I laughed out loud on his comment that when he flies his biplane or 310 by himself, he never makes any mistakes. I never knew how stupid I was until I got married. 😅
Airliners in the past have had 5 crew members - navigator, radio operator, flight engineer, co pilot, and pilot. Air Force One has 2 pilots, flight engineer, and a navigator.
Regarding the Flight Engineer station on the 767, yes it did exist somewhere. Ansett airlines in Australia took delivery of 5 early build 767s with a FE station. In fact if you youtube search Ansett AN22, you can find a full flight from Melbourne to Sydney in 1987 featuring the FE. This was all due to the union insisting this aircraft have a FE. Before the airline collapsed in 2001, all 767s were converted back to two crew aircraft.
The one pilot cockpit is in the works my brother but you will have a second guy on the ground backing you up virtually (like a drone type operation). Captain Max K. A-320/321
Great vlog as always! Here is the background for some aircraft like the Caravelle, DC-9, BAC 1-11 and F-28 was a two crew ops. MTOW if I remember is under 50 t. You know the FAR/AIM. I dont. Fun fact: Why was 727 built with three engines? They lowred the minima for WX ops. The DC-8/707 got lower minmas than the Caravelle. What if we make it three engines? Then it will be like the DC-8/707. Ansett of Australia was ONLY airline on the 767 with a F/E panel. It was the fuel panel to look at. I have seen pics. No bueno. Fun fact TW has always been strapped for cash after dereg. in 1979. They signed a contract for the A-310. When Boeing got wind of this they paid TW back in cash on the fuel burn of the 767 if it went above so and so. Why just buy the 76 with GE enigines? The same that was on the A-310…
I have been loving your videos Ron. Your stories, the average Joe doing great things, American things, spanning a romantic time and place in America. Respite from the modern crazy world. Thank you brother.
Single pilot cockpit is INSANE. The most important safety feature of any primary aircraft system is redundancy. Not to mention, the most important person on the entire airplane is the First Officer, because they are the only person with the skill, experience, awareness, ability, and authority to tell the Captain that they have their head up their patoot. I flew Captain with plenty of First Officers who have a "Captain Save" notch in their belt.
IF something bad were to happen with single pilot, the amount of money that the airline would have to pay out would FAR EXCEED any savings they realized company-wide. BAD IDEA!
@@tomwilson1006 Agreed. Anyone with multi-crew experience and an ounce of common sense knows intimately how many bad situations have been averted because the PNF could observe and mitigate a potential disaster. Realistically, there are plenty of scenarios (emergencies, diverts, etc.) when even a 2-pilot cockpit is strained to the limit trying to manage it. The foolish proponents of this idea are coming at it from the viewpoint of normal operations, without accounting for anything out of the ordinary happening. As we all know, "out of the ordinary" is a guaranteed reality of flying.
@@pi-sx3mb The ideal was when we still had flight-engineers, I believe, although 3 could sometimes talk themselves INTO trouble rather than OUT of it! Two crew is a bit iffy, and one is just bonkers. Every time they reduce the flight crew by one, the complexity, automation and scope for unforeseen problems goes UP. We're simply replacing one kind of accident for another these days. Statistically, flying is safer now, but we're now crashing aeroplanes for reasons that simply should never have occurred - eg Supermax/MCAS, and dozens of "mode accidents" where the invisible "3rd pilot intercedes with a stealthy exception to a mode change" and the aircraft goes in....
Interesting video. An interesting point about the surviving 727s is that actually the USA is one of the few places in the world with a reasonable number still flying. Most fly cargo at night so I reckon a lot of folk don't know about them but now they all have ADSB and can been see on FR24 each night. USA still has fairly lax noise reggs compared to most of the rest of the world so they live on!
Ron, unfortunately I think industry will push and enable single pilot ops. Traveling public is clumsy, a lot of pax have a hard time finding heir assigned seat even by looking at their ticket and let alone what aircraft they are on. Pax don’t know how fatigue occurs and feels, since they are sleeping while a crew on a red eye is struggling , coping with coffee and such… hope it never happens but it seems the industry just loves to test and then change their minds when accidents do occur.
The motivation to switch to a single pilot airliner is obviously money based. It's not based on increased safety to the crew and passengers. It's a bad idea for that reason alone.
Was the switch from 3 people made things less safe? Plenty of corporate pilots fly single seat. This will come as long as there is a secondary backup like ground remote monitoring. Give it 20 years.
