38 ms·

Airlines lobbying FAA to have only one pilot in the cockpit

185 points by indus 4y ago

Mistletoe 4y ago
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.
teeray 4y ago
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 not appropriate can increase one’s workload. A pilot has to know how to use a level of automation that is appropriate.” … “Whether you’re flying by hand or using technology to help, you’re ultimately flying the airplane with your mind by developing and maintaining an accurate real-time mental model of your reality—the airplane, the environment, and the situation. The question is: How many different levels of technology do you want to place between your brain and the control surfaces? The plane is never going somewhere on its own without you. It’s always going where you tell it to go. A computer can only do what it is told to do. The choice is: Do I tell it to do something by pushing on the control stick with my hand, or do I tell it to do something by using some intervening technology?” [0] [0] Sully: My Search for What Really Matters by Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, Jeffrey Zaslow https://a.co/2iSmRDH https://a.co/2iSmRDH
- deleted 4y ago
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- teeray 4y ago
  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 in the cockpit when it is already high… For those who believe technology is the answer to everything, [he] would offer data to prove that isn’t the case. He said that automated airplanes with the highest technologies do not eliminate errors. They change the nature of the errors that are made. For example, in terms of navigational errors, automation enables pilots to make huge navigation errors very precisely… Dr. Wiener is not antitechnology, and neither am I. But technology is no substitute for experience, skill, and judgment.”[1] [0] “Earl Wiener, Ph.D., a former Air Force pilot who is now retired from the University of Miami’s department of management science. He is renowned for his work in helping us understand aviation safety.”[1] [1] Sully: My Search for What Really Matters by Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, Jeffrey Zaslow https://a.co/gRNJtON https://a.co/gRNJtON
  - jrockway 4y ago
    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 can!
    - GauntletWizard 4y ago
      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.
    - AustinDev 4y ago
      > 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 can! This is not remotely true. Two humans can easily land in dense fog with instruments alone. If you can't then you shouldn't be flying a plane especially not one with passengers. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    In general, I don't understand the push of humans to want to replace everything we do with machines. What's the point? What's the end goal? We just sit in a vat of embalming fluid consuming media with a feeding tube while machines whir about? Why can't enough ever be enough for humanity?
- daigoba66 4y ago
  There’s a great classic pilot training video that covers this topic too: https://safeblog.org/2016/01/14/automation-dependency-children-of-the-magenta/amp/ https://safeblog.org/2016/01/14/automation-dependency-childr... It’s really great info for a lot of professions, not just aviation.
- indus 4y ago
  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 AI we are seeing with other areas of computing, matter of time before we leapfrog in Avionics and Controls.
  - wrp 4y ago
    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.
    - iso1631 4y ago
      I see this in system admin. It's not a popular view, but automation is not always the best way forward. maintaining your terraform/ansible/etc ecosystem to run a single service on a single raspberry pi that sits in an office running a ticker above reception is far more work than a 5 line instruction manual. Chances are you'll never have to touch that box again until it comes time to move office, and when you do all that automation fails anyway.
- ReptileMan 4y ago
  As the Boeing max fiasco showed sometimes the plane can decide to go where it wants while contradicting the pilot.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  You are right that current planes are still pretty dumb. It's an artificial restriction though. Certification in this space is very tough for obvious reasons so there are not a lot of companies working on self flying planes because getting solutions in this space past the certification is going to be a long and expensive process. There are a few though and there have already been unmanned cargo flights. From a technical point of view, flying and landing planes automatically is not that hard. It's a lot easier than self driving cars. And probably also a lot easier than landing a rocket, which is of course something that is not done manually by spacex. Why would they? It's way too complicated for humans and most of the important things require split second decision making far beyond what humans can even do. The hard part is going to be fixing procedures and practices, which are optimized for humans communicating via 1960s technology. A lot of what pilots do isn't staying ahead of the plane (as they sometimes refer to it) but dealing with a crazy level of communication overhead of people yelling out courses, altitudes, transponder codes, radio frequencies, and weather information to each other over a really poor radio connection, while baby sitting the auto pilot, running down endless checklists, and micro managing it's gazillions sub systems. It's stressful and even very experienced pilots quickly loose the ability to keep up if they don't fly regularly. Because people fundamentally aren't very good at this stuff. They make mistakes. They mishear things. Etc. It's hard but also very much something that could and should benefit massively from automation. Lots more than we have today. All that check listing can be vastly simplified with automation. All the routine sharing of information can be done in text/binary form and be machine readable so the auto pilot can act on it (with or without human confirmation). Etc. But that requires change and the aviation world is extremely change resistant. The military will likely get there first. The new B21 apparently can fly unmanned. It may still have a crew but it should be able to operate without one.
  - nradov 4y ago
    The actual hard part is dealing with emergencies. It's impossible to anticipate and code for every possible failure mode, but an experienced human pilot can sometimes figure out a good solution from first principles. In the famous case of US Airways flight 1549, the pilots intentionally disregarded part of the official checklist and improvised a new procedure on the fly. Would an automated system have performed as well? The military is willing to accept a certain amount of operational losses in order to accomplish their mission, especially for unmanned aircraft. Tolerance for losses on commercial passenger flights is virtually zero.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  The real problem in automation is the area Tesla is in: halfway there. As pilots age out of real experience, their replacement with by coddled by vr and never manage. Full manual for years until the auto fallback hits them and suddenly they have a huge issue of recall. So no matter how many pilots you have, automation needs to be all or nothing.
- pictureofabear 4y ago
  Automation really just takes out the hand-eye coordination part. It helps you fly more precisely. It does not take out the decision-making. It is also comforting to passengers that there are highly experienced people overseeing the operation of the plane.
pigtailgirl 4y ago
