Ban Single Pilot Operations!!

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Anthem00@reddit

is this for safety reasons or job/market preservation reasons ? Or using the safety reasons for job/market preservation reasons ?

I dont think much traction is happening on this front. there was brief talk about it - but its been squashed by airbus already I believe.

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I'm thinking in terms of safety. The risk of a medical emergency or technological issues is relatively high, to the point where I feel like it's an issue. I recently watched a Pilot Joe TED Talk about it, so I don't think it's that far of a reach in terms of relevance. What this would do is prevent airlines or manufacturers from attempting single-pilot ops in the future. I'd think they'd want to pursue it for the economic side. I'm open to any more questions you have, but I think that in the future, there will be another push for single-pilot operations again.

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x4457@reddit

Are you aware that we've been operating jets single pilot on the non-airline side of the industry with comparable safety since the 70s?

That's going to be a major argument you're going to have to answer for, and the way you do that is to focus on safety of the general traveling public.

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Legitimate-Watch-670@reddit

Are you aware that we've been operating jets single pilot on the non-airline side of the industry with comparable safety since the 70s?

No I wasn't, do you have a source for that?

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SituationReal5024@reddit (OP)

Yeah, I agree, I don't know about the comparable safety record part. The stress on a pilot's workload makes it dangerous, imo. If you check out Pilot Debrief, there are a ton of incidents regarding GA that would've been prevented with a second set of eyes. I don't want to restrict GA considering it's already becoming unattainable for the middle class, but I feel like this shouldn't become the norm for Part 121.

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youngbus1141@reddit

Even a second set of eyes pales compared to a monetized aviation crash YouTuber.

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x4457@reddit

Did you reply from the wrong account or are you someone different?

I'd have to do some data compiling on the NTSB's website if you wanted hard data on safety statistics, but the accident rates between single pilot and non-single pilot turbojet operations are relatively similar - particularly with professional pilots instead of owner pilots.

The CE-500 family, CE-525 family, Beechcraft Premier, Phenom 100, Phenom 300, HondaJet, and Cirrus Vision Jet are all single pilot capable aircraft and fly tens if not hundreds of thousands of hours every year fleet-wide single pilot without incident.

For the record, I'm very much against single pilot airliners and also want to see regulatory restriction on that (for protection of the general traveling public like I mentioned), but this is something that has been done on a smaller scale for decades.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

So you just made it up. You said that single pilot was just as safe, and then you said that you don’t have any statistics on it.

That means you just made it up. Yes most flights single pilot will be completed without incident, but the standard for safety in scheduled 121 is at a different level.

We had roughly 150 million flights scheduled 121 passenger flights without a single fatal crash in between Colgan and PSA 5342. That has never happened under single pilot operations.

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SituationReal5024@reddit (OP)

That person is different. You make good points and honestly, I hope that the tech never gets good enough for single pilot part 121 ops. I started this not thinking it would go far but just in the slight chance that it does lead to real change, I think it would be so irresponsible for airlines to move toward single pilot opps and just want to maybe help prevent it. Sign my petition if you want (just know that as much as I’m gonna try, i don’t think it’ll go anywhere)

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youngbus1141@reddit

People are starting with the rentseeking instinct and back-solving for everything else.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

Part 135 safety is absolutely not comparable to 121 passenger safety.

There are ~10 million airline flights per year, and in the last 15 years there has been 1 U.S. 121 passenger carrier crash.

There are much, much less 135 flights, and we can’t go a single year without a crash.

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x4457@reddit

I never said anything about 135 and 121 safety being comparable. I said that single pilot vs two pilot safety records are comparable, particularly when you isolate out owner pilots.

That would be comparing apples to apples. 135 and 121 is apples and sirloin.

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Accurate-Indication8@reddit

Not trying to start a fight and I know that there's a lot of other variables in the mix, but part 135 and part 91 operations have a mishap rate that vastly exceeds that of part 121. For part 135 vs part 121 for example, the FAA data shows that accident rates for part 135 operations is anywhere from 2-10x that of part 121 operations per 100k flight hours (depending on how the data is parsed out). Granted their are tons of variables at play and the data I've seen isn't granular enough to break out the impact of single pilot ops vs all the other differences between the different kinds of operations, but I'd be very curious to see the data you have that shows that accident rate for single pilot operators on the non-airline side of the industry are comparable to the accident rates of multi-piloted operations at airline carriers. Because all the data I've seen points to part 121 operators having the lowest mishap rate out there...