@@jamesburns2232 if all airlines have the same number of pilots, the playing field is level, there is no disadvantage in competition to any of them…. so the statement “have to look at cuts to stay in business” is completely unfounded… The main components of costs are fuel, capital, maintenance, fees (landing, nav, handling), etc…. flight crew costs are way down the list and don’t have a significant effect on the cost of the service…
At about 8:00 the mirrors for the magnetic compass are mentioned. Apparently this was a carryover from the DC-8: they are mentioned in the systems manual for that aircraft.
Capt Rogers: Given that United , along with other carriers, had had so many crashes in the 60s and 70s, would you consider providing more takes on some of them, like what happened to Flight 389, the type captains like Flight 227 that shouldn’t have been upgraded to jets and should the captain of Flight 266 , though legal, should have departed with that know discrepancy given the weather and could have they saved this jet? Love your content and stories , subbed. Thanks
Even given your experience in testing and evaluation and your baseline CV, I wonder if your combined status as 2nd officer and relatively low seniority helped in being chosen for a committee position that would impact future crew complement and fiscal requirements.
LOL you came up in the era of some pretty autocratic style CRM. By the time I came along, we just joked about the old salts who drew the invisible line down the cockpit. By the time I went to my last overseas job, we had some pretty strict flows across those panels - delegated by whether you were pilot flying or pilot monitoring.
If I’m not mistaken, there’s never been a successful attempt by a crew member to crash a pax jet, when there were 3 crew on the flight deck. There have been a few with just 2.
When I experienced my first auto-landing on the Boeing 737-200 ADV in 1981, I said to the captain I thought is probable that in our lifetime there will be only one pilot in the cockpit… and the bad news for you is, it’s going to be me…. because first officers are a lot cheaper. I don’t think pilotless pax airliners will “fly” with the public but single pilot plus a German Shepherd may… why the dog? To bite the pilot if he touches anything. Anxious to see your take on this video.
Could happen if the aircraft proves it can be the pilot in command at all times. The human would be the redundancy if the pilot in command malfunctions.
This is exactly why I chose the maintenance route. I think the traveling public would have no problem flying in a single man cockpit. CEOs have been doing it for years now. I understand pilots being upset about it....but techmology is what it is. And guess what? It always breaks! 😁. Remember, there was once a need for a navigator as well. I bet money the navigators were none too happy about the VORTAC....
I agree. I think this will only happen once there is Ai redundancy or remote control backup or both. We fly drones remotely now and cargo is testing this idea. But it’s going to be a while.
I think I remember them testing the MD-10 at Williams. I was taking my ATP and flight engineer (which I never used) written there. The guy next to me was having flight school flashbacks, haha. He was AF.
‘’CHeck Essential’’ a well used call out by the Captain and F/O in our 727’s as they got older. I loved the 727 as it’s instrument panel was a lot like the panel the UH-1H I flew for the Army. The 72 was like a 500mph Huey as far as flying instruments went with 2 extra engines. I flew all three seats in the 72. It was the last of the real pilot airliners.
Got that right. It was a pilot's airplane and easier to fly than a modern jet all loaded up with gizmos and high tech that ostensibly lessens the workload. One more labor saving device and no one will have the time or ability to fly the thing.
re: "This isn't the way to do it!" My employer was (probably) the only company that insisted it would operate the first gen DC-8 as a Two Crewmember aircraft. So pretty much everything except the fuel control levers/panel was moved to an extended overhead panel. The FO's seat had longer tracks so he could slide back to manage the (many) fuel selector levers. Finally, just before certification, The Authorities finally woke up and said - NOPE! It was designed for 3! You Shall Fly it with 3! These original aircraft couldn't be reconfigured easily - so the SO (FE) had a pretty sparse panel to work with. Will we ever see a Single Pilot Airliner imo? ... it's still TBD but MONEY and 'where there's a will -there's a way," seems to carry a lot of power.
Single pilot monitoring AI which is doing the flying is an inevitable step on the inevitable path to autonomous, fully AI flown airliners. As soon as AI is sophisticated enough these things will happen. Yes there will be crashes and just like with human piloted planes they will be leaned from and AI airliners will end up with a safety track record even better than we have now.
I wouldn't. The railroads are trying to pull that stuff with train crew, too. They haven't succeeded yet, but I'm sure if the right bribes are paid it'll happen. And I will definitely never fly again.