-- Mentour Pilot covered this really well today -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIShArZ15_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIShArZ15_0
daguava 4y ago
Flight law and procedure is painstakingly written in blood, and the thorough analysis of every plane crash is why aviation is so incredibly safe, there is no possible way this would ever be allowed. I highly recommend checking youtube for crash analysis videos and series btw, the incredible detail these investigations go into is eye opening, and really gave me an appreciation for the field.
- askvictor 4y ago
  Perhaps the CEOs (in constant pursuit of profits and bonuses) don't care so much about safety, and are trying to make a play to get society to accept a lower level of safety in air transport? We accept huge amounts of deaths from road transport, preventable illnesses, etc. Air transport is possibly the exception (that is getting in the way of profits)
  - tjpnz 4y ago
    If CEOs faced real consequences they would care.
CatWChainsaw 4y ago
Well, that's one way to make Amtrak more popular...
WalterBright 4y ago
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.
- rysertio 4y ago
  But would that pilot have to be in the plane to fly it? We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now.
  - simonsarris 4y ago
    > 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/when-drones-fall-from-the-sky/ 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.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    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.
CarbonCycles 4y ago
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.
willnonya 4y ago
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.
Waterluvian 4y ago
I watch VASAviation on YouTube and there’s, I think, 1 or 2 cases per year on that channel where one pilot dies or becomes incapacitated.
maximilianroos 4y ago
> But many recent examples tend to confirm the unions' argument, including a 2015 crash in Europe. A co-pilot of a Germanwings flight locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane, killing himself and 149 other people, giving credence to the ongoing argument that in an airborne crisis you need two pilots working in concert to save the aircraft How does that support the argument that two pilots are necessary? It supports the argument that a determined pilot is going to crash the airplane whether or not there are one or two pilots on the plane!
- John23832 4y ago
  Because now (at least in America), there are always two bodies in the cockpit at all times. When one of the pilots goes to the bathroom, the head stewardess goes into the cockpit. Someone can always attempt to unlock.
  - maximilianroos 4y ago
    Ah, interesting, thanks
- kayxspre 4y ago
  At least another pilot can try saving the plane even if a pilot attempted to crash it. In addition to flight 9525, I remember a Mayday documentary on EgyptAir Flight 990, where American and Egyptian investigators reached a very different conclusion. American investigators said that it's more likely for the first officer to intentionally nosedive the plane while the pilot was away, and the pilot tries to recover from it, while Egyptian investigators said there's a problem with the elevator control.
datapolitical 4y ago
I could see doing this in cargo assuming the planes could land themselves. But most likely it’s just a negotiating tactic to get a related concession like reduced training hours.
maximilianroos 4y ago
For those saying how obvious it is for us to mandate two pilots: Should buses have two drivers? A large bus carries about as many people as a small plane. And per distance, road travel is > 100 times more dangerous than air travel. References: - https://journalistsresource.org/economics/comparing-fatality-risks-united-states-transportation-across-modes-time/ https://journalistsresource.org/economics/comparing-fatality... - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/24/avoid-air-travel-mh17-math-risk-guide https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/24/avoid-...
- ipython 4y ago
  The failure modes are vastly different and the ability for a passenger to pilot a bus to the side of the road in an emergency is much more probable than the aircraft. This is not a reasonable comparison at all.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  Can anyone stop a bus? Does it stop automatically if the driver has a heart attack? Will all the passengers die? Can anyone land a plane? Does it land automatically if the pilot has a heart attack? Will all the passengers die? The outcomes are quite different.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    Hmm a tangent thought. Does a bus with an automatic transmission and cruise control on stop on its own if the driver passes out?
    - jen20 4y ago
      That is an argument for two drivers in busses, not one pilot in planes.
      - nottorp 4y ago
        Or a dead man’s switch like they have in trains? I didnt post it as an argument.
gkiely 4y ago
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 it into domestic with pilots still present, slowly phase out pilots to be remote. 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. I don’t see why a company hasn’t gone all in on this yet, but would love to hear why it’s a dumb idea/not feasible. * Edit: based off this link it seems that staffing is only 12% of costs which would not address my criteria of significantly cheaper flights. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33770/how-much-of-an-airlines-costs-are-labor-costs https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33770/how-much-...
- meibo 4y ago
  The 737 MAX crashes were in 2019. These companies don't have our safety as a top priority anymore and things being "proven safe" obviously is not something that can be held high. I don't see how I could trust an automated flight, if even the biggest aircraft producer in the world cannot make automated systems that won't kill 200 people in one go, in a matter of minutes, in 2019, without the pilot's knowledge.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  > 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.
  - V99 4y ago
    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?
fzeroracer 4y ago
No, just no, and I'm increasingly tired of companies eliminating any form of slack or redundancy to save pennies on the dollar. This is in effect taking a 'safety loan' in that you earn a little bit more now, but lose a lot more in the future when you're the subject of a massive lawsuit due to poor safety protocols. Even if planes become fully automated, a pilot and a copilot should always be present on the plane. One to serve as a check against the automated system, and the other to serve as a check against the pilot.
throw0101c 4y ago
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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs * https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen... * https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/sp/2015/05/msp2015050104/13rRUxASutL 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-advantages-and-safety-challenges 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-automation-the-real-lesson-for-children-of-the-magenta-line/ 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-vanderburgh-849292232 https://obituaries.gloucestertimes.com/obituary/warren-van-v...
rysertio 4y ago
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.
switch007 4y ago
I can’t wait to hear how they are forced to do this because customers are so price sensitive and always pick the cheapest flight (at a price they set…)
csours 4y ago
I'm kind of surprised that no one has mentioned the possibility of pilots having malicious intent.
- hef19898 4y ago
  And there is at least one case of this, so yeah, definitely a reason to have two people in the cockpit.
