Single pilot airliners may be

dasleben said:
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.
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Autoland didn't exist when turbines first came about. Now it does, and I'm willing to bet a pastrami sandwich it's an option on every Boeing made. Technology slowly advances. In time, it could be a 99.9% thing, and the .1% may be viewed as an acceptable risk.
 
mshunter said:
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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I guess my question with all this is what purpose this would serve. So you eliminate half of the pilots out there. But then you have to pay someone on the ground. That's still a "skilled job." Certainly not THAT much less than you would pay an FO. And with a reduction in safety (seriously, you CAN'T argue this will be safer, period.) is it really saving any money long-term? I just don't see the benefit. We whittled it down to 2 pilots which I think makes sense with automation, but that seems like a good line to me. A position from which we have seen many errors and learned how to best counteract them. I have heard the argument that most accidents/incidents are human error related and that's what we want to eliminate by removing pilots as much as possible. That's a fine thought process but the statistics we don't have is how many incidents/accidents are prevented (literally, even daily) by having the human in the cockpit. And how about how many are prevented by have a second set of eyes and brain power up there?
 
Dan208B said:
I guess my question with all this is what purpose this would serve. So you eliminate half of the pilots out there. But then you have to pay someone on the ground. That's still a "skilled job." Certainly not THAT much less than you would pay an FO. And with a reduction in safety (seriously, you CAN'T argue this will be safer, period.) is it really saving any money long-term? I just don't see the benefit. We whittled it down to 2 pilots which I think makes sense with automation, but that seems like a good line to me. A position from which we have seen many errors and learned how to best counteract them. I have heard the argument that most accidents/incidents are human error related and that's what we want to eliminate by removing pilots as much as possible. That's a fine thought process but the statistics we don't have is how many incidents/accidents are prevented (literally, even daily) by having the human in the cockpit. And how about how many are prevented by have a second set of eyes and brain power up there?
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All very good points. I'm not advocating it at all. Giving answers to it though is way above my head.
 
mshunter said:
All very good points. I'm not advocating it at all. Giving answers to it though is way above my head.
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Haha I agree. My wife is a Boeing engineer and we had dinner one night with some other folks there. This one guy found I was a pilot and spent the whole night telling me how dangerous we were and that he couldn't wait for the next 5 years (seriously that's what he said!) when we could go fully automated no-pilots and get rid of the horrible human error factor. The guy was very emotional and wouldn't even listen to any rebuttal I had about it. He was actively involved in Boeing's programs on it and said Airbus and Embraer were even further along than Boeing was. I still just don't see the benefit in going down past 2 pilots. I hope there are enough pilots out there to convince the general public it's a bad idea as well. And beyond that, I hope airline management gets it. (but likely not).
 
JDean3204 said:
Why wouldn't it happen? Heck the drop in labor costs alone will be enough for management to pursue single pilot certified operations. Not a fan of it, but I can see it happening within the next 10-15 years.
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Not arguing with your logic, but let's take it to its logical extension... no pilots. Makes sense. Why not? We already have experience killing people this way. Just have some 17 year old in his underwear eating cheetos, monitoring your flight with his joystick near at hand. Management will allow the spend and have him touch the joystick only in the event of dire need.
 
chrisreedrules said:
I think we'll see pilotless freight operators before single-pilot airliners. Apparently FedEx has been quietly testing pilotless freight aircraft out over the Pacific to ascertain viability.
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Mike O'Leary was already talking about pilot-less Pax airliners a few years ago. I can hear the next-quarter-watchers now... "What a visionary!"
This kinda does raise the obvious question... again... why am I not yet living in an artificial womb powering a battery?
Who is going to need to travel if everyone's job has been eliminated in the name of... what was it again? Profit? Efficiency? More leisure time? A better, more meaningful existence?
 
Screaming_Emu said:
Aaaand now I feel old...

...and better at math than you.
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Lol...I should have just said 'early 90s'. Also...I said above everyone '3-1 is not the same as 2-1' but what I meant was 3-2 is not the same as 2-1. A good analogy is engines. We're down to 2 crossing the Atlantic but nobody is seriously considering single engine airliners simply because we have gone from 4 engines to 2.
 
