Single Operating Captain
 

The concept of having a single pilot in the cockpit and one on the ground seems to be moving along nicely. The pilot on the ground would be working on as many as twelve flights at one time.

NASA Advances Single-Pilot Operations Concepts | Technology content from Aviation Week

It's one way of addressing potential pilot shortage...:confused:

Do you really think that is a good idea? For safety and our profession? Any shortage of pilots is good for your paycheck. The pilot monitoring is monitoring 11 other flights? Sounds great. He's probably making $50 /hr.

Passengers certainly won't care as long as there is still a human on the flight deck.

When drone technology becomes safe and reliable (10 years?); that's when you will see single pilot airliners.

It will be viewed as a saving grace to a pilot shortage by airline management... Plus millions will be saved in payroll so stock prices will rise.

Yeah, until that single captain in the cockpit yells out "Allah is great!" and slams that plane into a building because no one else is there to stop him or that single captain has had a bad day and learned his wife is doing the mailman, and slams that plane into a building or that single captain has a hart attack and the ground link somehow goes faulty and alt-ctrl-del dont fix it.
sounds like a real bright idea to me.

News flash, you're not preventing A, or B from happening if that's what the guy next to you wants to do. For C. - sure you will make all the difference in this case.

News flash, yes I am and i will.

Never mind any terroristic scenario. The only thing that usually keeps my forehead from making contact with the glareshield during a 4 hour flight is the guy sitting next to me.

With single pilot operations, you're still asking a single pilot to:

-Stay alert and focused with no human contact for hours on end.
-Clear traffic/obstacles both left and right after push, during taxi out and taxi-in.
-Look for traffic in the air.
-Assume he's on the correct routing, taxi route, making the right real time calls.
-Tune radios, run checklists, talk to ATC, talk to FAs, talk to pax


AND MOST IMPORTANT:

This turns back years of progress on CRM by essentially making the CA "god" again, enabling him to make unilateral, real-time decisions with little to no input from others.

Will. Not. Happen.

So a raise for every regional FO in the industry AND I can be home everynight? ;)





I'm not saying I want the industry to go this way, but wages are so depressed in the right seat for thousands of guys, I can't see why they wouldn't apply to do this kind of work.

Not gonna happen anytime soon, folks.

You'll see Part 25 SP bizjets WAAAAY before you see SP Part 25 aircraft operating in air carrier operations.

I mean really, look at the hoops air carriers have to jump through to use iPads and ask yourself if a single pilot 121 cockpit is waiting in the wings...

Pilots don't emit radio waves....!;)

Although they do produce a lot of hot air

:DI say NEVER underestimate the power of profit motive, and of course lobbyists that take skillful persuasion of the few people that really matter to the highest level of art, to do what is best for the almighty bottom line. I'd say it's easy to make a convincing argument to someone that 1 pilot ops for flights under 2 hours, perfectly great to try, and over that throw in a relief pilot? First airline to get the plan in action blows everyone else's socks off on profit, and now every competitor's CEO has to do it or watch his board replace him with someone who will. Yes- Start savin up for the trade school, my friends - at least you can't easily outsource a plumber :D

I've got 40 reasons I can and would stop him or her if there're hell bent on using the aircraft as a missile of mass destruction! Catch my drift sulky.

You are missing the mark. Single pilot operations will only start once airliners are completely autonomous. They would be able to fly as drones however due to liability and to keep the public happy it will still require a pilot at the controls simply to monitor, therefore, the things you mention above wouldn't be too important.

Lastly, I realy hope this doesn't happen but technology is moving at a rapid clip and our jobs could be targeted.

No you won't. Historically speaking in pilot suicide crashes (Egypt Air out of JFK and Silk Air enroute to SIN) the suicidal pilot waited until the normal pilot had to use the bathroom. Once the pilot was alone, he nosed it over and crashed.

There will never be single pilot airliners. The pilot is either a critical system or he/she is not. If they are, they will have a redundancy onboard, just like every other critical system. If they are not, there is no need for them at all. If the airplane can be designed to safely function with a failure of the pilot (which will happen), then it doesn't need the pilot there in the first place.

There will be either 2 pilot airliners or pilotless airliners, but not single pilot.

I don't think it will happen anytime soon, but once the Millennials start reproducing, those kids (when they become adults) will not give a darn who or what is flying an airplane when you consider how much technology they will have already been exposed to at such a young age.