- iHateStylo 4y ago
  Indeed wasn’t there a rule made specifically after the Germanwings suicide crash? I see it all the time: crew walks in, pilot goes to the toilet.
  - fetzu 4y ago
    It seems that it was made into a rule but dropped a year later [0] (by the EASA, so in Europe at least). According to the Wikipedia article on Germanwings 9525, even Germanwings dropped that two-person rule a couple of years later [1]. I don’t know what the FAA rule regarding this is. [0] https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/newsroom-and-events/news/minimum-cockpit-occupancy-easa-issues-revised-safety-information-bulletin https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/newsroom-and-events/news/minim... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39749803 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39749803
- dewey 4y ago
  Exactly, there's a reason the "Two-man rule" exists for when a single person should not be trusted with the outcome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-man_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-man_rule
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
giantg2 4y ago
It wasn't clear in the article. Does this mean there's only one pilot on the plane, or that only one pilot has to be at the controls but with a second pilot on board? It would have been nice if the article covered some numbers on different things. Such as how many times a pilot has had a medical emergency or some other issue that renders one of the two pilots incapacitated. Or what kinds of situations benefit from two pilots, or might even require two pilots, such as bad weather/winds, or decisions/actions in emergency situations, including technology failures. I also wonder about what happens if the single pilot became incapacitated with all the security these days. Would there be the ability for the crew or someone else to gain entry to the cockpit to fly the plane? Or would they essentially replace a pilot first officer with a non-pilot role?
NKosmatos 4y ago
Once more corporate greed and bad capitalism show their true faces, reduce cost by having only 1 pilot. And there are people who find this stupid proposal acceptable and have delusions that air ticket prices will fall if there is only 1 pilot :-) No wonder our society/civilization is going downhill :-(
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
If an airline offered 2 pilots when every other airline only had 1. Then I would fly them every time. I know the chance of them having a heart attack or stroke, suicide is statistically unlikely. But putting your life in the hands of a single person you’ve never met vs two is a no brainer to me.
- Y_Y 4y ago
  What if I offered you three pilots?
  - kirykl 4y ago
    the single point of failure between 1 pilot and 0 pilots is the issue
phkahler 4y ago
This makes no sense to me. The cost of having a copilot is one shared by every carrier. Eliminating that does not give one a competitive advantage as all carriers will get a similar cost reduction. It smacks an elitist "fuck employees, we hate having them, it's our money" That's not even considering the safety implications.
- cromka 4y ago
  > This makes no sense to me It maximizes earnings through reduction of the cost, not through competitive advantage (i.e. bigger sales volume). In other costs: it's saving more vs making more money. Two non-exclusive ways of improving your overall financial status.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  Clearly they don't believe it's a zero sum game.
- Calamitous 4y ago
  I suspect it has more to do with the availability of employees rather than the cost. But I’ll admit that’s based on my hearing anecdotal tales rather than hard facts.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Isn’t that the same thing? What I’ve heard is that the pay isn’t attractive enough to get enough new pilots and a ton of older ones retired when the airlines screwed them during the pandemic. If you have a reputation for dumping your employees any time you can save a little money, the base pay expectations are going to need to go up.
- kwanbix 4y ago
  And what happens if THE pilot has a heart attack or similar problem that prevents it from flying the plane?
  - null0ranje 4y ago
greggarious 4y ago
How will they avoid a situation like the Germanwings crash then? Or is it forever going to be a catch 22: if you can securely lock the cabin to prevent a hijacking, whoever locks themselves in can crash the plane? :/ >Alone in the cockpit after Sondenheimer left to use the bathroom, Lubitz immediately put his plan into action. He moved the cockpit-door toggle switch, located on a pedestal to the left of his seat, from “normal” to “locked” position, disabling Sondenheimer's emergency access code. Moments later, he reached forward and turned the dial on the automatic pilot to bring the plane down to 100 feet. Just before 10:31 A.M., after crossing the French coast near Toulon, the aircraft left its cruising altitude and began dropping at a rate of 3,500 feet per minute, or 58 feet per second. >At 10:39, Sondenheimer called for a flight attendant to bring him a crowbar hidden in the back of the plane. Grabbing the steel rod, the pilot began smashing the door, then trying to pry and bend it open. The plane had dropped to below 10,000 feet, the snow-encrusted Alps looming closer. Inside the cockpit, Lubitz placed an oxygen mask over his face. “Open this fucking door!” Sondenheimer screamed as passengers stared in bewilderment and mounting terror. Lubitz breathed calmly. At 10:40, an alarm went off: “TERRAIN, TERRAIN! PULL UP, PULL UP!” The plane dipped to 7,000 feet. The alarm signaled a shrill “ping-ping-ping,” a warning of approaching ground. Sixty seconds later, the Airbus's right wing clipped the mountainside at 5,000 feet. The only further sounds picked up by the voice recorder were alarms and screams. Moments later, the jet slammed into the mountain at 403 miles per hour. https://www.gq.com/story/germanwings-flight-9525-final-moments https://www.gq.com/story/germanwings-flight-9525-final-momen... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
sebzim4500 4y ago
I'd rather have zero pilots than two, personally. I doubt this will happen anyway.
jwie 4y ago
You can’t know what was prevented due to the copilot being present. This is the problem. Nobody appreciates the value of the unbroken window. I’m willing to bet a horrifyingly large amount of value exists in a human copilot. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but companies never allocate resources as if that were true. If prevention becomes a cost center, some jackass is going to try to cut it. They couldn’t measure the prevention. It was just another line item on the wrong side of a ledger.
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  The entire practice of CRM (crew resources management) exists because of the value of the second human. It is a formal mechanism to recognize that multiple minds, looking at the same input, might diagnose different problems and that the sum of those opinions is more valuable than one alone.
- wanderingmoose 4y ago
  During any incident, the current CRM is one pilot flies the plane while the non-flying pilot runs the check lists. I hope the single pilot is good at multi-tasking. (* I am not a commercial pilot but I've watched enough Mayday/Air Accident Investigations to get interested in the FAA publications on CRM. Interesting read. Active work was being done ~20 years ago in this area.)
shantara 4y ago
There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea. With the possible human error and handling of emergency situations already discussed in other comments, there is another obvious objection: how are the new pilots supposed to gain enough flight experience before they are allowed to solo fly commercial airliners? Simulator only?