Telepresence. A single-pilot airliner could mean there's only one person on the flight deck, while some poor schlub sitting in the ops center acts as first officer to multiple flights simultaneously. That still seems dicey when an engine fails at 100 ft on takeoff, so maybe it starts only on ultra-long haul flights where there's a relief crewmember in the seat during critical phases. I could see it happening in one of those countries where they have a whole passel of widebodies and labor unions are as illegal as charging interest.
 
Crop Duster said:
Not arguing with your logic, but let's take it to its logical extension... no pilots. Makes sense. Why not? We already have experience killing people this way. Just have some 17 year old in his underwear eating cheetos, monitoring your flight with his joystick near at hand. Management will allow the spend and have him touch the joystick only in the event of dire need.
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I do not think there will be unmanned passenger service. So the kid with cheetoh fingers will have to wait a few more years in order to control 100 plus lives in his/her hands. I do see SINGLE pilot ops happening domestically though.
 
Crop Duster said:
Who is going to need to travel if everyone's job has been eliminated in the name of... what was it again? Profit? Efficiency? More leisure time? A better, more meaningful existence?
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Surprised it took this long to come up...

Yes, I think that it's possible to automate 121 OPS completely, however, the time frame is 50+ years as opposed to 'a few.' Also, by the time full automation takes over airline work, so it will have for a great majority of other jobs. Some socialist style of resource distribution will have us lining up (virtually, of course) for meal pill and internet vouchers, and airline travel may perhaps be totally irrelevant.
 
This sets up perfectly for airlines to pile on the fee revenue. First Pilot - $25. Second Pilot - $50. Everyone except Southwest who will have an arrow on the side pointing to the cockpit that reads "Pilots Fly Free".
 
AA34 said:
This sets up perfectly for airlines to pile on the fee revenue. First Pilot - $25. Second Pilot - $50. Everyone except Southwest who will have an arrow on the side pointing to the cockpit that reads "Pilots Fly Free".
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Haha! I'd be cool with that if the fees all went to the pilots.

The airlines could stop paying salaries to pilots and just let the passengers take care of the pilots' pay.

Let's dream about this for a minute. Imagine if you will, a typical regional flight in a 70 seat aircraft.

Average 60 pax x $75 for two pilots on board= $4500 per flight. Split that three ways and give $1500 to the FO and $3000 to the Captain. Four trips a day = $6000 or $12000 a day. For bigger aircraft, even more money. Of course, if it was based on a "per flight" formula, domestic flying with more than 1 flight a day would probably pay more than international flights. I think I would be cool with that.

Imagine a regional FO making 500 1.5 hour flights a year, making $750k a year!

Alas, once the drone airliners arrive, I doubt pilot pay will work that way unfortunately. Fun idea to think about though.
 
Dan208B said:
Haha I agree. My wife is a Boeing engineer and we had dinner one night with some other folks there. This one guy found I was a pilot and spent the whole night telling me how dangerous we were and that he couldn't wait for the next 5 years (seriously that's what he said!) when we could go fully automated no-pilots and get rid of the horrible human error factor. The guy was very emotional and wouldn't even listen to any rebuttal I had about it. He was actively involved in Boeing's programs on it and said Airbus and Embraer were even further along than Boeing was. I still just don't see the benefit in going down past 2 pilots. I hope there are enough pilots out there to convince the general public it's a bad idea as well. And beyond that, I hope airline management gets it. (but likely not).
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The horrible human error factor, eh? I guess Boeing is using non-human engineers these days? ;)
 
Dan208B said:
Haha I agree. My wife is a Boeing engineer and we had dinner one night with some other folks there. This one guy found I was a pilot and spent the whole night telling me how dangerous we were and that he couldn't wait for the next 5 years (seriously that's what he said!) when we could go fully automated no-pilots and get rid of the horrible human error factor. The guy was very emotional and wouldn't even listen to any rebuttal I had about it. He was actively involved in Boeing's programs on it and said Airbus and Embraer were even further along than Boeing was. I still just don't see the benefit in going down past 2 pilots. I hope there are enough pilots out there to convince the general public it's a bad idea as well. And beyond that, I hope airline management gets it. (but likely not).
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He's clearly never sat in a modern cockpit and watched all the automation mess every single thing up when programmed perfectly.
Why's it doing that?
Oh yeah... it just does that sometimes.

Also, airlines would have to actually fix the airplane when things break instead of MELing the packs and the autopilot and the air data computer etc etc etc.
 
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