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x4457@reddit

but part 135 and part 91 operations have a mishap rate that vastly exceeds that of part 121.

Correct, but that has little to do with single pilot vs two pilot operations. The vast majority of 91 and 135 turbojet operations are with two pilot crews.

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Accurate-Indication8@reddit

Is the data granular enough to support that conclusion?

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x4457@reddit

Yes.

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SituationReal5024@reddit (OP)

I get that, but Part 121 ops are another level. 200+ lives in the hands of one pilot? I get that technology can get advanced and take the workload off the person in the cockpit but at the same time, there’s two pilots for redundancy. If a mistake is made the point of the second pair of eyes is to negate that risk. There have been so many incidents, sometimes fatal on the GA side bc even though the aircraft was rated single pilot, sometimes it’s just too much.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with single pilot operations if we can figure out a way to do it that is either as safe or safer than the way we currently do things. Technology is going to progress regardless of whether we want it to, and we can either learn and adapt or get pushed aside. Realistically we won't be seeing single pilot airline ops for at least 25+ more years because its going to take a couple development cycles to get to a place that would be acceptable from a risk perspective.

Side note: Please be more clear with your language. Most GA flights and a portion of Part 91 and Part 135 are all single pilot operations already, and banning them won't do anything other than make flying and flight training prohibitively expensive.

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SituationReal5024@reddit (OP)

Yeah that’s my bad, in the petition I specified part 121 ops but not on my post. I get that technology is progressing but the redundancy that a second pilot offers is just unmatched imo. There have been incidents (although rare yes) in recent years of one pilot becoming incapacitated. I just don’t feel like the risk of that happening with only one fully trained pilot on board is feasible to justify, especially with many lives at stake.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

Well think about this, the Cirrus Vision Jet and the G7 SR22 both have Cirrus Safe Return Technology that allows the airplane to emergency autoland at the nearest airport completely autonomously in the case of a pilot incapacitation. The newest generation of HondaJet also has a similar system.

These aircraft are obviously not as large and complicated as airliners are, but something like a HondaJet is closer to a regional jet than it is to a light GA piston aircraft.

In time these technologies will be scaled and spread across the industry as a whole, and as they are tested further and improve I have no doubt that one day we will have a version of this technology that could safely land a wide body airliner in the event of a pilot incapacitation.

Plus, pilot incapacitations are already exceedingly rare. The medical standards required of airline pilots help to mitigate that risk as well as a wider industry understanding of how fatigue and medical issues can contribute to pilots not being able to perform, so they are allowed to call out.

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SituationReal5024@reddit (OP)

That’s a good point. The Safe Return system in Cirrus jets and similar tech in the HondaJet are impressive, and I agree they’re a great step forward for general aviation. But airline operations are a completely different environment. You're dealing with much heavier aircraft, complex airspace, and hundreds of lives at stake. Even if an airliner could someday autoland after a medical emergency, that doesn't replace the constant decision-making, communication, and error-checking that two pilots provide throughout every flight. Automation can't handle judgment calls or detect every system failure, especially under pressure. Pilot incapacitations may be rare, but so are most aviation accidents. What keeps them rare is redundancy. Two-pilot crews exist for the same reason aircraft have backup systems: to make sure nothing slips through the cracks when it counts.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

I mean, airline operations are more complex on a day-to-day standpoint, but when dealing with an inflight emergency like a pilot incapacitation the steps aren't much different than for a smaller aircraft.

Airliners don't really have to worry about airspace because they fly IFR everywhere. Regardless, in an emergency system the airplane would be able to broadcast its intentions (the way Safe Return does) and then execute, allowing ATC to move other traffic out of the way. That is the same thing a human pilot would do in an emergency, focus on flying the airplane and have ATC work everything else out for you.