kirykl 4y ago
Why not just get rid of all redundant systems. One of everything on the plane instead of two
stevepeg 4y ago
Human airline pilot here, a lot of comments about the reliability of automation for takeoff, landing and some emergency scenarios but the proposed regulation is a little more specific. They're trying to allow one pilot at the controls in the cruise phase of flight, this will allow airlines to alter [read: reduce] the pay for the resting second pilot. What I think the regulators and manufacturers are missing has less to do with the what-if scenario of an incapacitated pilot and more to do with what happens when pilots get bored. Sitting in a cockpit for my 7+hr shift at night over the Pacific is made safer by the fact that I can have a conversation with the other pilot to keep my mind somewhat alert. Take that away and the mind gets dull, complacent and prone to error. I'm all for more automation as long as there's a measurable benefit to safety. If getting rid of all human pilots leads to a reduction in lives lost per unit of time then it's worth it. Sure there will be major accidents that a human could have prevented, but there will be accidents prevented by the machine too. The crossover point matters.
- teeray 4y ago
  Slightly O/T, but I am curious how an airline pilot ends up on HN. Welcome, and happy to have your perspective :)
  - stevepeg 4y ago
    Good question, I ask myself the same thing every time I come to this site :) I'm also a programmer in my spare time, I started coding long before I was a pilot. Sometimes I do consulting work and I also have a startup. Flying jobs generally give enough spare time to do these things in a limited way.
- 93po 4y ago
  > Sure there will be major accidents that a human could have prevented, but there will be accidents prevented by the machine too. The crossover point matters. Interesting how I assume HN is capable of a rational conversation around this, but when the exact same premise is raised around self driving cars, all rationality flies out the window
pifm_guy 4y ago
I'd like to see one pilot in the cockpit and remote control ability. Then a ground based copilot can be involved in complex manuvers, emergencies, etc. But not have to be present for the dull multi-hour cruising.
indus 4y ago
“There's language in a new bill now introduced in Congress — the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill — asking the Federal Aviation Administration to reconsider part 121 and to allow the use of a single pilot operation, first in cargo aircraft.”
jleyank 4y ago
I would hope that auto flying and landing is quite good and robust before considering single point of failure for the pilots. This also assumes that no pilot would act out against the health of their crew and passengers. In other words, when they can safely fly with no pilots they can have one.
totalZero 4y ago
I'm not sure I'd want to travel on commercial aircraft if the regulators eliminate pilot redundancy.
- pigtailgirl 4y ago
  -- 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-aviation-accidents/ https://nci.edu/2021/06/08/the-most-common-causes-of-aviatio... https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamtechreports/2000s/media/200618.pdf https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam...
  - McDev 4y ago
    Better to have the final say come from someone at the controls rather than a desk in Silicon Valley. Humans aren't going anywhere.
  - atkailash 4y ago
  - p_l 4y ago
    Main reason pilot error is #1 cause is that hardware problems can be fixed once and for all, while pilots take care of all the exceptions. Also, doing a CFIT while flying on autopilot is still a pilot error, because they gave the autopilot's orders.
    - pigtailgirl 4y ago
      -- https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamtechreports/2000s/media/200618.pdf https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam... - page 6 tru 16 are interesting --
  - c0m 4y ago
    Maybe this will be fine when the technology is there, but it's very obvious that doing this change today -- especially when it's being lobbied to be applied to cargo planes first (historically much older former passenger planes w/o modern creature comforts) -- is going only going to increase deaths by pilot error.
themodelplumber 4y ago
Computerized flight has come a long way, and that was true even in the 1970s. It may just be a matter of degrees / situations... And as long as passengers are duly alerted when the inflatable copilot is deployed in emergencies...
fasthands9 4y ago
> 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 getting rid of two co-pilots completely. don't know if the "pilot shortage" is still happening that resulted from lots retiring/taking buyouts at the beginning of covid but it is quite a lot of hours to train for a role that doesnt pay too much. https://injuryaccidentnews.jcreiterlaw.com/2019/10/09/do-international-pilots-need-fewer-flight-training-hours-to-qualify/ https://injuryaccidentnews.jcreiterlaw.com/2019/10/09/do-int...
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >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.
- akiselev 4y ago
  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
  - noahtallen 4y ago
    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.
sashk 4y ago
> American Airlines Capt. Michael Johnston died of a heart-attack mid-flight from Phoenix to Boston early Monday morning, his wife Betty Jean Johnston told NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/american-airlines-captain-who-died-flight-idd-57-year-old-n439066 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/american-airlines-ca... So, if he was the only pilot in cockpit, everyone on the flight would have died too?
- switch007 4y ago
  A risk the airlines are willing to take ..
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    The stock price demands human sacrifice!
- paulpauper 4y ago
  Perhaps they meant somewhere else in the plane
  - noeltock 4y ago
    Cockpit is locked off?
  - imoverclocked 4y ago
    … and where exactly would this second pilot be? The flight deck remains locked from the inside during flight post-9/11. There are a lot of concerns regarding two pilots, not just failure of one of the pilots but also mal-intent of a single pilot. Eg: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
    - polar8 4y ago
      The other pilot is working from home.
version_five 4y ago
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.
- gandalfgreybeer 4y ago
  Idk if this is an American/West thing but here unions are the main reasons why workers are not exploited and have rights.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    Same here in America. It's just that in America we resent that people with rights cost more, so every mistake any union has ever made must be proof that they want to resurrect Stalin and make him President for Life.
  - closeparen 4y ago
    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).
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      Incorrect, please look up why you have 8 hour work days and other labor laws.
      - closeparen 4y ago
        Who is “you”? Software development and most IT related occupations are exempt from overtime. Hardly anyone on HN has an 8 hour workday by law. Ditto for professional, managerial, and administrative - careers that most people would not, in fact, exchange for those with rights. The law can give a bit of leverage to people who otherwise have none, but I’d wager there are more people who have leverage of their own than whose employers are only restrained from abusing them by law/contract. Especially in a tight labor market like today’s (outside tech).

