Airbus + Cathay working on Single Pilot during Cruise with A350

[Airmann]

https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...ul-2021-06-16/

Airbus and Cathay will start tests on having only one pilot in the cockpit during Cruise on A350. Target a launch date of 2025.

[Less Hair]

Think AF447. Relaxed cruise and iced up probes but only one junior guy in the cockpit to deal with it now?

[Veruka Salt]

Iced up probes aren’t a problem in the 350. But I take your point.

[Rt Hon Jim Hacker MP]

What a load of old pony. Where exactly is the benefit? I pity the poor sod who finds themselves alone with a rapid decompression over high terrain in the middle of the night. Some things work just fine as they are. The wheel is another great example.

[Less Hair]

Take some broken cockpit window.

[Airmann]

Its a simple calculation at the end of the day. If the safety engineers can show that the aircraft can safely be flown in cruise with only one pilot, and all failures can be handled by that one pilot, there's no reason from a technical stand point why this project isn't feasible. I think that most of the opposition will come from the human factors side of things. That's the purpose of the next few years of testing. Ie. To prove that its doable.

[scr1]

What happens if something happens to the one pilot??

[Airmann]

Those are the sort of things safety engineers and risk management processes need to address. Once they can successfully show that they have a method of dealing with that and then the other issues then the soulless and cold world of aviation regulation might allow it.

At the end of the day aviation only exists because the parties involved have proved that they can mitigate the risks involved with it to make it acceptable to the traveling public. There's no reason why they couldn't do it again.

Remember, the aviation community was in arms when the flight engineer was replaced by computers.

[CW247]

Single pilot for cruise. "For how long at a time?" is the question. Are they implying the other one gets to nod off during that time? What if one needs to answer a call (from nature)?

Good luck Cathay/Airbus but all that's going to happen is that pilots involved in the trial will simply report how tired/exposed/compromised they felt. I can save you 5 years of research now.

[procede]

Less Hair

Actually, not having a second officer there would have prevented the accident. First of all he would not have pulled on the stick and second of all the captain would have been able to take his seat much more quickly...

[procede]

scr1

The flight management system will do its job until the other pilot wakes up before landing.

[Easyheat]

I don’t see the big savings in this kind of operation, but if you could reduce the cockpit to a single pilot cockpit then I see it would mean a lot in savings. But to have a single pilot cockpit in passenger flights, would mean that the A/C automation level would be able to do everything by itself from Thrust Levers is advanced on take off until it reaches taxi speed after landing, due to incapacitation of the pilot on board at the most critical point of the flight phase. And then you can ask yourself if the pilot is relevant at all.

[sudden twang]

Safety engineers risk assessing 😂 That’ll be fine then.
The aircraft would have to be safe with no pilots at the controls at least for a short period of time to allow for a pee break, nose bleed,vomit etc.

[Less Hair]

Why still use two engines then? One will do.

[sunnybunny]

So what happened to the procedures put in place after the GermanWings incident?

[Equivocal]

Safety engineers risk assessing 😂 That’ll be fine then.

So what alternative do you propose?

[sangiovese.]

I think we should carefully consider the facts and benefits here.

OK I’ve done that. No. Stupid cost saving initiative

[Nick 1]

Does they will count the time of resting pilot sleep and cut accordingly his salary ?

[socsbrian]

Not sure why so many people are opposing this.

[kikatinalong]

Perhaps we can improve safety even further by reducing to only one manager instead