Ok, I have a stupid question, where did all the flight engineer switches and gauges go when into a 2 person cockpit ? I guess I mean before glass screen cockpits became the norm. Is it just all in the overhead ?
I was a trash hauler & before I left we where conducting "developmental" SPO as a tester concept w/ the regulators...personally I loved both ends of it, on the flight deck as the ONLY and in operations as the assist if needed, you would monitor multiple flights & respond / assist as needed. For short haul yeah maybe two is better just based on the quick hop turnarounds (pre flight demands, planning, etc.) but long haul the tech is definitely there no problem. Just from my own little corner the only semi-close calls I was ever involved in resulted from both of us assuming the other guy already "took care of it" so to speak. SPO takes that out of the equation. Again just my two cents don't wanna lose my 401k match over these statements 😆
A little unrelated, but take the B52H/J. A number of years ago, they eliminated the gunner, but that was because they eliminated the gun - duh. The new J model BUF (Big Ugly Fu__er) will eliminate one of the navigator positions - the Electronic Warfare Officer - moving his position to the downstairs Navigator station. This will be done as they upgrade the 76 remaining H frames with new engines and new avionics and redesignate it as the J model. That is a direct corollary to going from 3 to 2 in the 80s in the civilian world but also in the military cargo fleet. I am a retired BUF A/C.
It use to be, A/C-Pilot, +CoPilot, + FE(2), NAVIGATOR(1), RADIO-OP,(1) and on transports a Load Master(LM), so much more than stated. Now we have in-flight right now a FAA approved system that does all a pilot can do and its made by Garmin (It's Red-button activated) OK, add AI to that and learn how it's done by Boeing's XM-44 drones. Might want to learn about Joby's new aircraft (Delta & USAF) know all about it. There are also a number of classified UAV-military long-flight-duration platforms flying (years old) too. Jus'say'n.
Certainly no one should even consider single pilot airline operations until aircraft operating requirements are completely redesigned to mitigate the risk of doing so. This would also require ground based "pilot" resources monitoring multiple flights at a time and having some amount of "aircraft control" for when problems and emergencies occur. This remote "control" would also introduce some amount of security risk. This ground based requirement will surely minimize the single pilot $ savings that the airlines or whoever would be pushing for this change would believe possible. Moving from the 3 pilot operations to a 2 pilot operation was a much easier transition with newer aircraft design and technologies. However, I crewed the Flight Engineer position for 4,400 hours in the 727, DC-10 and 747 and will say that working through complex system emergencies was much easier and went smoother with three pilots but 2 pilots would absolutely be the minimum for safety. A single pilot operation using ground based assistance or not is a really bad idea that is definitely not worth the small price savings imagined. Unfortunately I also believe that one day, single and even no pilot operations will likely become reality.
It's all about the bottom line. Profit is more important than safety. They didn't go from a three person crew to a two person crew because it was safer. It's the same reason they went from a 4 engine airplane for long distance over water flights to a two engine airplane.
I'm sure everyone will be reassured that if we ever need a "Capt Sully" in the future, the ground ops pilots and computers will step up to....ROFL LOL LMAO.....sorry, I couldn't even type it out. No, there are instances where decisions have to be made NOW, by the person at the controls. There is no substitute.
There was a plan to turn the 727 into a 2-crew airplane: extend the gear handle all the way to the Flight Engineer seat and eliminate the copilot seat. I flew 3-crew airplanes that became 2-crew airplanes: DC-10s turned into MD-10s.
They will never learn as far as redundancy is concerned remember the crappy Max 737 with a single AOA sensor same as single pilot ,when crazy flight crew members wants to commit suicide crashing the plane
You've obviously heard of the "Pilot and a dog" cockpit concept. There's a Captain to monitor the instruments and the dog is there to bite him if he tries to touch something.
It won't really be a single pilot cockit. It will have remote pilot monitoring. Second pilot will sit back at base and fly it from the ground. Exactly like military predator drones are controlled.
It would be a serious mistake to go down to a single pilot. Does Germanwings Flight 9525 ring a bell? Single pilot left unattended in the Cockpit. That Pilot had known Mental Illness issues. Captain left the Cockpit and was locked out. First Officer intentionally flew the Airbus A320 into the side of a Mountain, killing all 150 onboard the Aircraft.