185 points by indus 4y ago

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.

teeray 4y ago

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 not appropriate can increase one’s workload. A pilot has to know how to use a level of automation that is appropriate.” … “Whether you’re flying by hand or using technology to help, you’re ultimately flying the airplane with your mind by developing and maintaining an accurate real-time mental model of your reality—the airplane, the environment, and the situation. The question is: How many different levels of technology do you want to place between your brain and the control surfaces? The plane is never going somewhere on its own without you. It’s always going where you tell it to go. A computer can only do what it is told to do. The choice is: Do I tell it to do something by pushing on the control stick with my hand, or do I tell it to do something by using some intervening technology?” [0] [0] Sully: My Search for What Really Matters by Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, Jeffrey Zaslow https://a.co/2iSmRDH https://a.co/2iSmRDH

deleted 4y ago
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teeray 4y ago
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 in the cockpit when it is already high… For those who believe technology is the answer to everything, [he] would offer data to prove that isn’t the case. He said that automated airplanes with the highest technologies do not eliminate errors. They change the nature of the errors that are made. For example, in terms of navigational errors, automation enables pilots to make huge navigation errors very precisely… Dr. Wiener is not antitechnology, and neither am I. But technology is no substitute for experience, skill, and judgment.”[1] [0] “Earl Wiener, Ph.D., a former Air Force pilot who is now retired from the University of Miami’s department of management science. He is renowned for his work in helping us understand aviation safety.”[1] [1] Sully: My Search for What Really Matters by Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III, Jeffrey Zaslow https://a.co/gRNJtON https://a.co/gRNJtON
- jrockway 4y ago
  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 can!
  - GauntletWizard 4y ago
    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.
  - AustinDev 4y ago
    > 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 can! This is not remotely true. Two humans can easily land in dense fog with instruments alone. If you can't then you shouldn't be flying a plane especially not one with passengers. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
- bmitc 4y ago
  In general, I don't understand the push of humans to want to replace everything we do with machines. What's the point? What's the end goal? We just sit in a vat of embalming fluid consuming media with a feeding tube while machines whir about? Why can't enough ever be enough for humanity?
daigoba66 4y ago
There’s a great classic pilot training video that covers this topic too: https://safeblog.org/2016/01/14/automation-dependency-children-of-the-magenta/amp/ https://safeblog.org/2016/01/14/automation-dependency-childr... It’s really great info for a lot of professions, not just aviation.
indus 4y ago
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 AI we are seeing with other areas of computing, matter of time before we leapfrog in Avionics and Controls.
- wrp 4y ago
  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.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    I see this in system admin. It's not a popular view, but automation is not always the best way forward. maintaining your terraform/ansible/etc ecosystem to run a single service on a single raspberry pi that sits in an office running a ticker above reception is far more work than a 5 line instruction manual. Chances are you'll never have to touch that box again until it comes time to move office, and when you do all that automation fails anyway.
ReptileMan 4y ago
As the Boeing max fiasco showed sometimes the plane can decide to go where it wants while contradicting the pilot.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
You are right that current planes are still pretty dumb. It's an artificial restriction though. Certification in this space is very tough for obvious reasons so there are not a lot of companies working on self flying planes because getting solutions in this space past the certification is going to be a long and expensive process. There are a few though and there have already been unmanned cargo flights. From a technical point of view, flying and landing planes automatically is not that hard. It's a lot easier than self driving cars. And probably also a lot easier than landing a rocket, which is of course something that is not done manually by spacex. Why would they? It's way too complicated for humans and most of the important things require split second decision making far beyond what humans can even do. The hard part is going to be fixing procedures and practices, which are optimized for humans communicating via 1960s technology. A lot of what pilots do isn't staying ahead of the plane (as they sometimes refer to it) but dealing with a crazy level of communication overhead of people yelling out courses, altitudes, transponder codes, radio frequencies, and weather information to each other over a really poor radio connection, while baby sitting the auto pilot, running down endless checklists, and micro managing it's gazillions sub systems. It's stressful and even very experienced pilots quickly loose the ability to keep up if they don't fly regularly. Because people fundamentally aren't very good at this stuff. They make mistakes. They mishear things. Etc. It's hard but also very much something that could and should benefit massively from automation. Lots more than we have today. All that check listing can be vastly simplified with automation. All the routine sharing of information can be done in text/binary form and be machine readable so the auto pilot can act on it (with or without human confirmation). Etc. But that requires change and the aviation world is extremely change resistant. The military will likely get there first. The new B21 apparently can fly unmanned. It may still have a crew but it should be able to operate without one.
- nradov 4y ago
  The actual hard part is dealing with emergencies. It's impossible to anticipate and code for every possible failure mode, but an experienced human pilot can sometimes figure out a good solution from first principles. In the famous case of US Airways flight 1549, the pilots intentionally disregarded part of the official checklist and improvised a new procedure on the fly. Would an automated system have performed as well? The military is willing to accept a certain amount of operational losses in order to accomplish their mission, especially for unmanned aircraft. Tolerance for losses on commercial passenger flights is virtually zero.
cyanydeez 4y ago
The real problem in automation is the area Tesla is in: halfway there. As pilots age out of real experience, their replacement with by coddled by vr and never manage. Full manual for years until the auto fallback hits them and suddenly they have a huge issue of recall. So no matter how many pilots you have, automation needs to be all or nothing.
pictureofabear 4y ago
Automation really just takes out the hand-eye coordination part. It helps you fly more precisely. It does not take out the decision-making. It is also comforting to passengers that there are highly experienced people overseeing the operation of the plane.

pigtailgirl 4y ago

-- Mentour Pilot covered this really well today -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIShArZ15_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIShArZ15_0

daguava 4y ago

Flight law and procedure is painstakingly written in blood, and the thorough analysis of every plane crash is why aviation is so incredibly safe, there is no possible way this would ever be allowed. I highly recommend checking youtube for crash analysis videos and series btw, the incredible detail these investigations go into is eye opening, and really gave me an appreciation for the field.

askvictor 4y ago
Perhaps the CEOs (in constant pursuit of profits and bonuses) don't care so much about safety, and are trying to make a play to get society to accept a lower level of safety in air transport? We accept huge amounts of deaths from road transport, preventable illnesses, etc. Air transport is possibly the exception (that is getting in the way of profits)
- tjpnz 4y ago
  If CEOs faced real consequences they would care.