Since they will make up a majority of the flying public, I think airlines will have to wait until then.

FFDO .40 cal - touché - I catch it Flinty. :D

There will be single pilot airplanes, however, there will never be pilotless 121 airplanes. The reason is data security; That's the function of a single pilot. If he passes out, that's a random occurrence, and will not affect safety.

For single pilot to work, the ATC system need to be reworked, and the FAA has to change certification rules. I think you will see regional airlines be single pilot sometime in the next 20 years, mainline will take longer.

I think that an entirely new generation of airliners will be required before we go single pilot/remote pilot/ fully autonomous. There will have to be a completely new atc system, an entirely new set of regs, and new aircraft. Those are big hurdles that will take a long time and a lot of money. Is it even worth it? To save the salary of two pilots... I kind of doubt it.

How long has the FAA been working on NextGen? How much has it cost? How tiny of a step is it towards single pilot or remotely piloted airlines? It all just seems so far off, not because the technology couldn't keep up, but the infrastructure, regulatory hurdles and pubic acceptance are massive obstacles with not much benefit.

I am way more interested in self driving cars. The technology for those is virtually 100% there. But it's still got such a steep hill to climb for all the same reasons pilotless airliners are so far off. that being said, I am not recommending my young children pursue this career.

Yes. I've been saying this for years.

The first single-pilot airliners will be full-auto airliners which will carry a pilot as a backup until they develop a proven track record.

Pilot incapacitation events are very real, and have increased significantly in recent years (wonder why?). Apparently it's so bad that the FAA doesn't publicly release the data for 121 incapacitation or so I'm told by a fed. Not why FOIA would not work though...

Autonomous airliners are about 100 years away IMO, and I have a pretty darn good understanding of systems engineering, AI, and regulatory issues.

Yes. Vast changes will be required in aircraft design, certification, and ATC. It won't be a retrofit either, need a clean slate. We're talking billions, probably hundreds of billions.

What comes first, chicken or egg? Who pays?

The airlines would love to get rid of all the pilots, but only if somebody else pays for all the ground work to develop a safe system that works without pilots. They can't see beyond next quarters financials, much less paying for something which will pay off maybe in 50 years.

Why would the government initiate a manhattan project just to eliminate 100,000 pilot jobs and save airlines some money.

The manufacturers aren't going there unless there's a regulatory path to certification, an ATC system which will operations, and airlines willing to commit to buying the things. Oh yeah, and the planes will need extra systems redundancy to allow dispatch reliability in case something breaks...$$$$$

On top of that add 20 years for lack of public acceptance.


Can it be done today with existing UAV technology? Yes, with much lower safety levels...probably several hull losses/month in the US alone. The REALLY REALLY hard part is dealing with relatively unusual but critical situations where a human being can exercise grey area judgement.

Agreed. But cargo? I'm not so sure.

I think you are looking at it the wrong way. For the new ATC system to work, it would require a pilot to be on the ground to make operational decisions. They want to hard wire ATC right into airline control centers. This gives airlines more operational control, and they will spend the billions to get it. This would also eliminate voice communications with ATC from the cockpit completely. This is the real reason single pilot is certain, because the second pilot has to move to the ground.

Yeah, because if the guy you are flying with is suicidal, he is going to do it flying with a FFDO? Historical precedence of passenger jetliners shows the suicidal guy waits until you have to go to the bathroom. There are reasons to be made against a single-cockpit pilot operation. A suicidal pilot is not one of them. If one wanted to do it, he could even with two pilots - it just wouldn't be two pilots in the flight deck when it happens.

Re: Egypt Air 990 and Silk Air 185

Single pilot, or no pilot drone airlines will NEVER, EVER, NEVER, EVER happen in our lifetime and probably not even your kids lifetime. Way too much liability can happen with those scenarios. I will get into my self-driving car and kick back in my lazyboy chair as it takes me across the country before I get in a drone airliner. If anyone should worry its city bus drivers, taxi drivers, and garbage truck drivers. I can see those going completely automated in our lifetime.

