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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

#71

Post by simonsarris »

rysertio wrote: post #68
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.

> More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001

Quote from 2014: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/20/w...

I think with planes carrying humans we don't want that track record, especially if you calculate crashes per mile flown.

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

#72

Post by V99 »

rsj_hn wrote: post #61
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…

Experienced captains at the major ("legacy") airlines make considerably more than you think. Up to ~$350 per hour (plus benefits, retirement, etc.)

On the other hand, salaries are VERY back-loaded towards the end of their career. A first-year first officer ("copilot") is maybe $90/hr. And if you switch employers, you start all over again at the bottom of the ladder. A strange world compared to hopping around tech companies like most of us here are familiar with.

Also pilots do not work 40hrs/week, and the more common airframe variants are maybe 150 seats on average. Those all somewhat cancel out, but it's probably more like double your estimate. Still not a huge fraction of ticket price.

Part of the problem with a single pilot is how a new person gets the experience in the real world of big boy planes. You need 1500 hours of flight time before airlines will hire you. New pilots often get most of those hours as CFI's tooling around teaching others how to fly a 4-seat Cessna 172. Ready to get in a 737 with them at hour 1501?

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

#73

Post by noahtallen »

akiselev wrote: post #37
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…

The sad thing about GA is that it’s just so cost prohibitive. You’re talking tens of thousands of dollars just to get the basic license, and even then it’s not that practically useful (you can’t even fly at night or in weather without an instrument rating). I would love to get my PP, but even in a well-paying field it’s just inaccessible without dedicating a lot more than I’m ready to give.

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

#74

Post by WalterBright »

rysertio wrote: post #68
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.

I am not a pilot. But given my experience driving cars in video games, and driving them in 3D land, there's no comparison.

A remote operator cannot pick up a fire extinguisher, go into the cabin and look out the window, smell the smoke, feel the weird vibration, relieve the pilot who is pulling on the controls with all his might, fend off intruders with the fire axe, etc.

Remote control is always going to have a lag in it. I doubt one could land an airplane remotely even with just a 1 second lag.

Having your butt in the seat of the airplane is a strong motivator to keep it flying. The pilot always arrives first at the scene of the crash.

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

#75

Post by gkiely »

rsj_hn wrote: post #61
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…

I didn’t phrase this well, good call out.

Now that I’ve thought about it what I’m actually trying to ask is…

What would it take to drop flight prices 50%?

Automated flights, a change in fuel technology, 0 marketing spend, reduced maintenance?

More specifically, what is the bare bones cost to transport a human from point a to b, safely, in the same or less time it takes a flight.

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

#76

Post by rdtwo »

biomcgary wrote: post #63
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.

Most of the major airplane accidents in the last decade were caused by those low hour pilots

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

#77

Post by akiselev »

noahtallen wrote: post #73
akiselev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The sad thing about GA is that it’s just so cost prohibitive. You’re talking tens of thousands of dollars just to get the basic license, and even then it’s not that practically useful (you can’t even fly at night or in weather without an instrument rating). I would love to get my PP, but even in a well-paying field it’s just inaccessible without dedicating a lot more than I’m ready to give.

The GA manufacturing industry seems to have entered death spiral. With the fall in popularity of GA, the number of planes made every year went way down which drove the price of both new and used planes up. We went from producing almost 20,000 GA planes a year in the 1970s to under a thousand a year in the 1990s and it's barely recovered since then (1,500 a year IIRC)

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

#78

Post by bsder »

akiselev wrote: post #37
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…

> There simply isn’t enough pilots anywhere in the pipeline.

Really? Can you back that up with some reference somewhere?

From talking to aspiring airline pilots, it seems that their career trajectory is terrible until they actually land their butt in the seat of a major airline plane.

How can we have such a shortage of pilots and at the same time have such lousy pay and working conditions for the infeed?

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

#79

Post by akiselev »

bsder wrote: post #78
akiselev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There simply isn’t enough pilots anywhere in the pipeline. Really? Can you back that up with some reference somewhere? From talking to aspiring airline pilots, it seems that their career trajectory is terrible until they actually land their butt in the seat of a major airline plane. How can we have such a shortage of pilots and at the same time have such lousy pay and working conditions for the infeed?

See the FAA's US Civil Airmen Statistics spreadsheet for the overall big picture [1]. Specifically, the "Pilot Total w/o Student Category" fell from 490k in 2012 to 470k in 2021, despite the number of instructors growing from 98k to 121k. The number of students has skyrocketed from 120k in 2012 to 250k in 2021 but it's just not translating to commercially viable pilots: we added 30k students last year but lost several hundred airline pilots and only gained 600 commercial pilots. The number of PPLs fell from 188k in 2012 to 161k in 2021.

[1] https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/c...

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

#80

Post by NBJack »

rysertio wrote: post #68
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.

"Attention passengers, I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is that Captain Ovarwurked has, sadly, passed away while flying the plane. The good news is that a remote backup pilot is now going to fly us to the nearest landing field! Please sit back and relax, and try not to think about the person sitting in the comfort of their home with an Xbox 360 controller who hopefully has a stable internet connection. [1]

On that note, we'd like to ask everyone to please stop using anything wireless, as it runs a small risk of interfering with the delicate connection to satellites overhead, which is currently all that is keeping our remote pilot connected."

[1] https://www.pyrosoft.co.uk/blog/2007/11/04/army-fly-uav-spy-...

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