CatWChainsaw 4y ago

Well, that's one way to make Amtrak more popular...

WalterBright 4y ago

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.

rysertio 4y ago
But would that pilot have to be in the plane to fly it? We have been using remote controlled killer drones for years now.
- simonsarris 4y ago
  > 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/when-drones-fall-from-the-sky/ 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.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  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.

CarbonCycles 4y ago

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.

willnonya 4y ago

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.

Waterluvian 4y ago

I watch VASAviation on YouTube and there’s, I think, 1 or 2 cases per year on that channel where one pilot dies or becomes incapacitated.

maximilianroos 4y ago

> But many recent examples tend to confirm the unions' argument, including a 2015 crash in Europe. A co-pilot of a Germanwings flight locked the pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane, killing himself and 149 other people, giving credence to the ongoing argument that in an airborne crisis you need two pilots working in concert to save the aircraft How does that support the argument that two pilots are necessary? It supports the argument that a determined pilot is going to crash the airplane whether or not there are one or two pilots on the plane!

John23832 4y ago
Because now (at least in America), there are always two bodies in the cockpit at all times. When one of the pilots goes to the bathroom, the head stewardess goes into the cockpit. Someone can always attempt to unlock.
- maximilianroos 4y ago
  Ah, interesting, thanks
kayxspre 4y ago
At least another pilot can try saving the plane even if a pilot attempted to crash it. In addition to flight 9525, I remember a Mayday documentary on EgyptAir Flight 990, where American and Egyptian investigators reached a very different conclusion. American investigators said that it's more likely for the first officer to intentionally nosedive the plane while the pilot was away, and the pilot tries to recover from it, while Egyptian investigators said there's a problem with the elevator control.

datapolitical 4y ago

I could see doing this in cargo assuming the planes could land themselves. But most likely it’s just a negotiating tactic to get a related concession like reduced training hours.

maximilianroos 4y ago

For those saying how obvious it is for us to mandate two pilots: Should buses have two drivers? A large bus carries about as many people as a small plane. And per distance, road travel is > 100 times more dangerous than air travel. References: - https://journalistsresource.org/economics/comparing-fatality-risks-united-states-transportation-across-modes-time/ https://journalistsresource.org/economics/comparing-fatality... - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/24/avoid-air-travel-mh17-math-risk-guide https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/24/avoid-...

ipython 4y ago
The failure modes are vastly different and the ability for a passenger to pilot a bus to the side of the road in an emergency is much more probable than the aircraft. This is not a reasonable comparison at all.
tinus_hn 4y ago
Can anyone stop a bus? Does it stop automatically if the driver has a heart attack? Will all the passengers die? Can anyone land a plane? Does it land automatically if the pilot has a heart attack? Will all the passengers die? The outcomes are quite different.
- nottorp 4y ago
  Hmm a tangent thought. Does a bus with an automatic transmission and cruise control on stop on its own if the driver passes out?
  - jen20 4y ago
    That is an argument for two drivers in busses, not one pilot in planes.
    - nottorp 4y ago
      Or a dead man’s switch like they have in trains? I didnt post it as an argument.

gkiely 4y ago

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 it into domestic with pilots still present, slowly phase out pilots to be remote. 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. I don’t see why a company hasn’t gone all in on this yet, but would love to hear why it’s a dumb idea/not feasible. * Edit: based off this link it seems that staffing is only 12% of costs which would not address my criteria of significantly cheaper flights. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33770/how-much-of-an-airlines-costs-are-labor-costs https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/33770/how-much-...

meibo 4y ago
The 737 MAX crashes were in 2019. These companies don't have our safety as a top priority anymore and things being "proven safe" obviously is not something that can be held high. I don't see how I could trust an automated flight, if even the biggest aircraft producer in the world cannot make automated systems that won't kill 200 people in one go, in a matter of minutes, in 2019, without the pilot's knowledge.
rsj_hn 4y ago
> 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.
- V99 4y ago
  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?

fzeroracer 4y ago

No, just no, and I'm increasingly tired of companies eliminating any form of slack or redundancy to save pennies on the dollar. This is in effect taking a 'safety loan' in that you earn a little bit more now, but lose a lot more in the future when you're the subject of a massive lawsuit due to poor safety protocols. Even if planes become fully automated, a pilot and a copilot should always be present on the plane. One to serve as a check against the automated system, and the other to serve as a check against the pilot.

throw0101c 4y ago

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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs * https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta-automation-paradox-pt-1/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen... * https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/sp/2015/05/msp2015050104/13rRUxASutL 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-advantages-and-safety-challenges 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-automation-the-real-lesson-for-children-of-the-magenta-line/ 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-vanderburgh-849292232 https://obituaries.gloucestertimes.com/obituary/warren-van-v...

rysertio 4y ago

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.

switch007 4y ago

I can’t wait to hear how they are forced to do this because customers are so price sensitive and always pick the cheapest flight (at a price they set…)

csours 4y ago

I'm kind of surprised that no one has mentioned the possibility of pilots having malicious intent.

hef19898 4y ago
And there is at least one case of this, so yeah, definitely a reason to have two people in the cockpit.
iHateStylo 4y ago
Indeed wasn’t there a rule made specifically after the Germanwings suicide crash? I see it all the time: crew walks in, pilot goes to the toilet.
- fetzu 4y ago
  It seems that it was made into a rule but dropped a year later [0] (by the EASA, so in Europe at least). According to the Wikipedia article on Germanwings 9525, even Germanwings dropped that two-person rule a couple of years later [1]. I don’t know what the FAA rule regarding this is. [0] https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/newsroom-and-events/news/minimum-cockpit-occupancy-easa-issues-revised-safety-information-bulletin https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/newsroom-and-events/news/minim... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39749803 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39749803
dewey 4y ago
Exactly, there's a reason the "Two-man rule" exists for when a single person should not be trusted with the outcome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-man_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-man_rule