Hmmm...so the 64 year old captain is going to now be alert and ready for the 8:30 single pilot trans-con? And then after that he sets up an auto land with guidance from the on ground co-pilot. What happens when at 300' or even lower the captain is looking outside for the runway on a low mins and the autoland fails or on a Airbus you don't get flare at 50' and it crushes into the pavement? Or tower calls go around and the captain is barely conscious from 8.5 hours of boredom with nobody to interact with?
I hope all these questions and many more are seriously considered before they push this technology.

Single pilot ops will happen in our lifetime.

An FO I know had a Fed in the jumpseat last year whose sole job for the past 2 years has been working on a complete new set of FARs specific to single pilot 121 ops. The Fed told him this is not a mere rewrite but a ground up, quantum leap in the entire operation. He went on to say they have the rules written and are near approval for long haul, over water, single pilot cargo ops. Sure it will take a while for all parties to spool up but the aircraft technology is already here.

Until we see trains without a conductor we won't see pilotless airliners but single pilot ops is inevitable in my opinion. The upside is no one will ever have to endure 18 years as an FO! Start saving now...

And how did they manage that without an NPRM?

Agree 100%

All the rest of you have your heads in the sand.

How long will this take you ask?

I bet my new hire class back in 1999 that we would see it before I retire. If I go full term, I'm out in 2030.

Think of me come 1/1/30 :D

This makes a lot of sense. However, what may eventually happen may not follow a logical path. There are single pilot private jets. The FAA has allowed this and become at least somewhat comfortable with it. If Airbus and Boeing build a plane in 30 years that's meant for a single pilot, and can be controlled remotely by a ground operator, I could see the FAA agreeing to it. I'm not sure that's the most likely course of progress, because what the heck is the benefit? The payoff for the airlines isn't there. Fully autonomous airplanes would save way more money, but would be much harder to do and much further down the road.

I don't know. My guess is that he meant they have a pretty solid framework written but obviously nothing is official.

Single pilot is ops is within reach with today's technology. A completely autonomous aircraft might not make financial sense ever, not to mention the questionable safety aspect. Think about the servos and cameras that would need to be installed in the aircraft for a ground based operator to be able to fully operate the aircraft from push back to gate arrival at the destination. You would essentially just be moving the pilot from the cockpit to the ground. Not a whole lot of savings there. My understanding about military UAVs is they require quite a support team to operate just one. My guess is it takes more than 2 operators to complete a typical 8 hour UAV mission.

You sure know too much about airline suicide. Is your new job such a drag?

From the top down many in FredEx management believe the problem with FredEx is the pilot. The quicker they can eliminate this position the smoother the company will run. UAV's here we come!

? I just read up on airline crashes to learn what happened/what went wrong. These two cases both came to mind. Which is also why I don't think MH370 was a suicide.

Single pilot aircraft don't have to be fully autonomous because there is at least on pilot setting up the systems during preflight. In the event of a disabled pilot, the aircraft auto lands via electronic clearance, and stops on the runway. The pilot on the ground receives the clearance from ATC, and uploads it to the aircraft. The single pilot verifies that the clearance is valid, and the aircraft is following the instructions. Changes in aircraft control come from the ground however. The chances of pilot incapacitation, ground systems failing, and the aircraft auto pilot failing all at the same time are so remote, it's not an issue.

The last several accidents in the US could have been prevented with this technology. Trust me, single pilot is coming soon.

Please list the last several accidents that would have been prevented by use of single pilot ops.




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Single Operating Captain
 

I've got 30+ years left...not concerned in the least about a single pilot transport in my career, "remote backup" or not.

And I say that as a guy with a single pilot jet type rating on the certificate.

Call me an optimist, but I sure do hope this whole single pilot operation kicks in within ten years from now, like I get this feeling it is easily able to. Why? So the circle will be complete- I started out flying planes on a computer (MS FS 98) and I might as will finish it up doing it that way. I mean we can at least LEGALLY text and use our PEDs, right guys? If that's not part of the package, then well deal breaker!!!

Well obviously since safety is paramount, the FAA would be derelict in their duty if they didn't ratchet up our very lax medical oversight policies and of course, you're absolutely right about that 64 year old being not the right fit for such an innovative, safety conscious forward thinking system. When you have 2x the pilots that you need, why have an age over 55 operating anything more than a walmart receipt marker pen at the door greeter position?

Just by chance, I was wondering if you would be interested in some ocean front property in Arizona 'cuz sir do I have a deal for you :D:D