It'll start with the A350F. Brilliant aircraft, but the beginning of the end for human pilots. Auto TCAS, auto emergency descent, auto taxi - takeoff - cruise - approach - landing. It'll start with 2 crew for takeoff and landing, but single pilot cruise. Maybe with a ground station monitoring several flights at once, with the ability to trigger an alarm to wake up the other pilot. Once it's proven on a freighter for long enough that your average passenger feels safe, they'll move it to passenger aircraft. Once they've proven single pilot cruise it'll become single pilot automatic takeoff and landing, no pilot cruise. With a slightly louder alarm to wake up the single pilot. ATC will become all but redundant as aircraft talk to and avoid eachother automatically, allowing closer airway and approach spacing. Glitches, coding errors, nefarious interference etc will be handled by the single pilot, until theres few enough issues that the only qualification you'll need to be a "pilot" will be knowing when to stop serving drinks and press then big red "land now" button.
The single pilot will be coding the software you say…. hmmm… The work “auto” is a bit deceptive, functions like auto land does not mean the crew is doing nothing…. They are very active, managing and monitoring the system, making settings and inputs…. and taking over when the auto system can’t handle it, which is very frequent… I can pretty confidently state that your prognostications ain’t gonna happen…
It’s all about ALPA dues money. More butts in seats more exotic MEC meetings in Maui. This is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t believe line pilots should be instructing at TK. Most are lifer TKers and have NEVER flown the line. Those jobs should be filled by retirees, guys who’ve lost their medical, etc. Think of the experience Ron Rogers would bring to training someone on a 777. Myself I have 11,000 hours on the airbus. But no, we let that experience leave the property arguably when it’s needed most.
How much can they save by cutting pilots? Let’s say the average pilot including copilots earns $240,000 a year. I think that may be a little high. Let’s just say that the average pilot copilot flies 1000 hours a year. That’s $240 for the average one hour flight. Assuming there’s an average of 100 passengers per flight, this translates to $2.40 x 2 = $4.80 = something like 1 gallon of fuel. So, you can play around with different assumptions, but an amounts to the same thing: a false economy. If you ask the average passenger if they would mind paying an extra $2.40 for the privilege of two pilots instead of one 99.9999% of passengers would to spend the extra $2.40. I’m not a pilot I’m a mathematician. I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, but it seems to me there’s many many other things that could be done to economize that would be much more productive than cutting pilots.
I laughed out loud on his comment that when he flies his biplane or 310 by himself, he never makes any mistakes. I never knew how stupid I was until I got married. 😅
The more kids you have, the dumber you get as well!!
Airliners in the past have had 5 crew members - navigator, radio operator, flight engineer, co pilot, and pilot. Air Force One has 2 pilots, flight engineer, and a navigator.
Regarding the Flight Engineer station on the 767, yes it did exist somewhere. Ansett airlines in Australia took delivery of 5 early build 767s with a FE station. In fact if you youtube search Ansett AN22, you can find a full flight from Melbourne to Sydney in 1987 featuring the FE. This was all due to the union insisting this aircraft have a FE. Before the airline collapsed in 2001, all 767s were converted back to two crew aircraft.
We already have airliners flown by one pilot. At least, in the UK. I flew from Jersey to Guernsey and back on a BN Trislander with one pilot.
The one pilot cockpit is in the works my brother but you will have a second guy on the ground backing you up virtually (like a drone type operation). Captain Max K. A-320/321
Our pilot has passed out, the internet link is down. Do we have any IT people who can fly a plane?
Great vlog as always! Here is the background for some aircraft like the Caravelle, DC-9, BAC 1-11 and F-28 was a two crew ops. MTOW if I remember is under 50 t. You know the FAR/AIM. I dont. Fun fact: Why was 727 built with three engines? They lowred the minima for WX ops. The DC-8/707 got lower minmas than the Caravelle. What if we make it three engines? Then it will be like the DC-8/707. Ansett of Australia was ONLY airline on the 767 with a F/E panel. It was the fuel panel to look at. I have seen pics. No bueno. Fun fact TW has always been strapped for cash after dereg. in 1979. They signed a contract for the A-310. When Boeing got wind of this they paid TW back in cash on the fuel burn of the 767 if it went above so and so. Why just buy the 76 with GE enigines? The same that was on the A-310…
I have been loving your videos Ron. Your stories, the average Joe doing great things, American things, spanning a romantic time and place in America. Respite from the modern crazy world. Thank you brother.
