Single pilot airliner [Archive]

Wiley

7th May 2007, 18:11

Sadly, I can see the day coming - maybe it's already come - where some beancounter will come up with the bright, money saving idea of a single monitoring pilot for the cruise sector of long range flights while the two takeoff and landing crewmembers sleep.

They'll probably give him a portapotty to cover his biological needs.

lenstrad

7th May 2007, 19:11

many situations out of the scoop , that need two crew members to aply crm tools and solve them , remember that when an airplane is with one crew member with pilot incapacitation , the other declares emergency and assistance if possible best regards
pd: the pilot is the cheapest thing in an airplane

hetfield

7th May 2007, 19:21

Wait a minute. The beancounters think different. Like "there are two crewmembers if CRM is required", (means, wake up the other guy/girl).

Or, who is talking about "incapacitation"? One pilot is just having a break....

Like I said, not my point of view.......

veterangreaser

7th May 2007, 19:28

Wiley

The Bean Counters are already working on it. TWO pilots? to monitor Takeoff & Landing. REMEMBER 1 Radio operators, 2 Navigators, 3 Flight Engineers? Never get rid of them either? :mad: :mad: I'm afraid it's the way of the world now - Automation wins everytime on cost longterm. Check out your ATSU unit next time it's just a machine - machine thing with a human switch. Sad times

g109

7th May 2007, 20:04

airbus is currently evaluating options for the A350 for single pilot operation.
Airlines are very interested!

it will only be a question of time, when we see single pilot airliners, as well as pilotless airplanes, which will be initially used for cargo.

good news: it won t affect US so much, as most of us will be retired by then.

so long

Anotherflapoperator

7th May 2007, 20:04

Yes, but would you or your mother or your next door neighbour get on an airliner that was single crew?

I would be VERY uncomfortable with one, no matter how good the automation. If they're talking about designing a flightdeck with the bunks within the secure area up front, and allowing a system to monitor a third relief pilot to allow him to work a cruise period whilst the others rest, then it's not so out of the realms of safety.

The level of monitoring of the awareness of the third pilot would have to be foolproof mind. A big automatic stick that smacks him/her round the lughole every 20 minutes might just do it:ooh:

BackPacker

7th May 2007, 20:24

Train operators neatly solved that issue with a dead mans knob system.

Two pilots for the busy times, and only one relief pilot for the cruise, where the relief pilot is monitored through a dead mans knob system which is able to alert the first two pilots, sounds like a better solution to me than the current practice of crews taking "power naps" in turn during a long night cruise.

But I would not be happy if the *total* flight crew would be reduced to less than two.

xsbank

7th May 2007, 20:24

I don't think we are very far away from pilotless a/c. The only part that can't be automated so far is the taxi and if you can tow an a/c out to the button you could tow it back too. $12/hr ground-pounder vs $200,000/yr pilot?

Commuter rail is driverless in Vancouver and everybody accepts it. Won't be long....

llondel

7th May 2007, 20:33

Train operators neatly solved that issue with a dead mans knob system.

Sorry, that conjures up visions of an aircraft with the engines being shut down if the pilot doesn't respond.

Research elsewhere (medical, I think, regarding doctors on call) suggests that your decision-making is seriously impaired for up to fifteen minutes after waking up from a decent sleep. so if you're going to have engine failure or anything else that makes life up front more interesting, best make sure there's at least that much warning so the rest of the flight crew can be in a good condition to deal with it.

boguing

7th May 2007, 22:17

Ancient Mariner - I think that the recent "Ouzo" vs "Pride of Bilbao" might be the wake up call for European maritime operations. That's not to say, or even hope, that visiting Nations will adhere to our rules, but it may be a start.

However, it's a bit of a stretch to compare two dimensional/25 Knot driving to 600 Kt/three dimensional workload.

Tofu Racing

7th May 2007, 22:24

But I would not be happy if the *total* flight crew would be reduced to less than two.

..or less than one :p

Jerricho

7th May 2007, 22:40

Rainboe has echoed exactly what was going through my mind. In a busy terminal environment? No way.

Gingerbread Man

8th May 2007, 00:47

dead mans knob

Keep it clean please ;)

Dan Winterland

8th May 2007, 01:31

A system that slaps the pilot round the head every twenty minutes?

