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.
A community for discussing events around the World
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
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.
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.
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.
I wouldn't say it's an insane amount of time in the simulator. That probably averages less than 15 hours a year; however, there's many hours spent preparing for the time in the simulator which is what really makes emergency procedures rote.
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.
We should have a bunch of flight sim dilettantes sign an open letter saying we're waiting in the wings, overjoyed at the opportunity previously only available to doctors lol
This was 9 years ago. It's a pretty good reason to have at least 2.
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, many 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.
I distinctly remember that, and the associated horror. Not to mention the risk of fatigue, health issues, and a thousand other scenarios.
As a professional pilot. I don't think there's any future in single pilot ops. Realistically the only time you need two pilots in a modern airliner is when shit's fucked sideways, which is exactly the time the single pilot in this situation needs to work. Normal ops are easy. You could automate that no problem, what is hard is automating whatever combination of failures and weather the engineers never thought of.
Maybe in cargo, where the stakes are lower, it'll happen. But in passenger ops, I think we'll go from 2 pilots to no pilots before we go to one pilot.
One point of failure can’t possibly result in a catastrophe.
As if I needed more reasons to never want to fly again!