Glad you like them!
Single pilot cockpit is INSANE. The most important safety feature of any primary aircraft system is redundancy.
Not to mention, the most important person on the entire airplane is the First Officer, because they are the only person with the skill, experience, awareness, ability, and authority to tell the Captain that they have their head up their patoot. I flew Captain with plenty of First Officers who have a "Captain Save" notch in their belt.
When I would check out a new F/O I told them that their primary job was to keep the captain out of trouble.
@@ronrogers LOL, spot on. In addition, if anything went wrong it was all their fault for allowing me to do something stupid. 😜
IF something bad were to happen with single pilot, the amount of money that the airline would have to pay out would FAR EXCEED any savings they realized company-wide. BAD IDEA!
@@tomwilson1006 Agreed. Anyone with multi-crew experience and an ounce of common sense knows intimately how many bad situations have been averted because the PNF could observe and mitigate a potential disaster. Realistically, there are plenty of scenarios (emergencies, diverts, etc.) when even a 2-pilot cockpit is strained to the limit trying to manage it.
The foolish proponents of this idea are coming at it from the viewpoint of normal operations, without accounting for anything out of the ordinary happening. As we all know, "out of the ordinary" is a guaranteed reality of flying.
@@pi-sx3mb The ideal was when we still had flight-engineers, I believe, although 3 could sometimes talk themselves INTO trouble rather than OUT of it! Two crew is a bit iffy, and one is just bonkers. Every time they reduce the flight crew by one, the complexity, automation and scope for unforeseen problems goes UP. We're simply replacing one kind of accident for another these days. Statistically, flying is safer now, but we're now crashing aeroplanes for reasons that simply should never have occurred - eg Supermax/MCAS, and dozens of "mode accidents" where the invisible "3rd pilot intercedes with a stealthy exception to a mode change" and the aircraft goes in....
Interesting video. An interesting point about the surviving 727s is that actually the USA is one of the few places in the world with a reasonable number still flying. Most fly cargo at night so I reckon a lot of folk don't know about them but now they all have ADSB and can been see on FR24 each night. USA still has fairly lax noise reggs compared to most of the rest of the world so they live on!
Ron, unfortunately I think industry will push and enable single pilot ops. Traveling public is clumsy, a lot of pax have a hard time finding heir assigned seat even by looking at their ticket and let alone what aircraft they are on. Pax don’t know how fatigue occurs and feels, since they are sleeping while a crew on a red eye is struggling , coping with coffee and such… hope it never happens but it seems the industry just loves to test and then change their minds when accidents do occur.
Same on the Victor.. captain would slap the guys hand away when he went for the fuel switches... back in those days scavenging was very manual.
The motivation to switch to a single pilot airliner is obviously money based. It's not based on increased safety to the crew and passengers. It's a bad idea for that reason alone.
Greedy pilots want more and more money to the point that Airlines have to look at cuts to remain in business. 🤑
Was the switch from 3 people made things less safe? Plenty of corporate pilots fly single seat. This will come as long as there is a secondary backup like ground remote monitoring. Give it 20 years.
Greedy airlines more like
@@jamesburns2232 Maybe in the US, and at a stretch the Middle East, but for the rest of us…. Ha!
@@jamesburns2232 if all airlines have the same number of pilots, the playing field is level, there is no disadvantage in competition to any of them…. so the statement “have to look at cuts to stay in business” is completely unfounded…
The main components of costs are fuel, capital, maintenance, fees (landing, nav, handling), etc…. flight crew costs are way down the list and don’t have a significant effect on the cost of the service…
At about 8:00 the mirrors for the magnetic compass are mentioned. Apparently this was a carryover from the DC-8: they are mentioned in the systems manual for that aircraft.
Capt Rogers: Given that United , along with other carriers, had had so many crashes in the 60s and 70s, would you consider providing more takes on some of them, like what happened to Flight 389, the type captains like Flight 227 that shouldn’t have been upgraded to jets and should the captain of Flight 266 , though legal, should have departed with that know discrepancy given the weather and could have they saved this jet?
Love your content and stories , subbed. Thanks
Thanks for the great content, Ron. I enjoy all of it. Hopefully I’ll catch you on the air one day! 73!