It already exists. The long range glass Boeings put up an a EICAS message 'Pliot Initiated Event required' if nothing has been touched for twenty minutes. If nothing in the cockpit has been touched, the caution alerrt sounds and the caption goes amber. After another minute, if nothing had been done, the master warning sounds. Both I and the other pilot have been woken up by the master warning on at least one occaision while crossing the Atlantic in the early hours!

Another Number

8th May 2007, 01:58

If the beancounters' motives were honest for once, rather than just "cutting costs" for the benefit of airline profits, I for one wouldn't have too great a problem with airlines offering:

*Normal Ticket - Comes with the Dual Pilot Guarantee

*CheapAflite Ticket - One buck cheaper - Single Pilot for your Convenience

*Budget Xpress - Come Fly With Otto (http://symbii.com/images/stories/airplaneminiotto.jpg)

The per ticket overhead of two pilots is pretty small. I think I know which option most people would prefer.

Xeptu

8th May 2007, 02:54

Having had some exposure to the bleeding edge technology in the field of artificial intelligence and considering how far we have come in the last 50 years, I can tell you with some degree of certainty that it won't be another 50 years before the first officers seat in the heavy commercial airliner is replaced completely with a fully automated self contained machine.
Single pilot at any one time in any flight regime at the controls, I am confident, less than 20 years away.

L1011

8th May 2007, 06:56

The Predator drones used by the US military are the leading-edge of what is to come. Totally pilotless, controlled by a geek on the ground.
On the other hand, the NYT estimates that upto 30% of Predators are lost in operation. The actual number of course is classified.:eek:
Single pilot and no-pilot will happen, but not for a few years yet.

ship's power

8th May 2007, 07:33

Today, most of the Predator drone aircraft flying combat missions over Afghanistan, are actually being remotely controlled from thousands of miles away, in the Nellis AFB area (actually Creech AFB, located near Las Vegas, Nevada) via satellite link.

Also - Check out Evergreen unmanned aviation systems at http://www.evergreenaviation.com

Capt H Peacock

8th May 2007, 08:05

So they won't even trust me with a tube of toothpaste, but they'd happily lock me alone in the flightdeck to join in paradise with The Prophet pbuh?

Give me a break.

I'm sure this came out of Beancounter's Monthly as the centrefold. Watch out for the suited ones with a copy under their arm, skulking off for a physiological break in the executive bathroom with a box of tissues.:=

Sleeve Wing

8th May 2007, 08:11

""A system that slaps the pilot round the head every twenty minutes"" ??

KLM were doing this 30 years ago.......using a KITCHEN TIMER fitted in the overhead !(DC8s/DC9s)

"Your turn for a kip, mate ? Set the timer for 15-20 minutes. ......then that'll wake us both up ! ;) :zzz:

Tandemrotor

8th May 2007, 08:19

As stated earlier. The great god 'Security', will be perfectly adequate to knock this idea on the head.

Having said that, we do already have single pilot cruise. I guess it's just a question of the duration!!

Can't help thinking, any savings would be negligible, until we get single (or pilotless!) take off and landings!

BrianCat

8th May 2007, 08:25

"A system that slaps the pilot round the head every twenty minutes"

Or a dog that bites him when it's hungry (or he touches anything). :}

ARINC

8th May 2007, 15:56

many pilots die in flight each year , so
think about it best regards

Another reason to remove them entirely and fully automate the process perhaps.....Dons the proverbial

What is the MTBF for a pilot these days anyway ? :}

chornedsnorkack

8th May 2007, 16:04

Can't help thinking, any savings would be negligible, until we get single (or pilotless!) take off and landings!

We already have cruise pilots, who are not allowed to perform takeoffs and landings.

Wouldn´t there be savings if long flights can be flown by 2 real pilots one of whom is alone while the other is sleeping in crew rest, instead of having 2 real pilots and 1 cruise pilot?

moosp

8th May 2007, 16:34

Boeing had a proof of concept single pilot flight deck 737 mock up in Seattle many years ago, and were suggesting that for flights up to 4 hours the statistics on crew incapacitation were well within the 10 to the -6 required. The technology is available now, especially on the new machines.

