Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit • Hacker News Board

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#31

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:16 AM UTC

All you gotta do is watch a few episodes of "Aviation Disasters" to conclude that the pilot needs a backup - the copilot.

After all, when the pilot goes to the potty, who is flying the airplane? The computer? LOL. When something unanticipated goes wrong, the computers are COMPLETELY USELESS because it wasn't programmed to deal with unanticipated problems.

Me, I'll pay a bit extra for my flight to have 2 pilots.

Pilots:

1. fall asleep

2. get distracted

3. make mistakes

4. misinterpret what is going on

5. panic

6. have heart attacks

7. take breaks

8. use the wrong checklist

9. have bad days

10. forget to watch the airspeed and altitude

11. skip steps on the checklist

I.e. are human.

And so a backup is needed.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#32

Post by pessimizer » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

pigtailgirl wrote: post #14

totalZero wrote: post #4

I'm not sure I'd want to travel on commercial aircraft if the regulators eliminate pilot redundancy.

-- interesting - total opposite for me - #1 cause of commercial aircraft accidents is pilot error - by a long shot - personally - looking forward to the day humans are not involved in flying an aircraft -- https://nci.edu/2021/06/08/the-most-common-causes-of-aviatio... https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam...

After pilots are eliminated, the #1 cause of accidents will be autopilot error.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#33

Post by jimbob45 » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

version_five wrote: post #8

I'm generally anti-union, but happy to see the union here pushing back against this. This is definitely not in passengers' interests, and normally passengers don't have an advocate with any power, so it's nice to see our interests are aligned with the pilots' union.

I’m also anti-union but what’s going on here seems like typical union negotiation tactics.

One side wants something. However, they have no leverage. Accordingly, they make a claim and see if the public will back it up. If so, you now have a token to trade at the bargaining table that you never actually intended to play. If the public isn’t on your side, you just say you’ve learned from the public’s opinion.

We see this garbage with the NFL all the time. Most recently, it was with the manufactured penalties from touchdown celebrations.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#34

Post by CarbonCycles » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:19 AM UTC

Yea know this lobbying effort just screams lawsuit by incompetence.

The execs who are pushing this effort appear to know little to nothing about flying, safety, human centered design, and automation.

I might be as brash to state they may not give a damn as long as they get their bonuses and punch out leaving the other exec holding the bag. The compensation structure and laws regarding claw back clauses must be revamped.

Anyway, as a person w a controls background and system automation, this is a total cluster fvck w out a major investment in sensors and UX redesign.

If this passes, I am going to seriously consider those private plane sharing programs.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#35

Post by lotsofpulp » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

fasthands9 wrote: post #6

> Prior to 2010, pilots needed just 250 hours to start flying for a commercial airline. The Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010 raised this requirement from 250 hours to 1,500 hours. >co-pilots in foreign countries are required to have just 240 hours, with some of those hours occurring in a simulator. This is from a different article but feel like this is lower hanging fruit than…

>This is from a different article but feel like this is lower hanging fruit than getting rid of two co-pilots completely.

The other low hanging fruit is to not underpay new pilots in exchange for them hitting the lottery and the career only paying off if they are lucky enough to land a cushy gig at a big airline.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#36

Post by pigtailgirl » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:22 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #32

pigtailgirl wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-- interesting - total opposite for me - #1 cause of commercial aircraft accidents is pilot error - by a long shot - personally - looking forward to the day humans are not involved in flying an aircraft -- https://nci.edu/2021/06/08/the-most-common-causes-of-aviatio... https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam...

After pilots are eliminated, the #1 cause of accidents will be autopilot error.

-- it will likely still be a human factor - maintenance/mechanical is the second cause after pilot error --

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#37

Post by akiselev » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:27 AM UTC

fasthands9 wrote: post #6

> Prior to 2010, pilots needed just 250 hours to start flying for a commercial airline. The Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010 raised this requirement from 250 hours to 1,500 hours. >co-pilots in foreign countries are required to have just 240 hours, with some of those hours occurring in a simulator. This is from a different article but feel like this is lower hanging fruit than…

The pilot shortage is all up and down the stack, including in GA [1], commercial, and military. There simply isn’t enough pilots anywhere in the pipeline. It doesn’t help that most PPLs tend towards wealthy professionals who sure as hell aren’t sitting in an aluminum tube nonstop six to twenty hours at a time. Instead of using pilots’ love of flying to siphon off recruits from other professions theyve used it to keep salaries down just like the gaming industry. You reap what you sow.

It’s going to take a generation of higher salaries to build that pipeline back out. Instead they just want to drop a pilot. F that.

[1] private pilots make up part of our natural disaster infrastructure and the FAA has long been trying to get more people into aviation because that’s going to be a painful shortage if i.e. the big one hits the Seattle area and most of rhe highways get eaten by sand

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#38

Post by Mistletoe » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

This must be the last remaining thing they can think of to get the stock to go up and get the CEOs the bonuses they think they deserve. The ultimate short-sighted move because the first crash that happens from this will tank your stock.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#39

Post by GauntletWizard » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:31 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #27

teeray wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m going to pull another quote from that section that I think also supports the idea. There are specific cases cited in the book… I just don’t think copying an entire section of a book will be as helpful at getting the ideas out here: > “Dr. Wiener[0] worried, and I agree, that the paradox of automation is that it often lowers a pilot’s workload when that load is already low. And it sometimes increases the workload…

That makes a lot of sense. Automation is more interesting in how it can enhance human capabilities. Humans don't need a whole lot of help keeping the wings straight and level on a clear day. But they do need help landing the airplane in dense fog, and two humans and three computers working together can actually do that. The computers can't do it by themselves, the humans can't do it by themselves, but together, they…

As a SRE, or what I'm going to term "Operations Automation Engineer" (because like DevOps or Systems Administrator, there's a treadmill of terminology), I have often automated myself out of my secondary responsibilities, the ones that take up the majority of my time. At Google, we liked to joke that "It's SRE's job to automate ourselves out of our jobs every 18 months", and I think that from the perspective of time, that was very true. Whatever we spent most of our time on eighteen months ago should be a trivial task today.

What I can't automate myself out of is my primary responsibility; Making sure that the site or service is up and available and making our customers happy. I can make constant improvements to that, with occasional backslides, but what I'm paid to do and feel comfortable with my job security is to make a reliable, trustworthy service. That's not going anywhere.

Re: Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

#40

Post by willnonya » Sun, Dec 11, 2022, 1:34 AM UTC

So, their solution to solving a pilot shortage created by sensless changes to existing regulations is to enact more senseless regulation changes?

How about they just revert the flight hour requirements to those that allowed for adequate staffing and safety for decades a d be done with it.

I can't help but suspect the intent is to raise the cost of borh the equipment and pilots required to a point that makes new competition all but impossible.