Even given your experience in testing and evaluation and your baseline CV, I wonder if your combined status as 2nd officer and relatively low seniority helped in being chosen for a committee position that would impact future crew complement and fiscal requirements.
I bet we'll have a 0 person cockpit before we have a 1 person cockpit.
Probably, until the first smoking hole in the ground shows up because the HAL 9000 refused to open the pod bay doors.
These videos are really interesting and unique thanks Ron !
Glad you like them!
LOL you came up in the era of some pretty autocratic style CRM. By the time I came along, we just joked about the old salts who drew the invisible line down the cockpit. By the time I went to my last overseas job, we had some pretty strict flows across those panels - delegated by whether you were pilot flying or pilot monitoring.
If I’m not mistaken, there’s never been a successful attempt by a crew member to crash a pax jet, when there were 3 crew on the flight deck. There have been a few with just 2.
When I experienced my first auto-landing on the Boeing 737-200 ADV in 1981, I said to the captain I thought is probable that in our lifetime there will be only one pilot in the cockpit… and the bad news for you is, it’s going to be me…. because first officers are a lot cheaper. I don’t think pilotless pax airliners will “fly” with the public but single pilot plus a German Shepherd may… why the dog? To bite the pilot if he touches anything. Anxious to see your take on this video.
Yes, the Boeing proposal of pilot and dog!
Could happen if the aircraft proves it can be the pilot in command at all times. The human would be the redundancy if the pilot in command malfunctions.
This is exactly why I chose the maintenance route. I think the traveling public would have no problem flying in a single man cockpit. CEOs have been doing it for years now. I understand pilots being upset about it....but techmology is what it is. And guess what? It always breaks! 😁. Remember, there was once a need for a navigator as well. I bet money the navigators were none too happy about the VORTAC....
It would end 1 person cockpit, if the pilot was to have a major health event...
Very interesting! Not sure I'd like to have the workload of a single person crew, when a serious problem arose, during a critical phase of flight.
I agree. I think this will only happen once there is Ai redundancy or remote control backup or both. We fly drones remotely now and cargo is testing this idea. But it’s going to be a while.
All I remember about my days on the 727 is, "Check essential!"
3-1-2
I think I remember them testing the MD-10 at Williams. I was taking my ATP and flight engineer (which I never used) written there. The guy next to me was having flight school flashbacks, haha. He was AF.
A rear view mirror to look at the magnetic compass, that is a hangover from the original DC3!
‘’CHeck Essential’’ a well used call out by the Captain and F/O in our 727’s as they got older. I loved the 727 as it’s instrument panel was a lot like the panel the UH-1H I flew for the Army. The 72 was like a 500mph Huey as far as flying instruments went with 2 extra engines. I flew all three seats in the 72. It was the last of the real pilot airliners.
Got that right. It was a pilot's airplane and easier to fly than a modern jet all loaded up with gizmos and high tech that ostensibly lessens the workload. One more labor saving device and no one will have the time or ability to fly the thing.
I was a 727 flight engineer 1986-1990 and can still cleary recall that command!
Check Essential....didn't UAL lose a 727 when the were dispatched with one gen out and the FE mismanaged the electrical system?
re: "This isn't the way to do it!" My employer was (probably) the only company that insisted it would operate the first gen DC-8 as a Two Crewmember aircraft. So pretty much everything except the fuel control levers/panel was moved to an extended overhead panel. The FO's seat had longer tracks so he could slide back to manage the (many) fuel selector levers. Finally, just before certification, The Authorities finally woke up and said - NOPE! It was designed for 3! You Shall Fly it with 3! These original aircraft couldn't be reconfigured easily - so the SO (FE) had a pretty sparse panel to work with. Will we ever see a Single Pilot Airliner imo? ... it's still TBD but MONEY and 'where there's a will -there's a way," seems to carry a lot of power.
That 732 has a serious AI disagreement on all 3 instruments. Were you fueling it with Jet-A1 or Tequila?
Single pilot monitoring AI which is doing the flying is an inevitable step on the inevitable path to autonomous, fully AI flown airliners. As soon as AI is sophisticated enough these things will happen. Yes there will be crashes and just like with human piloted planes they will be leaned from and AI airliners will end up with a safety track record even better than we have now.
Most likely someday. I would guess within. 50 years.
I wouldn't. The railroads are trying to pull that stuff with train crew, too. They haven't succeeded yet, but I'm sure if the right bribes are paid it'll happen. And I will definitely never fly again.