>Automation can't handle judgment calls or detect every system failure, especially under pressure.

Automation already does this in airliners every time there is a major emergency. That is exactly why airbus has the ECAM system, it quite literally identifies the failed systems and tells the pilots exactly what they need to do to address the issue. Automation is better at handling things under stress because unlike humans the working capacity of a computer isn't drastically reduced under stress.

Keep in mind that the only time automation would be the sole handler of all of this would be in the case of a pilot incapacitation. During normal operation there would still be a human at the controls able to manage the automation. It would be similar to how automated computer systems replaced the navigator and flight engineer positions.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

Automation is better than humans, that’s why MCAS put 2 perfectly good 737s into the ground right?

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

For every MCAS crash you have 10 instances of Airbus alpha floor protection saving the pilots from stalling and crashing (Sully's miracle on the hudson would be a prime example, read the NTSB report).

The increase in automation has been the single biggest factor in the decreasing accident rate over the past 30 years. Aircraft already rely on automation and redundant systems to self-check and correct before a major fault even occurs, that's why the A320 has five flight computers.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

It’s not an either or. It’s not automation or humans. That’s a false dichotomy. Automation in conjunction with 2 well trained pilots is the safest option.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

Yes it is the safer option right now. In the future as automation gets better having two pilots may not be necessary.

Keep in mind that the US Air Force flies over 1 million hours per year of single pilot single engine jet operations.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. -Upton Sinclair

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

The U.S. Air Force has an accident rate that is so insanely higher than 121 ops it would be mass death if they were the same. That’s without including combat.

We would have airliners falling out of the sky every month if they had the accident rate of the Air Force.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

How does safe return auto land do if a pilot is incapacitated on the takeoff roll or on short final?

That happened at Envoy recently. Captain lost consciousness just after V1.

There are 10 million 121 flights per year, so edge cases like that have to be accounted for.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

I'm sure that whatever system eventually gets implemented will have that sorted out. Just off the top of my head you could use capacitive sensors on the yoke to detect if the pilot lets go of the yoke then abort the takeoff if below V1.

As for short final, if the aircraft can already fly an entire approach itself then that doesn't seem like a major issue to implement.

Regardless, that problem is for some engineers who are a lot smarter than me to solve and then on the FAA to test and certify the system to ensure it actually improves safety instead of degrading it.

Realistically I think the biggest challenge of single pilot ops would be the day to day logistics of 121 airline ops. It helps a lot to have two people to do the briefing, handle radios and hand fly, do the walkaround and set up the cockpit, etc. Shifting all that work on to one person would be a big deal unless we find ways to mitigate that, and that is a much bigger challenge.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

Yeah but the problem is that if you’re on short final, the pilot may be hand-flying the airplane. Are you going to be able to recognize the situation, and take over that quickly with the automation?

What happens if a pilot releases pressure momentarily? Does the airplane automatically abort the takeoff? That could get really expensive. If it waits a few seconds then it could be easily too late. It doesn’t take long to reach the end of a runway at 150kts.

You can’t just hand wave away and say smarter people will solve these problems. These are problems that have never been solved before. It might not be realistic to ever solve these problems. In cars we just shrug and say that’s an acceptable amount of fatalities.

The difference between aviation and any other industry is that the acceptable amount of fatalities is zero. That is very difficult for automation, unless we somehow create a general A.I. that can problem solve on the fly.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

It's not that I'm hand-waving away these problems because they are very real and need to be solved, but I'm saying that solving them isn't impossible and I'm 100% sure that they could be solved.

Compare something like a Boeing 707 to a 787, the technology has come so far that the two aircraft are barely even comparable. Imagine telling someone in 1968 that one day a widebody passenger airliner could fly an autoland in Cat III weather.

At the end of the day, computers react faster than people do, and they both make aviation safer and easier for pilots. Over the past 70 years flying has gone from paper maps and hand calculations for navigation to largely using computer systems and monitoring them while flying.

Someday technology will be good enough that pilot jobs will be obsolete and all aircraft will be autonomous. Both of us will likely be long dead before that ever happens, but it only makes sense that that is the direction things are heading eventually.

