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Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

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

#61

Post by rsj_hn »

gkiely wrote: post #55

I take a contrarian opinion on this, the price of a flight in the US outside of major hubs is egregious. Especially during peak times or holidays. What is the long term plan here? Will there still be duo pilots in 2040? 2060? Surely long term it will be automated with remote supervision/override and a cabin crew who have basic training to emergency land. Do the testing on mail delivery, get it good enough, introduce…

> I would fly domestic automated flights if the automation was proven as safe, the above conditions were met, and the price was 40-50% cheaper.

You believe pilot salaries are 40-50% of airline ticket prices? A pilot makes ~130K per year and flies, say, 2 trips a day, so ~500 trips a year. So on a plane with 200 people, they are each paying about $1.30 per pilot. Two pilots, round it up to $5 per trip. That's how much you'd save if the automation system was free.

But, hey, I'd also fly an automated flight that was proven safe for a 50% discount. Even a manual flight.

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

#62

Post by Retric »

oceanplexian wrote: post #60
Retric wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I think remote backup drivers for self driving cars is fairly reasonable, but remote pilots just brings to mind thousands of passenger filled bombs.

At least to start it’s pretty simple. Have a single physical pilot with the ability for a remote pilot to take over in the event of incapacitation, bathroom breaks, etc. The real pilot can always override the remote piloting system through some kind of physical disconnect.

That’s a different trade off in the case of a deranged pilot or hijackers. Similarly something easy to disconnect is likely to accidentally disconnect, while something difficult to disconnect might not be fast enough.

A much larger issue is copilots do a significant amount of work especially in an emergency while also gaining experience in the aircraft. This means a steady stream of highly experienced senior pilots on the exact airframe being flown.

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

#63

Post by biomcgary »

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…

Why not require a pilot with 1.5k of hours and allow co-pilots with 250+ hours for cargo and 500+ hours for passenger? It would decrease the upfront cost of getting trained as a pilot before getting paid.

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

#64

Post by nanidin »

gkiely wrote: post #55

I take a contrarian opinion on this, the price of a flight in the US outside of major hubs is egregious. Especially during peak times or holidays. What is the long term plan here? Will there still be duo pilots in 2040? 2060? Surely long term it will be automated with remote supervision/override and a cabin crew who have basic training to emergency land. Do the testing on mail delivery, get it good enough, introduce…

Fuel is responsible for most of the cost of a flight.

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

#65

Post by throw0101c »

There is relatively well-know presentation from 1997 by late American Airlines captain Warren Vanderburgh [0] called "Children of Magenta" that talked about the risk of crew being too dependent on the guiding magenta-colored lines of the autopilot on their screens:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs

* https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen...

* https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/sp/2015/05/msp2015050...

Some of the pros and cons of cockpit automation:

* https://www.skybrary.aero/articles/cockpit-automation-advant...

Generally automation exists on a spectrum, and the pilot should be able to select the level depending on the circumstances:

> In Van’s presentation he describes three levels of automation:

> *The pilot manually flying the aircraft.

> *The pilot using the flight director, autopilot, and autopilot modes to fly the aircraft for a short period of time. For example: Heading select, Flight Level Change, Vertical Speed, Indicated Airspeed, etc.

> *The pilot using the FMS to command the autopilot to fly the aircraft for hours at a time.

* https://airfactsjournal.com/2020/09/stepping-down-in-automat...

Another thought is that if one-pilot planes are allowed, to insist on more training for pilots: if the computer/autopilot can handle the more mundane stuff, then more hours could be spend by pilots in simulators being (virtually) thrown into strange situations (perhaps taken from real-life incidents) to deal with. There are (IIRC) already per-mont flight hour restrictions on pilots, so reduce those by some ammount and move them to the simulator.

[0 https://obituaries.gloucestertimes.com/obituary/warren-van-v...

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

#66

Post by closeparen »

SQueeeeeL wrote: post #9
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 generally anti-union, but happy to see the union here pushing back against this. Damn, it's almost like workers rights and safety are aligned in some way...

Maybe? Unions like to make sure that employers put plenty of their members, especially senior members, on any given job. That could mitigate safety issues related to inexperience or understaffing. But they also tend to protect members from accountability for unsafe conduct, and resist the imposition of safety measures that members find annoying. They’re just pro worker. Workers are human and prone to incompetence and machismo as much as anyone else.

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

#67

Post by closeparen »

gandalfgreybeer wrote: post #20
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.

Idk if this is an American/West thing but here unions are the main reasons why workers are not exploited and have rights.

The main reason American workers are not exploited is that they can easily get other jobs and would be difficult to replace (but when that’s not the case, they are).

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

#68

Post by rysertio »

WalterBright wrote: post #31

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. Pilot…

But would that pilot have to be in the plane to fly it? We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now.

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

#69

Post by rysertio »

For passenger flights it's a big no. But for cargo planes it makes more sense to pilot the plane from the ground, like drones. Automating flights can have significant safety issues but piloting planes from the ground is widely used in military. So we might get away with remotely piloted cargo planes.

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

#70

Post by wrp »

indus wrote: post #53
teeray wrote: post #16

Since we’re going to be talking about automation quite a bit here, I found Sully’s take on automation in the cockpit to be quite relevant: > “I’VE COME across a number of people over the years who think that modern airplanes, with all their technology and automation, can almost fly themselves. That’s simply not true. Automation can lower the workload in some cases. But in other situations, using automation when it is…

Automation in aviation can be broken down into: * Avionics * Weather * Communication * Controls * Positioning What Sully refers to automation is controls. Beyond auto-pilot capabilities, there has been advancement but little has gone to mainstream/commercial. Automation in communication and weather reporting has gone up leaps. Look at ADS-B or real-time satellite based in/out reporting. Just like the advancement in A…

I think there is some confusion here about "automation". The benefits referred to involve providing greater access to information. The problems referred to involve putting more layers of abstraction between you and what you are controlling.
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