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

giantg2 4y ago

It wasn't clear in the article. Does this mean there's only one pilot on the plane, or that only one pilot has to be at the controls but with a second pilot on board? It would have been nice if the article covered some numbers on different things. Such as how many times a pilot has had a medical emergency or some other issue that renders one of the two pilots incapacitated. Or what kinds of situations benefit from two pilots, or might even require two pilots, such as bad weather/winds, or decisions/actions in emergency situations, including technology failures. I also wonder about what happens if the single pilot became incapacitated with all the security these days. Would there be the ability for the crew or someone else to gain entry to the cockpit to fly the plane? Or would they essentially replace a pilot first officer with a non-pilot role?

NKosmatos 4y ago

Once more corporate greed and bad capitalism show their true faces, reduce cost by having only 1 pilot. And there are people who find this stupid proposal acceptable and have delusions that air ticket prices will fall if there is only 1 pilot :-) No wonder our society/civilization is going downhill :-(

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

If an airline offered 2 pilots when every other airline only had 1. Then I would fly them every time. I know the chance of them having a heart attack or stroke, suicide is statistically unlikely. But putting your life in the hands of a single person you’ve never met vs two is a no brainer to me.

Y_Y 4y ago
What if I offered you three pilots?
- kirykl 4y ago
  the single point of failure between 1 pilot and 0 pilots is the issue

phkahler 4y ago

This makes no sense to me. The cost of having a copilot is one shared by every carrier. Eliminating that does not give one a competitive advantage as all carriers will get a similar cost reduction. It smacks an elitist "fuck employees, we hate having them, it's our money" That's not even considering the safety implications.

cromka 4y ago
> This makes no sense to me It maximizes earnings through reduction of the cost, not through competitive advantage (i.e. bigger sales volume). In other costs: it's saving more vs making more money. Two non-exclusive ways of improving your overall financial status.
sebzim4500 4y ago
Clearly they don't believe it's a zero sum game.
Calamitous 4y ago
I suspect it has more to do with the availability of employees rather than the cost. But I’ll admit that’s based on my hearing anecdotal tales rather than hard facts.
- acdha 4y ago
  Isn’t that the same thing? What I’ve heard is that the pay isn’t attractive enough to get enough new pilots and a ton of older ones retired when the airlines screwed them during the pandemic. If you have a reputation for dumping your employees any time you can save a little money, the base pay expectations are going to need to go up.
kwanbix 4y ago
And what happens if THE pilot has a heart attack or similar problem that prevents it from flying the plane?
- null0ranje 4y ago

greggarious 4y ago

How will they avoid a situation like the Germanwings crash then? Or is it forever going to be a catch 22: if you can securely lock the cabin to prevent a hijacking, whoever locks themselves in can crash the plane? :/ >Alone in the cockpit after Sondenheimer left to use the bathroom, Lubitz immediately put his plan into action. He moved the cockpit-door toggle switch, located on a pedestal to the left of his seat, from “normal” to “locked” position, disabling Sondenheimer's emergency access code. Moments later, he reached forward and turned the dial on the automatic pilot to bring the plane down to 100 feet. Just before 10:31 A.M., after crossing the French coast near Toulon, the aircraft left its cruising altitude and began dropping at a rate of 3,500 feet per minute, or 58 feet per second. >At 10:39, Sondenheimer called for a flight attendant to bring him a crowbar hidden in the back of the plane. Grabbing the steel rod, the pilot began smashing the door, then trying to pry and bend it open. The plane had dropped to below 10,000 feet, the snow-encrusted Alps looming closer. Inside the cockpit, Lubitz placed an oxygen mask over his face. “Open this fucking door!” Sondenheimer screamed as passengers stared in bewilderment and mounting terror. Lubitz breathed calmly. At 10:40, an alarm went off: “TERRAIN, TERRAIN! PULL UP, PULL UP!” The plane dipped to 7,000 feet. The alarm signaled a shrill “ping-ping-ping,” a warning of approaching ground. Sixty seconds later, the Airbus's right wing clipped the mountainside at 5,000 feet. The only further sounds picked up by the voice recorder were alarms and screams. Moments later, the jet slammed into the mountain at 403 miles per hour. https://www.gq.com/story/germanwings-flight-9525-final-moments https://www.gq.com/story/germanwings-flight-9525-final-momen... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

sebzim4500 4y ago

I'd rather have zero pilots than two, personally. I doubt this will happen anyway.

jwie 4y ago

You can’t know what was prevented due to the copilot being present. This is the problem. Nobody appreciates the value of the unbroken window. I’m willing to bet a horrifyingly large amount of value exists in a human copilot. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but companies never allocate resources as if that were true. If prevention becomes a cost center, some jackass is going to try to cut it. They couldn’t measure the prevention. It was just another line item on the wrong side of a ledger.

jeffrallen 4y ago
The entire practice of CRM (crew resources management) exists because of the value of the second human. It is a formal mechanism to recognize that multiple minds, looking at the same input, might diagnose different problems and that the sum of those opinions is more valuable than one alone.
wanderingmoose 4y ago
During any incident, the current CRM is one pilot flies the plane while the non-flying pilot runs the check lists. I hope the single pilot is good at multi-tasking. (* I am not a commercial pilot but I've watched enough Mayday/Air Accident Investigations to get interested in the FAA publications on CRM. Interesting read. Active work was being done ~20 years ago in this area.)

shantara 4y ago

There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea. With the possible human error and handling of emergency situations already discussed in other comments, there is another obvious objection: how are the new pilots supposed to gain enough flight experience before they are allowed to solo fly commercial airliners? Simulator only?