Ok, I have a stupid question, where did all the flight engineer switches and gauges go when into a 2 person cockpit ? I guess I mean before glass screen cockpits became the norm. Is it just all in the overhead ?
Many on the overhead originally, but many were eliminated through automation on placed on touch screens.
Here's what you do every passenger row on the plane has a switch , guage or lever to work
I was a trash hauler & before I left we where conducting "developmental" SPO as a tester concept w/ the regulators...personally I loved both ends of it, on the flight deck as the ONLY and in operations as the assist if needed, you would monitor multiple flights & respond / assist as needed. For short haul yeah maybe two is better just based on the quick hop turnarounds (pre flight demands, planning, etc.) but long haul the tech is definitely there no problem. Just from my own little corner the only semi-close calls I was ever involved in resulted from both of us assuming the other guy already "took care of it" so to speak. SPO takes that out of the equation. Again just my two cents don't wanna lose my 401k match over these statements 😆
A little unrelated, but take the B52H/J. A number of years ago, they eliminated the gunner, but that was because they eliminated the gun - duh. The new J model BUF (Big Ugly Fu__er) will eliminate one of the navigator positions - the Electronic Warfare Officer - moving his position to the downstairs Navigator station. This will be done as they upgrade the 76 remaining H frames with new engines and new avionics and redesignate it as the J model. That is a direct corollary to going from 3 to 2 in the 80s in the civilian world but also in the military cargo fleet. I am a retired BUF A/C.
WOW, I find that shocking!
It use to be, A/C-Pilot, +CoPilot, + FE(2), NAVIGATOR(1), RADIO-OP,(1) and on transports a Load Master(LM), so much more than stated. Now we have in-flight right now a FAA approved system that does all a pilot can do and its made by Garmin (It's Red-button activated) OK, add AI to that and learn how it's done by Boeing's XM-44 drones. Might want to learn about Joby's new aircraft (Delta & USAF) know all about it. There are also a number of classified UAV-military long-flight-duration platforms flying (years old) too. Jus'say'n.
Three person to two person to 1 person and Air Bus is promoting a 0 person cockpit. I wonder is people will fly on a completely automated AI airliner.
But, you'll always be flying with your favorite captain! I hope this never happens...
I think when they go to single pilot cockpits, they will be backed up by a guy on the ground. So technically 2 crew, but only 1 in the airplane.
Certainly no one should even consider single pilot airline operations until aircraft operating requirements are completely redesigned to mitigate the risk of doing so. This would also require ground based "pilot" resources monitoring multiple flights at a time and having some amount of "aircraft control" for when problems and emergencies occur. This remote "control" would also introduce some amount of security risk. This ground based requirement will surely minimize the single pilot $ savings that the airlines or whoever would be pushing for this change would believe possible. Moving from the 3 pilot operations to a 2 pilot operation was a much easier transition with newer aircraft design and technologies. However, I crewed the Flight Engineer position for 4,400 hours in the 727, DC-10 and 747 and will say that working through complex system emergencies was much easier and went smoother with three pilots but 2 pilots would absolutely be the minimum for safety. A single pilot operation using ground based assistance or not is a really bad idea that is definitely not worth the small price savings imagined. Unfortunately I also believe that one day, single and even no pilot operations will likely become reality.
I used to joke that I would open my laptop, in my bathrobe, and fly the trip from home.
The B737 jump seat is REALLY a jump shelf. 😁
727 jump seat was just a square metal shelf that folded out from the cabin wall
Single pilot? How about no pilots. Fully automated monitoring and ATC by computer. What could possibly go wrong?
It's all about the bottom line. Profit is more important than safety. They didn't go from a three person crew to a two person crew because it was safer. It's the same reason they went from a 4 engine airplane for long distance over water flights to a two engine airplane.
I'm sure everyone will be reassured that if we ever need a "Capt Sully" in the future, the ground ops pilots and computers will step up to....ROFL LOL LMAO.....sorry, I couldn't even type it out.
No, there are instances where decisions have to be made NOW, by the person at the controls. There is no substitute.
I have been doing a little hamming myself
There was a plan to turn the 727 into a 2-crew airplane: extend the gear handle all the way to the Flight Engineer seat and eliminate the copilot seat.
I flew 3-crew airplanes that became 2-crew airplanes: DC-10s turned into MD-10s.
