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Top pilots’ union sounds alarm as regulators consider smaller crew sizes

Aerospace giants have been accused of putting profits ahead of safety as officials consider cutting the minimum number of pilots required on commercial flight decks from two to one.

The move, which is currently being evaluated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), would weaken standards to the “lowest common denominator”, the world’s largest union of airline pilots has warned.

“This threat is not something that is 10, 15, 20 years away,” Capt James Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents more than 78,000 pilots in the US and Canada, said. “It’s something that, quietly, Airbus, has been working on. It’s not what they are marketing it to be.

“The US has the safest aviation record in the world. We need to improve the standard for everybody, not just go to the lowest common denominator.”

ryathal ,

This was 9 years ago. It’s a pretty good reason to have at least 2.

____ ,

I distinctly remember that, and the associated horror. Not to mention the risk of fatigue, health issues, and a thousand other scenarios.

thurstylark ,

Then there’s the case of the pilot riding in the jump seat who had been taking magic mushrooms to deal with grief and depression, and genuinely thought the best course of action was to crash the plane. (he didn’t report his condition prior to resorting to elicit substances in fear of losing his career, which is a whole other rant. For those interested, this video goes more into that side of the story)

Granted he wasn’t flying (and didn’t try to fly, per-se), but I doubt that a single pilot could subdue someone who is tripping balls and keep a commercial airliner in the air simultaneously.

Or the many, many, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi0SM524ylKVAo5NJNrfzPwf4mTdzLz2l other cases that don’t make headlines in which a warm spare became imminently critical for the safety of hundreds of people (both in the air and on the ground). The reason they don’t get media attention is because “Situation on Plane Ended in the Good Way, System Worked as Intended” isn’t a headline that get clicks.

Hell, even aircraft themselves are built with redundancy for critical components. How in the fucking world could one even begin to justify not doing so for us squishy humans?

It’s not that this idea is just stupid, this idea is dangerously stupid.

Rhaedas ,

A compromise - have one pilot, but also require there be at least one passenger who has flown before, or at least messed with Flight Simulator at one time in their life.

They're looking at money and forgetting why there's rules.

slingstone ,

Alternately, if only one pilot is required, then every passenger should have an ejection seat or capsule of some kind–some way to get safely to the ground in a catastrophic emergency.

mspencer712 ,

As a Flight Simulator / study-level airliner add-on enjoyer I want to point out / supplement the above, that the main point of a real-world airline transport pilot is handling exceptions and problems. Sure I can American-Truck-Simulator-Airbus-Edition my way through a flight from cold and dark at one gate to cold and dark at another. I do not know how to handle failures.

Makes for a fun shower thought. And a fun exercise in task saturation, going into the menu and triggering a bunch of random failures. You usually need a bunch for a fun challenge because, in a study level thingy, the list of potential faults is huge and most of them are just a reduction in redundancy, a “crew awareness” item, or loss of a convenience feature. But I do not belong on a flight deck under any realistic circumstance.

Gives you huge appreciation for how massively redundant airliners are, how much “we already thought this through and here’s what gives you the best chances at a safe outcome” research went into every checklist and procedure, and how much study and practice goes into training and maintaining every fight crew member, cabin crew included.

Rhaedas ,

Pilots spend an insane amount of their non-flight time in simulators doing this very thing, to the point where when things do go wrong they subconsciously know the routine to address it. There's no time to think about a reaction in many cases. And now they want to just have one person be at that alert level all the time.

And I thought that fatigue was an ongoing problem with pilots now, but I'm sure having just one person focused the whole flight won't hurt.

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