kirykl 4y ago

Why not just get rid of all redundant systems. One of everything on the plane instead of two

stevepeg 4y ago

Human airline pilot here, a lot of comments about the reliability of automation for takeoff, landing and some emergency scenarios but the proposed regulation is a little more specific. They're trying to allow one pilot at the controls in the cruise phase of flight, this will allow airlines to alter [read: reduce] the pay for the resting second pilot. What I think the regulators and manufacturers are missing has less to do with the what-if scenario of an incapacitated pilot and more to do with what happens when pilots get bored. Sitting in a cockpit for my 7+hr shift at night over the Pacific is made safer by the fact that I can have a conversation with the other pilot to keep my mind somewhat alert. Take that away and the mind gets dull, complacent and prone to error. I'm all for more automation as long as there's a measurable benefit to safety. If getting rid of all human pilots leads to a reduction in lives lost per unit of time then it's worth it. Sure there will be major accidents that a human could have prevented, but there will be accidents prevented by the machine too. The crossover point matters.

teeray 4y ago
Slightly O/T, but I am curious how an airline pilot ends up on HN. Welcome, and happy to have your perspective :)
- stevepeg 4y ago
  Good question, I ask myself the same thing every time I come to this site :) I'm also a programmer in my spare time, I started coding long before I was a pilot. Sometimes I do consulting work and I also have a startup. Flying jobs generally give enough spare time to do these things in a limited way.
93po 4y ago
> Sure there will be major accidents that a human could have prevented, but there will be accidents prevented by the machine too. The crossover point matters. Interesting how I assume HN is capable of a rational conversation around this, but when the exact same premise is raised around self driving cars, all rationality flies out the window

pifm_guy 4y ago

I'd like to see one pilot in the cockpit and remote control ability. Then a ground based copilot can be involved in complex manuvers, emergencies, etc. But not have to be present for the dull multi-hour cruising.

indus 4y ago

“There's language in a new bill now introduced in Congress — the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill — asking the Federal Aviation Administration to reconsider part 121 and to allow the use of a single pilot operation, first in cargo aircraft.”

jleyank 4y ago

I would hope that auto flying and landing is quite good and robust before considering single point of failure for the pilots. This also assumes that no pilot would act out against the health of their crew and passengers. In other words, when they can safely fly with no pilots they can have one.

totalZero 4y ago

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

pigtailgirl 4y ago
-- 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-aviation-accidents/ https://nci.edu/2021/06/08/the-most-common-causes-of-aviatio... https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamtechreports/2000s/media/200618.pdf https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam...
- McDev 4y ago
  Better to have the final say come from someone at the controls rather than a desk in Silicon Valley. Humans aren't going anywhere.
- atkailash 4y ago
- p_l 4y ago
  Main reason pilot error is #1 cause is that hardware problems can be fixed once and for all, while pilots take care of all the exceptions. Also, doing a CFIT while flying on autopilot is still a pilot error, because they gave the autopilot's orders.
  - pigtailgirl 4y ago
    -- https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oamtechreports/2000s/media/200618.pdf https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam... - page 6 tru 16 are interesting --
- c0m 4y ago
  Maybe this will be fine when the technology is there, but it's very obvious that doing this change today -- especially when it's being lobbied to be applied to cargo planes first (historically much older former passenger planes w/o modern creature comforts) -- is going only going to increase deaths by pilot error.

themodelplumber 4y ago

Computerized flight has come a long way, and that was true even in the 1970s. It may just be a matter of degrees / situations... And as long as passengers are duly alerted when the inflatable copilot is deployed in emergencies...

fasthands9 4y ago

> 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 getting rid of two co-pilots completely. don't know if the "pilot shortage" is still happening that resulted from lots retiring/taking buyouts at the beginning of covid but it is quite a lot of hours to train for a role that doesnt pay too much. https://injuryaccidentnews.jcreiterlaw.com/2019/10/09/do-international-pilots-need-fewer-flight-training-hours-to-qualify/ https://injuryaccidentnews.jcreiterlaw.com/2019/10/09/do-int...

lotsofpulp 4y ago
>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.
akiselev 4y ago
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
- noahtallen 4y ago
  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.

sashk 4y ago

> American Airlines Capt. Michael Johnston died of a heart-attack mid-flight from Phoenix to Boston early Monday morning, his wife Betty Jean Johnston told NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/american-airlines-captain-who-died-flight-idd-57-year-old-n439066 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/american-airlines-ca... So, if he was the only pilot in cockpit, everyone on the flight would have died too?

switch007 4y ago
A risk the airlines are willing to take ..
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  The stock price demands human sacrifice!
paulpauper 4y ago
Perhaps they meant somewhere else in the plane
- noeltock 4y ago
  Cockpit is locked off?
- imoverclocked 4y ago
  … and where exactly would this second pilot be? The flight deck remains locked from the inside during flight post-9/11. There are a lot of concerns regarding two pilots, not just failure of one of the pilots but also mal-intent of a single pilot. Eg: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
  - polar8 4y ago
    The other pilot is working from home.

version_five 4y ago

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.

gandalfgreybeer 4y ago
Idk if this is an American/West thing but here unions are the main reasons why workers are not exploited and have rights.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Same here in America. It's just that in America we resent that people with rights cost more, so every mistake any union has ever made must be proof that they want to resurrect Stalin and make him President for Life.
- closeparen 4y ago
  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).
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    Incorrect, please look up why you have 8 hour work days and other labor laws.
    - closeparen 4y ago
      Who is “you”? Software development and most IT related occupations are exempt from overtime. Hardly anyone on HN has an 8 hour workday by law. Ditto for professional, managerial, and administrative - careers that most people would not, in fact, exchange for those with rights. The law can give a bit of leverage to people who otherwise have none, but I’d wager there are more people who have leverage of their own than whose employers are only restrained from abusing them by law/contract. Especially in a tight labor market like today’s (outside tech).