Well one pilot and a computer assistant like MCAS on a Boeing will be perfectly safe 😂
They will never learn as far as redundancy is concerned remember the crappy Max 737 with a single AOA sensor same as single pilot ,when crazy flight crew members wants to commit suicide crashing the plane
You've obviously heard of the "Pilot and a dog" cockpit concept. There's a Captain to monitor the instruments and the dog is there to bite him if he tries to touch something.
Yes, was the Boeing inside joke.
This just screams Germanwings flight 9525 happening again.
It won't really be a single pilot cockit. It will have remote pilot monitoring. Second pilot will sit back at base and fly it from the ground. Exactly like military predator drones are controlled.
COCKPIT OF THE FUTURE!
Pilot & German Shepherd.
Pilot Monitors computers,
Dog BITES Pilot if he touches controls.
It would be a serious mistake to go down to a single pilot.
Does Germanwings Flight 9525 ring a bell? Single pilot left unattended in the Cockpit. That Pilot had known Mental Illness issues. Captain left the Cockpit and was locked out. First Officer intentionally flew the Airbus A320 into the side of a Mountain, killing all 150 onboard the Aircraft.
Actually, German law forbade his doctors disclosing his mental illness. The airline had no clue.
It'll start with the A350F. Brilliant aircraft, but the beginning of the end for human pilots. Auto TCAS, auto emergency descent, auto taxi - takeoff - cruise - approach - landing. It'll start with 2 crew for takeoff and landing, but single pilot cruise. Maybe with a ground station monitoring several flights at once, with the ability to trigger an alarm to wake up the other pilot. Once it's proven on a freighter for long enough that your average passenger feels safe, they'll move it to passenger aircraft. Once they've proven single pilot cruise it'll become single pilot automatic takeoff and landing, no pilot cruise. With a slightly louder alarm to wake up the single pilot. ATC will become all but redundant as aircraft talk to and avoid eachother automatically, allowing closer airway and approach spacing. Glitches, coding errors, nefarious interference etc will be handled by the single pilot, until theres few enough issues that the only qualification you'll need to be a "pilot" will be knowing when to stop serving drinks and press then big red "land now" button.
The single pilot will be coding the software you say…. hmmm…
The work “auto” is a bit deceptive, functions like auto land does not mean the crew is doing nothing…. They are very active, managing and monitoring the system, making settings and inputs…. and taking over when the auto system can’t handle it, which is very frequent…
I can pretty confidently state that your prognostications ain’t gonna happen…
Keep crying about pilot shortages and it will become a single pilot operation because the claim will be no choice.
Two pilots is fine, one pilot is not. I would not fly as a pax on an airliner with just one pilot.
It’s all about ALPA dues money. More butts in seats more exotic MEC meetings in Maui. This is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t believe line pilots should be instructing at TK. Most are lifer TKers and have NEVER flown the line. Those jobs should be filled by retirees, guys who’ve lost their medical, etc. Think of the experience Ron Rogers would bring to training someone on a 777. Myself I have 11,000 hours on the airbus. But no, we let that experience leave the property arguably when it’s needed most.
How much can they save by cutting pilots? Let’s say the average pilot including copilots earns $240,000 a year. I think that may be a little high. Let’s just say that the average pilot copilot flies 1000 hours a year. That’s $240 for the average one hour flight. Assuming there’s an average of 100 passengers per flight, this translates to $2.40 x 2 = $4.80 = something like 1 gallon of fuel. So, you can play around with different assumptions, but an amounts to the same thing: a false economy. If you ask the average passenger if they would mind paying an extra $2.40 for the privilege of two pilots instead of one 99.9999% of passengers would to spend the extra $2.40. I’m not a pilot I’m a mathematician. I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, but it seems to me there’s many many other things that could be done to economize that would be much more productive than cutting pilots.
3 reasons it'll never happen
Gameel Al-Batouti
Andreas Lubitz
Joseph Emerson
(I'd actually expect flying with 0 pilots sooner than 1 pilot)
I assume you are aghast at "BUF". It sure is not "Big ugly fat fellow" because it is not ugly and certainly not fat.
I imagine that at some point we will get to the zero pilot airliner.
B737 is the crapiest aircraft ever built especially the Max the flying coffin ⚰️
I loved flying the 737 200, 300, and 400. Back when Boeing was king👨✈️
3-2-1-0
CQ,CQ….KN4YTT watching….