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Push for one-pilot large-jet transport is absurd
It will take a herculean effort to convince the public that an aircraft flown by a single pilot with remote operation back-up will be as safe as an aircraft flown by dual pilots.
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Training on a jet plane: Christian Kampff (left) of Brazil and Nicolas Durand of Canada take a training course on a Boeing 737 jet simulator at the Pan Am Flight Academy on May 19, 2022 in Miami Springs, Florida, the United States. (AFP/Getty Images/Joe Raedle )
T
he topic of this article refers to the title of an article, “Airlines Push for Lone Pilot Flights to Cut Costs Despite Safety Fears”, which appeared in bloomberg.com on Nov. 20 and posted in airlinesrating.com two days later.
The article has since attracted commentaries from regulators, manufacturers, airlines and professionals from various backgrounds. No wonder, because since the era when flight engineers as the third crew in the flight deck ended in the 1980s and the big jets fly only by the captain-in-command and first-officer-in-cockpit, the dual-pilot operations have widely been accepted by industries, regulators, airlines, passenger and the pilots themselves.
According to the Bloomberg article, over 40 countries including Germany and the United Kingdom have asked the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to help set the standards, which will allow and be a guideline for operational procedures for single-pilot flight in all types of commercial aircraft.
The article also stated that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has also been working with manufactures to determine the technical requirements that would be required to keep the flight procedure for single-pilot operations as safe as in two-pilot.
However, many aspects from this controversial idea remain in the dark.
A study based on research conducted by Arnorld Barnett, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor published in 2020 summarized that currently commercial-air travel is safer than ever. The study showed that between 2008 and 2017, airline-passenger fatalities significantly fell compared to the previous decade measured by the numbers of individual passengers boarding. Globally, the fatality rate currently is one death per 7.9 million passenger boarding, compared to one death per 2.7 million passengers boarding during the period 1998-2007, and one death per 1.3 million boarding during 1988-1997.
While such factors as safety-driven regulation, aircraft technology, air-traffic control technology and rigorous pilot-training program have contributed to making commercial air travel safer, the study itself implicitly underscored there was no strong reason to revisit the dual-pilot operation.