I have an engineering background, so when you bring up problems like the ones you listed here I don't see an insurmountable set of obstacles, but rather a list of testing scenarios that any proposed system will have to be able to deal with.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

Pushed aside by who? It’s not like other airlines can just come in and operate in the United States. If the handful of 121 operators in the U.S. put their foot down and don’t allow single pilot, it won’t happen.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

Yeah, if you think the airlines are going to be against single pilot ops then keep dreaming. Airlines would kill to save that labor cost, and its up to the FAA to make sure they don't put profit over safety.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

You’re forgetting that every major airline in the US is unionized. It would be war with each and every MEC.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

Yeah, if you think the unions can fight this you might wanna read up on what happened to PATCO in the 80's or what happened to the Longshoremen during their strike.

You think the unions didn't try to stop the replacement of flight engineers? Ultimately they were unsuccessful because technology marches on.

If you read my original comment, I specifically said single pilot would only make sense to implement if it was as safe or safer than multi-pilot crews, which means that with our current technology that is not the case. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened sometime in the future though.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

We live in a different environment thankfully. Essentially 2 unions control the entire US airline industry, ALPA and APA. It’s a lot easier to coordinate efforts now.

Single pilot can’t ever be safer than current systems. That’s like saying single engine can be safer with technology. Redundancy is safer.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

They said the exact same thing about flight engineers and ETOPS, but look at today's environment. Neither you nor I know what technology the future will bring and whether or not it will be safer.

Also just a side point, but single engine GA is literally safer than light twins. Just important to point that out.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

Single engine GA is not safer than a properly maintained light twin with a well trained pilot.

The problem with light twins is when you are a weekend warrior it’s just more complication to get you in trouble. So the average GA pilot is safer in a single. Not particularly applicable to professional aviation.

The difference between ETOPS and flight engineer is you are going to zero redundancy for a critical airplane system. Big difference going from 3 engines to 2 engines or 3 crew members to 2.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

Yeah, the paradigm shift would come from having the plane itself be the redundant backup system to the single pilot.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

That would require gate to gate automation. Not realistic in our lifetimes. You can talk about anything that could happen 80 years from now but then you’re just getting into sci-fi.

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Dependent-Place-4795@reddit

Imagine the job market with half the pilots needed 💀

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

Yeah it would suck for pilots, but at the end of the day trying to artificially stop technological progress for the sake of the job market is a backwards way of doing things. Imagine if we legislated against two pilot crews in order to save the jobs of flight engineers.

Like all things the market will adapt and new opportunities will open up where old ones are phased out.

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Dependent-Place-4795@reddit

I agree, I guess I’ll figure out another job if inneed

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

Its also something that isn't going to happen overnight. It will be a long process if it ever does happen.

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Bot_Marvin@reddit

Single pilot is outright dangerous. People will die. You need another person in the cockpit with you when things start going wrong. You need another person to check behind you and act a a barrier for more errors.

If ALPA has any sense they will come down hard on any development of single pilot ops.

Any pilot who steps on a single pilot 121 aircraft should be considered a scab.

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Neither-Way-4889@reddit

The idea would be that automated systems would handle the responsibility for those things instead of a second person. As technology improves it could definitely be possible, but it would take a lot of testing and trials before we had enough data to determine if its safer or not.

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CarrySweaty7528@reddit

I’m thinking in terms of safety - the risk of a medical emergency or a technological failure is high ish to the point where I believe it’s a concern. I watched a captain Joe TED talk on it recently and thought it was relevant enough. Even if it doesn’t get pursued now, I feel like it’s bound to happen purely because of the economical aspect. This would ensure that airlines would for sure not be able to do this, even if they want to in the future

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rFlyingTower@reddit

This is a copy of the original post body for posterity:

Hi guys, with airlines and manufacturers wanting to move toward single pilot operations, I've started a petition to ban such a change from happening. I'm in the early stages of writing a research paper about this issue, and would appreciate your support on my petition. I have a meeting with my congressman next month and am hoping that with support from here, paired with my research paper, I'll be able to convince someone to move this up the chain - https://chng.it/r8kNCXFVS8

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