NASA Studying Single Pilot Cockpits

Anyone else think this is a horrible idea?

In an age of dwindling pilots and airline profits the government turns to Rockwell Collins to test solutions that will eventually remove the copilot/first office/monitoring pilot from the flightdeck.

In the plan, the copilot would be sitting at a ground station monitoring 12 different aircraft, not unlike an ATC, and only step in when necessary.

In normal operations, the super dispatcher is there to watch the operations and offer advice or help for the pilot. In a contingency, which has to be triggered by the captain, the super dispatcher transitions into dedicated support mode as a first officer in the left seat of the ground station; the pilot and first officer then conduct a briefing over an open microphone loop to assign duties, including who will fly the aircraft (the first officer flies via inputs to the autoflight system in the mode control panel representation in the ground control station). The super dispatcher can then brief the captain about information available in the ground station, including the most viable diversion choices given the environmental conditions and aircraft’s physical state.

aviationweek.com...

The issue isn't a matter of aircraft being so complicated that they need two people simply to run everything, but rather one of human nature. Humans make mistakes every single day. Having a second set of eyes up front to catch those mistakes is probably the best safety device you could possibly have on a flight deck. Whether it be something as simple as helping run a checklist or offering advice on a situation the other pilot has not encounter before, having a second pilot is priceless.

flightclub.jalopnik.com...

Anyone else find this to be an atrocious idea?

a reply to: aholic

Agree, if pilots / co pilots and engineers are becoming too expensive then air fairs are too cheap.

It's probably about time that this technology is added to the budget airline....

You can fly to Europe without a pilot for X

I'm going to do some fag packet maths here...all in UK pounds.

A pilot gets 70k per year, a co-pilot 50k per year, all up, 120k.

Both fly an average of 4 flight per week = 56 x 4 = 224 per year. 120k \ 224 flights is $535 per flight.

If an aircraft averages 100 people...that's less than 6 pounds I pay for a human pilot.

Excuse me if I would rather see fuel efficiency to cover expenses and pilots paid a fair share.

So I think Airport Tax, yes the delights of #ty queueing, poor security, obscene sales which makes a massive profit from you being there and then charges you a tax to take off should make way for pilots and redundancy in the human pilot loop.

Leeches, grabbing leeches...

The future is no pilots. If implemented properly I see no problem here.

a reply to: aholic

Anyone else think this is a horrible idea?

Yes . I want my planes to have 2 engines preferably 4 . Three people at the pointy end . Lots of pretty women serving me beer and toilets in the back .

I think those are actually steps towards fully automated flight, with the pilot being the operator monitoring the system (practically we are pretty much there already).

"Seventy five percent of commercial airline accidents are caused by human error, with flight crew failure at the top of the list."

a reply to: moebius

We are absolutely there. The flight computer has successfully managed to land an airliner on a couple of occasions. But unfortunately this is going to have to move at the speed of law, which is why we probably won't see a pilotless cockpit for quite a long time.

originally posted by: moebius
I think those are actually steps towards fully automated flight, with the pilot being the operator monitoring the system (practically we are pretty much there already).

"Seventy five percent of commercial airline accidents are caused by human error, with flight crew failure at the top of the list."

Automation doesn't change a thing. Somebody has to tell the automatic systems what to do and when, and recognize when they are not working intelligently. And many of those accidents come from this problem: complexity of all the automatic systems (how many different modes are there and what do they do and when) and lack of situational awareness.

So you fully 'automate' the cockpit, meaning you have a human program it ahead of time and it will follow its program no matter what happens, and you'll still get accidents due to human error, because human didn't program something in, or human programmers didn't consider some edge case in the software.

Before automating a 200 million aircraft going at 540 mph, start first with a municipal bus going at 20. Guess what, even that job is pretty difficult. How does it work when there's a huge construction trench which just had its water pipe burst and the cop is yelling at all you losers to turn the heck around and take a detour.

a reply to: aholic

More than just a couple occasions. There is a whole category of ILS approaches(Cat III) for fully automated landings. However, the use of these are very rare and still require heavy pilot supervision.