Most passengers would accept single pilot already, if it results in a cheaper flight. The only reactionaries would be airline pilots, for obvious reasons.

It will happen, and certainly in the working lifetime of a 40 year old pilot, which may well be 30 years. Just as all the other inovations of aviation have changed our profession, we need to be involved in the evolution at the design stage, and not act as Luddites and try to fight off the inevitable progress of the industry.

Ground controlled passenger carrying commercial aircraft, or futher in the future, autonomous unmanned passenger aircraft will also be seen within the 25 to 35 year time frame. The technology is almost there, and the social acceptance will be as unremarkable as the introduction of attendant-less elevators and driverless trains.

So just as Darwin pointed out, adapt or die.

Few Cloudy

8th May 2007, 16:41

Or adapt AND die...

green granite

8th May 2007, 16:46

If you have single pilot aircraft, how would the then non existent First Officers get the experience to become captains? :hmm:

Wiley

8th May 2007, 19:19

On a computer keyboard.

Tandemrotor

8th May 2007, 20:34

Wouldn´t there be savings if long flights can be flown by 2 real pilots one of whom is alone while the other is sleeping in crew rest, instead of having 2 real pilots and 1 cruise pilot?

So. Let's say you remove a 'cruise pilot' from a flight. He/she earns £60k?? and flies only 40 trips per year. Using these ball park figures that represents £1500 per trip. (I suspect this is an EXTREMELY optimistic figure!)

IF that is distributed amongst the 400 passengers in a 747-400, that represents less than £4 per ticket! On a fare that could easily cost £400, that's 1%. I'm sure robber Brown will find an excuse to take that.

There is a 'counter safety' argument, and there is no significant financial imperative. No savings will be passed on to passengers, under ANY circumstances! This is not like flight engineers (more accurately, panel operators) becoming redundant in modern aircraft.

It is of course already feasible for an aircraft to 'cruise' with NO pilots (Think Helios and a number of other similar events), never mind one pilot. Whether it is desirable is another matter.

Anyone who thinks one pilot at the controls is the master of all he/she surveys, really hasn't considered the impact of a decompression on a NAT track or over terrain (for example). Contrary to populist opinion, the job can rapidly descend into something a little more than just 'button pushing' don't you know! :rolleyes:

A very old and bold pilot once told me; "I don't get paid for what I do. I get paid for what I can do!"

Hear, hear to that!

Paul Wilson

8th May 2007, 21:36

A back of the fag packet calculation for a typical LoCo 2 hour sector. Crew cost per year £120,000 for a max of 900 hours. Therefore £133 per flight hour, so going to single crew would save £133 on a 2 hour sector or less than £1 per ticket. I'd happily pay that. Although I could see a certain blue and gold LoCo going the way of no salary for FO's, tips only, passing around the hat just before landing should ensure a better result.

Fly Ginger

8th May 2007, 21:58

just for once i thought i would respond. A320 junior f/o, on approach to EGCC yesterday, hold at dayne, exit dayne through wx, AP disconnect due to very interesting updraught, told to descend, ap would not reconnect no matter what i or very experienced training captain could do. capt flew rawdata until out of wx, land no issue. i too had held automation as the best thing since etc................

will remember to be a professional pilot like all my training taught me to be.............................

a lesson well taught...............................

please............... fly ginger!!;)

GZip

8th May 2007, 23:57

OTOH, if bunks provided within the flt deck zone, in spite of the reduction in pilot establishment required on the fleet, wouldn't it be better to take rest on longhaul 2-crew ops in a proper bunk instead of 'controlled' rest in the seat?

Heard various rumors that 748 (er, no, not the HS one!!) is designed for single-pilot monitoring in the cruise.

Having worked with PREDATOR & GH it is probably a 50-yr trend, sadly...

