, but less respected in the public eye. Even my home airport is getting choked with urban sprawl (and noise complaints).
As long as airliners are flying people and not just cargo then I want the redundancy of two pilots, period. I would no more get on a plane and fly in heavy IMC conditions with only one engine than I would get on a plane with only one pilot. Two heads are better than one and two heartbeats are also better than one.
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This is an attempt by Airlines to save money over safety. When things go wrong which is very very rare the value of a second crew member is always evident. Just having another pilot in the cockpit to keep you in check and aware is worth it’s value.
Jeff J - I fly a 777 full of cargo. We fly to major population centers all over the world because that’s where the demand is. An accident on takeoff or landing over a densely populated area would have disastrous consequences for those on the ground. Single pilot airliners are a bad idea, no matter what is inside them.
John M - Every pilot makes mistakes on every flight. Some are very minor. Others have life threatening consequences (e.g.Dale Snodgrass). Yes, in an emergency or non-normal situation, having a second pilot is a must in order to ensure someone is actively flying the airplane while the other runs the checklist and communicates with ATC. But like you said, those instances are rare. The real value of a second pilot is to “error capture” the other pilot when every day mistakes are made on every flight.
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This is only a request to set standards for technology and operational standards. It is the first step in a long, long road. I expect that any approved single pilot operations for passenger carrying flights will be structured such that the single pilot will be the backup for the automation, not the other way around. The aircraft automation systems and the airspace control systems will need to be robust enough to allow this to happen.
There are already efforts under way for autonomous passenger operations using smaller eVTOL aircraft over short distances.
I agree that two pilots in the cockpit are better than one when things go bad but there have been cases where pilot error was the cause of fatal crashes even with two pilots in the cockpit. So, two pilot operation is not infallible.
Automation technology and maturity have a long way to go before single pilot operations will become reality. This request is only the first baby step.
Also, a couple of other fixes would be nice, like being able to edit your displayed name, not allowing more than one contributor to use the same displayed name, and maybe being able to again upload your picture.
Even though from a logical engineering standpoint automated aviation is the easier goal to reach, it probably will first take the successful real-world integration and broad public acceptance of full-automation cars before anyone is comfortable with the automated airliners idea.
And you notice more than one of the leading car automation R&D houses are pulling back from their rosy predictions that fully automated cars are just around the corner.
Oops, let’s stay on topic, please
Here’s what we actually do not know - the future. We know it will likely rhyme with the past, but we really don’t know what’s coming. We do not know how safe automation can make flight.
Here’s something we do know - regulators like the FAA are so slow it has become toxic. We now take more time to start projects than it used to take to finish them. The safety culture recently shut down the planet due to a LOT of bad decisions. The plans made in advance and the lessons learned from centuries of experience were ignored while government actors tried to benefit from the crisis. It’s likely done more harm than good.
I see here the inevitable knee jerk reaction of our community to innovation which is a product of nature and nurture. I suppose it’s okay because pilots don’t run the world.
Bottom line is, industry needs the regulators to set the goal posts or they cannot make the process work properly. It will save billions if we know the goal so that innovators and investors can take reasonable risks on whether to fund projects. We can not afford to waste resources creating machines that will become obsolete while regulators dance around trying to ensure they do not get blamed for any failures. Their dances now take years and decades.
On a side note. The horrible, distasteful thing we call money is a necessary construct to help us manage resources that not only improve lives but save them. Greed is the human failing we need to mitigate, and it’s in all of us. Careful throwing stones. Your house likely has windows.
The single pilot is only to be there if and when things go wrong. Otherwise he will never be needed.
If the pilot goes wrong first, then the airplane will bring him and the airplane home.
The odds of both the pilot and the airplane going wrong at the same time is so low as to be considered non existent. Probably less than the odds of two pilots going wrong at the same time.
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This is about nothing more than money. Increasing the bottom line by only one pilot instead of two. (aka; think of how much more money it adds to our bottom line) ALPA and other airline pilots groups will never agree to such a fool notion as this.
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Although very rare I have been in situations when two pilots is not enough.
Air France 447 shows the opposite – the combination of automation and humans isn’t foolproof. Both the automation and basic airmanship failed, with three people on the flight deck receiving and interpreting an incomplete set of inputs from the automation. What level of proficiency will we expect from a single safety pilot who is almost always just along for the ride?