This probably won't happen for a very long time, if ever, for a lot of reasons besides lawmaking. Pilot unions, consumer confidence, and logistics would be the three biggest that I can think of.

a reply to: justwanttofly

The general thinking now is this will be a cargo only switch, and after 10 years or so testing for commercial flights will slowly start.

a reply to: justwanttofly

Yup, you and I are on the same page. To me the speed of law includes all those things since they are connected to legislation.

How many fully automated landing strips are there in the US?

2 dozen?

a reply to: aholic

Most airports with a good amount of commercial traffic should be CAT III authorized for at least one runway.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Even then I don't see any of the pilot unions coming anywhere close to agreeing to single pilot ops.

a reply to: justwanttofly

I've got a wild idea.... Why don't we just pay our pilots more! That might do something about the shortage....

a reply to: aholic

The pilot shortage is artificial.

a reply to: justwanttofly

They're going to have to eventually suck it up.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Mind clarifying this?

a reply to: aholic

When I can eventually get on my laptop where I have the articles bookmarked.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That would be fantastic. Very interested in what you have to say about that.

a reply to: Forensick

Agree, if pilots / co pilots and engineers are becoming too expensive then air fairs are too cheap.

Absolutely one hundred percent correct. Even a premium long haul airline flying 777's, 380's or 747's with a full crew amounts to probably no more than about $20-30US per passenger in wages. Fuel makes up the vast majority of a flights cost with the rest going to aircraft leasing payments, flight attendants wages, catering, company operations etc.

Put it this way, there must be something wrong in the airline business if they are able to offer seats at a cost that is below what it would take you to drive your car between those same two points in fuel alone. I live on the East coast of Australia and a quick check of available flights shows I could book a flight tomorrow one way from Sydney to Brisbane for between $75-100AU (less booking fees and tax of course). If I drove in my car I would use over a tank of petrol which would roughly cost 65-85 bucks minimum, not including any food of course for a drive that would take about 12hrs with a couple of breaks. Yet as I said I can get on an airliner costing about 75 million in n organization that needs thousands of employees to be paid for, get me there in a flight time of about 70-90mins and they can charge me less? Something is awfully funny in these numbers. So penny pinching on flight crew and engineers when you charge ridiculously low fares is stupid. I have been very reliably informed that some airlines are making barely 0.50c-$2.00 per seat, even after lots of funny accounting, novel tax write offs and corporate debt hiding.

So I think Airport Tax, yes the delights of #ty queueing, poor security, obscene sales which makes a massive profit from you being there and then charges you a tax to take off should make way for pilots and redundancy in the human pilot loop

Agreed, taxes and hidden charges should be looked at first as some of them are frankly unjustifiable, particularly taxes for takeoffs/landings at airports that are now privatized in many Western countries.

Leeches, grabbing leeches...

Yes, specifically corporate leeches by the thousand of the kind who's jobs with ever more incomprehensible job titles seem protected and don't need to justify their existence while operational areas can be cut dangerously close to the bone. It leaves a bad taste in ones mouth when people loose their jobs as airfares drop to unsustainable levels while some corporate 26yr old marketing airhead blows over 1 million plus in one night "entertaining" a bunch of celebs at an obscenely lavish dinner.

Yeah sure we need single pilot aircraft to reduce costs. Like a hole in the head. I just don't believe we have the technology available to give a remote pilot the level of Situational Awareness they need and I doubt there is a quick solution for the control time lag issue yet. No thanks.

LEE.

a reply to: aholic

Apparently the connection here is good enough to let me log on and take my money but not let me do anything.

It all basically boils down to the layoffs though. If they rehired all the pilots laid off and made a couple minor changes to policy then they would fill all the holes they're currently saying they can't fill.