Single pilot airliners may be

Beep said:
Don't get me wrong here, I do not like the idea of a single pilot airliner, that will not be enough to stop " progress ", though. Truth be told I don't like the idea of single pilot business jets either.
Twenty three years ago when I started flying there was still a strong sentiment from the pilot group that getting rid of the flight engineer was a foolish, even dangerous idea... Now, not so much.
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23 years ago was 1993. The FE was gone on new airplanes. The 757/767 was flying for over 10 years and was a 2 pilot plane. The DC9 was flying for decades with 2 pilots.

3-1 is not the same as 2-1.
 
Derg said:
We will see large scale transitions to single pilot aircraft right after the transition to single engine transport category jets. They are reliable, donchya noh.
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Now you're talking.

I'm thinking a single piloted rocket.

LAX- SYD or even better LAX-PER
 
Soku39 said:
Edit: at 27 years old I do not believe that airliners will have a 2 man cockpit for the rest of my career. I do believe that the F-35 is the last manned "fighter" the the United States will ever build. To think otherwise would be to put my head in the sand. I do believe that if I am to remain employed until my late 60s I will inevitably need to learn another skill set other than flying, and one that can not be replaced by technology. The world is changing more rapidly than most people can come up with, my goal is to not be left behind.
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Prepare yourself to be a tradesman or construction dawg.
 
Guys are still talking about the tech as if it's inevitable they'll find a way to automate a second pilot out completely. And yes, I agree. It's already been done on a number of new jets, even though they're not transport category.

But, nobody's touching on the human factors element. Seriously, what happens when the single pilot has to take a leak on a 5 hour flight?
 
dasleben said:
Guys are still talking about the tech as if it's inevitable they'll find a way to automate a second pilot out completely. And yes, I agree. It's already been done on a number of new jets, even though they're not transport category.

But, nobody's touching on the human factors element. Seriously, what happens when the single pilot has to take a leak on a 5 hour flight?
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Louie1975 said:
23 years ago was 1993. The FE was gone on new airplanes. The 757/767 was flying for over 10 years and was a 2 pilot plane. The DC9 was flying for decades with 2 pilots.

3-1 is not the same as 2-1.
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That is correct, but the point I was making was that there was more resistance to the idea of getting rid of the flight engineer position all together at that time, not so much any more.

* opinion *
I think it will be the same when we get the first single pilot airliners, then that resistance will go away over time as that becomes common.
 
In 1969 G-IIs were being flown with two pilots all over the world, the earliest Lears had two pilots designed into it. I might sound like a luddite, but when the brown stuff hits the spinny thing I'm pretty sure I'd rather have two sets of eyes looking at something and perhaps coming to different conclusions, they will think about the fact that it's their ass that might not get home.
 
dasleben said:
Nobody's addressed my single-pilot bathroom break, food, or rest question yet...
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On a 5 hour fight, he gets up and takes a leak. The operator on the ground keeps an eye on things. On the long haul stuff, the operate the same way they do now. Only one pilot up front, and one in back sleeping.

I see this being done a lot like UAV's. You might only have one guy up front, but you'll still have two guys operating the thing. Only that guy on the ground will be just like a dispatcher, and operate multiple flights at a time.
 
mshunter said:
On a 5 hour fight, he gets up and takes a leak. The operator on the ground keeps an eye on things. On the long haul stuff, the operate the same way they do now. Only one pilot up front, and one in back sleeping.

I see this being done a lot like UAV's. You might only have one guy up front, but you'll still have two guys operating the thing. Only that guy on the ground will be just like a dispatcher, and operate multiple flights at a time.
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So with a guy on the ground "keeping an eye on things" with a now pilotless cockpit, how is this as safe, or safer, than current 2-man cockpits?
 
Soku39 said:
I am unsure how people can watch an autonomous attack drone fly a pattern around the boat and land on the 3 wire with zero human interaction and come up with the conclusion that the technology isn't there, the denial is simply beyond me.
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You guys should actually do an autoland in a real jet. It works great until it doesn't, and when it doesn't, you need a pilot there to intervene immediately. A single pilot could certainly do it (if you forget all about this industry's CRM advances that have PF/PM roles as a cornerstone), but in the event the pilot is incapacitated? Good luck. For the sake of the 200 people behind him, you'd better hope the autoland works.

I simply don't see it. Nobody is saying the technology doesn't exist, or couldn't exist. You'd just have to rewrite decades worth of CRM and safety philosophy to make it happen.
 
dasleben said:
So with a guy on the ground "keeping an eye on things" with a now pilotless cockpit, how is this as safe, or safer, than current 2-man cockpits?
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That remains to be seen I guess. I'm not to happy about it either. But I can see it coming I'm the future. And I think it'll be here far sooner than we think.
 
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