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Better have a rabid dog in the cockpit to keep the pilot awake. Talk about a boring job. you’d have to double current pilot pay to get anyone to do it. So how much money would be saved?
Simple
Design and certify aircraft. Set route/ticket price.
See how many passengers board
Market will determine success
You may be more correct than you realize. No one has mentioned insurance cost. When a company I flew for got a CJ on the certificate, the insurance cost to operate that plane single pilot was so high, the cost was the same as paying for the salary of a copilot. The company went with flying the CJ with 2 pilots to reduce the insurance cost. I’ll believe airlines will go to single pilot ops when I hear insurance companies say they will cover that. Not holding my breath on that happening in my lifetime.
If it’s only about money, and you find that objectionable, will you pay for all the second pilots? It’s only money?
I know this is a common attack, but it’s really silly. All businesses are constantly trying to become more efficient. It’s not greed, it’s business.
I doubt you worked for free your entire life. You just did it for the money? It was therefore wrong if you to have worked?
The price of the second pilot with all the overhead keeps going up and up. If you knew what a pilot actually cost, and how it’s increasing, you’d not have said what you did. You’d also easily bring in $300 an hour as a consultant. I’ve never met an employer who actually knew what his employees were really, truly costing them. What they do know is that number goes up all the time, and DC keeps adding more and more.
Until we vastly simplify employment laws and labor taxes, humans are going to increasingly face stiffer and stiffer competition from automation. Look at where all the capital is going. It’s going to companies with tiny work forces and big profits.
In the case of Air France 447, apparently there was no automation to continue control and execute the necessary emergency procedures with pitch and power when the primary automation disconnected. According to a documentary that I saw, test pilots for that aircraft type explained the emergency procedure was to set 5° pitch and 85% power using the backup instruments. That had to be handled manually by the pilot(s) and according to the documentary, it wasn’t done. It seems reasonable that newer algorithms could automatically control a similar emergency in the future without any input from the pilots.
Hmmm… Seems there might be a bit of protect good union jobs bias in both the association and commercial pilot responders. There have been too many unfortunate accidents with two qualified pilots aboard. Back in the railroad heyday, when the railroads tried to cut the number of conductors, brakemen, engineers, etc. the same biased insiders objected. They called it featherbedding.
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You know Cargo flies CAO hazmat right over you, next to you, same runways, same airspace. All the while making much more $/#/mile.
It can afford 2 pilots, and you might want that.
Ding. And mamned and unmanned will not share the same under ATC- so call me when they flip the switch.
Yes, pilots are only a few percent of operating cost. But they’re also the only fraction that the airline can reduce. You can’t negotiate with the engines to burn less fuel…
By definition, every airline accident has had two or more pilots onboard, because there has never been a single pilot airliner. What we don’t know is the number of accidents that were prevented by having two pilots.
Wanna buy a bridge, troll;)?
The automation will have to be fully capable of all phases of flight. The single pilot will be the backup.
Consider that the Garmin Autoland system is already in use. If the pilot becomes incapacitated during flight, a passenger simply pushes a button on the panel. The automation system does the rest, including communicating with ATC, to safely land the plane at the nearest suitable airport.
It is a little short sighted to think that in 10 to 15 years or so that automation systems can’t be developed that have the capability to safely conduct passenger flights, single pilot. I expect there will be more automation in the ATC system as well. The automated flight systems will communicate directly with the automated ATC system. The live controller will become the backup.
Eventually, the single pilot will no longer be needed. By then we each will have had so much experience with self-driving cars and trucks that a self-flying airplane won’t be so anxiety inducing.
A future passenger to passenger exchange on a scheduled flight might go something like this;
"Remember when flights were routinely delayed or cancelled because required flight crew were either delayed or exceeded work hour limitations?
“Yeah, not to mention the delays and cancellations due to the limitations of humans to manage the airspace system. Flying is so much easier now.”
My maxim about automated transportation on open systems (road and airways) in the civilian world is this:
If there is risk to serious injury or loss of life as a result of such transport, there must always be some person, who has the capacity to prevent injury or loss of life, who is also subjected to the consequences of an accident they have the power to prevent. I.e., if the “operator” is safe on the ground somewhere, unless forced by a military or totalitarian power, persons of free will won’t board.
Secondarily, my sense is that the insurance/legal world has a repulsion to the fact that a responsible person is not onboard, as this makes it much harder to assign liability.