Treetopflyer

9th May 2007, 00:32

Crew costs are more than just what crews get as salaries! Add about 20% social charges (country-dependent), initial and recurrent sim training, ground training, and all the rest... We cost a fortune... :E :E :E

F4F

9th May 2007, 07:15

Fly Ginger I sure do agree!
All those flying long enough will have experienced fuzzy logic (!) thru autopilot disconnect, FD loss, AT channel failures, FAC faults, etc etc the list is too long.
Fact, actual technology is not ready for fully automated flight. Open questions such as redundancy, weather avoidance, and how much would one really save (just see estimates of crew factor savings, what about additional costs of development, RC controller, programmers and so on?) need some serious answering first.

Single pilot ops... if you loose that one, as did happen many times already, start reading again the above text :hmm:

BoeingMEL

9th May 2007, 08:03

Those of us old enough to remember single-pilot ops on 19-pax schedules... in very busy airspace ... will remember the workload (eg being directed to a hold you've never heard of), the difficulty in aviating whilst communicating and the countless occasions when an extra pair of ears and eyes would have been priceless! Dear Lord, for the first time I'm glad I've left the party! bm:ugh:

YYZguy

9th May 2007, 08:05

Single pilot in cruise huh? Well, having seen the way some guys fly with TWO of us in the flightdeck, I would not be comfortable having just one guy alone up there for any extended amount of time. The variables are just too large when you condsider global operations (crap ATC (or no ATC at all), crap Wx, questionable pilot standards, terrain issues, variations in ATC procedures, etc).
Not to mention the way we operate NG aircraft. The basics like Aviate, Navigate, Communicate become a little more complicated for just one chap when you throw FMS and ECAM/EICAS into the works. The ability to crosscheck would be lost. It MAY work somewhere like domestic N. American and mainland European flights, but not for global ops.
As for comparing airliners to Predator, apples and oranges folks, you don't have 400 pax and crew lost when one goes down.
My two cents worth.
Cheers all.

kellykelpie

9th May 2007, 08:09

I think single pilot airliners is a good suggestion if technology can cover a bit more.

Many of my mistakes have been because I thought the other guy/girl had it covered.

Wingswinger

9th May 2007, 08:48

Many of my mistakes have been because I thought the other guy/girl had it covered.

Didn't you ask? "Never assume, check" is one of the oldest rules in the game.

Taildragger67

9th May 2007, 12:45

For the record, I support two active crew on the flight deck at all times.

That said, IMHO it's inevitable that pressures will increase to reduce crew. I have read all the arguments about marginal addition to ticket costs, etc, but if a carrier could tin 20-25% of its flight crew (cost), they'd leap at it.

So how's this scenario - (say) 9-12 hour sectors with two crew, one goes off to the bunk, the other is on their pat, with back-up provided by data-link to a central location where one pilot provides support for several flights.

That is, the 'working' on-board pilot is monitoring, radioing, etc. and can get the other pilot out of the rest (which would have to be directly connected to the flight deck) if need be.

The non-on-board pilot can assume control if need be (if the working on-board pilot suddenly becomes incapacitated) and rouse the resting on-board pilot back to the flight deck, and has real-time flight data at their station. They can also provide real-time assistance to the working on-board pilot to discuss operational matters as they arise.

Suddenly you have a two-pilot long-haul operation.

Not that I'm in favour of it, but as technology improves, they sure won't be adding more bods at the sharp end. :hmm:

barit1

9th May 2007, 12:55

The late Pat Tobin told me when he worked for TWA, a mgmt captain was assigned to ferry a Connie from KC Muni to the shop at Fairfax across the Missouri River - a 3 min. flight. He got tired of waiting for the rest of the crew to show up, so he climbed back to the F/E seat, started the engines, climbed back up front, and took off & flew the trip solo.

Does this count? :E

Blues&twos

9th May 2007, 13:09

Quotation from moospThe technology is almost there, and the social acceptance will be as unremarkable as the introduction of attendant-less elevators and driverless trains.

As a controls engineer there is not a chance in hell I would fly in a pilotless plane. The big difference between aircraft and ground based transport is of course that trains/trucks/elevators etc can 'fail safe' - anything goes wrong with electronics, navigation, sensors etc, the brakes come on, the vehicle stops. Everyone swears and gets out.

Bit difficult to do this in flight. (well, not difficult, but very unpopular with pax)

Until somoone invents components that don't fail unpredictably, I'll happily pay a few extra quid for my ticket!

p7lot

9th May 2007, 13:37

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxP8LwSArYA

Maybe the GA program was running on vista???

rigpiggy

9th May 2007, 13:40

I'm fairly sure the last time skytrain had computer problems it stopped. Airliners don't

ARINC

9th May 2007, 14:07

I take it you are looking at this from a non-prof pilot angle. It is easy to swallow the publicity about the latest technical gear and what their capabilities allegedly are. It's how they handle it all when it goes wrong that counts far more. I have sat on the FD of a 747-400 watching multiple messages come up- each and every generator failed, all hydraulic system warnings from every system, multiple fuel pump failure warnings. So many we were trying to find page 1 to start noting them. Could have been alarming, but we were flying along happily at the time. What would single pilots, or worse, automatic non-pilot control systems have made of that? It's all very interesting talking about 'data links'- even these days I'm trying to communicate by shouting on HF across the Atlantic, and .......Africa? Great holes of communication. Sorry to be rude, but worldwide data links?....... my arse! I've flown across Africa for hours totally incommunicado.
It's at least a generation away- I'd say 30 years. And for cargo only- no passenger ops.
I rarely take issue with you Rainboe, but I have to say that your technical arguments revolve around a crew based environment. The whole point of automation is to remove the crew. Aircraft systems already deal with multiple redundancy situations that you as aircrew never see.

The argument cannot be based on technical grounds, it is a social and political argument. Whether I would want to fly on a fully automated aircraft is really the question, not.. is it possible ?

FullWings

9th May 2007, 14:47

I don't see pilotless commercial aircraft coming into operation for many, many years. This is not to say that it can't happen but we are talking about human-level AI: this has been 5-10 years away for the last x decades, much like fusion power stations. Considering the amount of effort that would have to go into R&D, testing and certification(!), it's going to be cheaper to train pilots for the foreseeable future.

In percentage terms, a large amount of the traditional work of the airline pilot *has* been automated - but those were the bits that were susceptible to *easy* automation, e.g. cruise flight and ILS approaches. "Situations falling outside the scope of normal operations and procedures" are a much more complicated problem.

My personal view is that yes, it could happen but by then we won't worry as every other physical or intellectual task that we might want to perform will done just as capably by machine intelligences, leaving us sipping our Martinis by the edge of the pool waiting for the Singularity...

chornedsnorkack

9th May 2007, 15:39

Buses require a driver.

A solo driver. There are no duplicated controls. Even if a relief driver is carried, he cannot take over controls in cruise.

Just a spotter

9th May 2007, 18:37

As a small business owner I understand the value of a good accountant.

However, particularly in aviation, if they go bad and start scrimping and saving then

beancounters cost lives.

"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail." -- Benjamin Franklin (and the print him on banknotes now!)

As a passanger, I'd rather pay for the second seater up in the front office thanks. And don't get me started on unmaned passanger aircraft ... if they start with that I'm driving and to hell with the eco hippies!!

JAS

RAT 5

9th May 2007, 21:16

Wow! This started with an idea about a single pilot watching the office in the cruise to a single pilot, even pilotless, airliner. That's quite a leap from the opening topic.

Some years ago, in Italy, and I suspect it still exsits, FTL's were 16hours for 2crew & 24hrs for 3 crew. Why so long? This is UK heavy crew duty times for only 2 pilots. How can 2 pilots be expected to stay alert for so long? And this was planning; the question of discretionary delays was a very open one.

The answer! The Italian CAA considered the autopilot to be an extra crew member. Thus on a long-haul flight of 13 hours stick time at night, and after 6hours time zone, it was necessary to combat ZZZ. On a NAT Track this was not too bad as it is +/- 1.00 between checkpoints. However, if the other bod nods off it could get interesting. The C/A's were still dinging every 20 mins to keep you awake. Bl%#$y nuisance. SELCAL: sometimes did the same.

Where it got interesting was on multi short sector days as the FTL's did not reduce as sectors increased. Then the concept of the A/P taking the strain into non autoland airfields was non-sensical.

The point being that some CAA's might have sneekily being doing this for sometime without being open about it. It was all about human stamina, or lack of, and more faith in Honeywell & Sperry than el Commondante.