Slashdot Mirror
Ryanair's CEO Suggests Eliminating Co-Pilots
postbigbang writes "Ryanair's miser-in-chief Michael O'Leary now suggests eliminating co-pilots as a way to save money. Will airliners be powered by drones, or is it actually viable to have just a single pilot on passenger planes?"
I'm all for cutting waste and luxuries we can do without. But when it comes to safety and personnel this is just going too far.
There are good reasons for having a co-pilot. What he's really saying is that pilots salaries are (in his opinion) excessive, and he thinks he sees a cheap way out by eliminating the "unnecessary" backup pilot.
Which will work great until that pilot has a coronary at 35,000 feet.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Ryanair has been coming up with more revolutionary ways to save money:
Let stewardesses land planes:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/7981643/Ryanair-boss-says-air-stewardesses-should-be-allowed-to-land-planes-in-an-emergency.html
Let passengers stand:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/5753477/Ryanair-to-make-passengers-stand.html
I suggest sending them to sleep or maybe browsing Facebook...
Should an emergency arise, the CEO could ring a bell and a specially trained board member could come in and take over running the company.
So if the pilot has a aneurism mid-way across the Atlantic, one of the flight attendants is going to take over? I know auto-pilots have come a long way over the years, but I'd rather have a qualified, competent, human backup at the ready. This guy doesn't sound like he has the mental prowess to run a Burger King. Which genius decided he should be CEO?
Yeah, because getting rid of the back-up pilot is such a wonderful idea. How about I eliminate Ryanair as an airline I'll travel on?
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
O'Leary probably only runs on 1 hard drive with no backups. I wouldn't want to fly on that airline.
This jerk gets publicity for his cheap-ass airline by making outrageous threats, most of which are unlawful in any case. Not long ago it was pay toilets in the plane. Then it was standing room only, no seats, with harnesses to hold you in place. It's just a way of getting print space in newspapers that emphasizes how low his fares are.
He is, in short, a troll. Buy some advertising and STFU.
I piss off bigots.
"If the pilot has an emergency, he rings the bell, he calls her in..."
O'Leary is wearing a big bag of crazy on his shoulders, but some of his ideas are so over the top it would be entertaining to allow those practices and let the market decide on their wisdom. It should make for some exciting news reports as well.
How about just offering free flights for pilots, waitresses, and doctors? Kind of like the self-checkout at the grocery store...
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
He gets free publicity from the newspapers by announcing these outrageous ideas. None of them ever come to pass, but the column inches he gets could cost millions if he had to pay for them.
I piss off bigots.
Nothing against flight attendants but do we really need more than one? Stop serving drinks and get us from point A to point B safely. That's all we care about.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Should an emergency arise, the CEO could ring a bell and a specially trained board member could come in and take over running the company.
Yes. And that board member will have a large red, rubber nose and have huge, goofy shoes and will be named "Bozo."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Emergency decisions could be controlled from the ground.
Because there'd never be any sort of interference between the plane and the ground...
Hijack this, bitch.
So now it can be hijacked with a cell phone, instead of box cutters. And now the TSA will start banning personal electronics on planes, making air travel even less pleasant, even though it would also be possible to do the same thing from the ground.
Thanks for that.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This reminds me of this segment of Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story', where he discusses airline pilots that are so poorly paid that they are on food stamps and having to work second jobs to make ends meet (with potentially disastrous consequences).
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I'm all for leaning on technology, but this just seems like profiteering
Just in case you weren't paying attention, there has been a big move in the US to increase regulations on commuter carriers who have driven down pilot pay and driven up pilot hours in order to increase profits. A lack of pilot training and an over reliance of the autopilot was seen as a direct cause of the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-07-30-aviation-safety_N.htm
IMHO, this makes ryanair's request unreasonable
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Not feasible today. Sufficiently large or complex aircraft are designed to be crew operated. You can not just leave the copilot seat empty.
Frankly, I believe that computers make fewer mistakes than humans, so I would in fact prefer a plane with a single (or no) human pilots.
Reminds me :
Q: What is the ideal cockpit crew?
A: A pilot and a dog...the pilot is there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to bite the pilot in case he tries to touch anything.
remote control for Emergency is bad as all it takes is for something to mess up the link for things to go from bad to worse.
No, no, the idea is someone other than the CEO takes over running things.
This is just like his previous ideas of having passengers standing up for the flight or (so far at least) pay-for use toilets. There's no way it would ever fly (pun intended), but it does get RyanAir a lot of free publicity in the press and TV news. Congratulations, you just gave him some more!
That said, flip this on its head and have the co-pilot assuming the role of a flight attendant or purser while the plane is on auto-pilot probably would be within regulations, although without quite the same degree of cost savings. That kind of makes sense as the chances are that when two pilots are required in the cockpit the fasten seatbelts light will be on anyway, so having one less attendant won't matter.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Im 6'4 id rather be standing on a short flight(less than hour) than sitting in some of those cramped seats with the idiots who thinks
their right to recline into my knees.
When his company bankrupts (people will surely not appreciate this idea) and people start fleeing to other companies for flights, the demand will rise and other companies will become more profitable. If not saving money for himself, he could actually help other companies earn more.
In this day in age planes should be drones by now with a "pilot" only being called to duty in an emergency. Otherwise he could be helping out with the flight crew as more of an "engineer" making sure everything is working smoothly.
Of course that probably would not go over too well with the "unions" but that is to be expected.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Disclaimer: IANACP (I Am Not a Commercial Pilot) but IAAP (I Am A Pilot)
There are probably some flights, in some aircraft, where you could train a flight crew member to do enough to relieve the captain of enough tasks so that (s)he can concentrate on landing the plane. In some cases it isn't that any one part of getting an aircraft from A to B is difficult so much as it's the sheer number of tasks at hand -- between monitoring a zillion instruments and talking to approach, then the tower, then the ground -- that you just need a second person there. Even in a small plane, there are times when having a co-pilot just handle the radio makes things a lot easier.
The actual mechanics of flying an airplane are not especially difficult, but knowing how to handle bad or emergency conditions while keeping cool is. It's easy to get overwhelmed just by the quantity of things you have to keep track of. It's plausible that, on shorter, commuter flights, a computer could do enough of those things so that one person can reasonably fly a plane.
The problem is that, while most pilots are pretty safety-conscious, there is such a huge supply of them that there will always be people willing to fly for these companies under less than ideal conditions. Particularly with the minimum number of hours (in the US, anyway) jumping to 1500 (from something like 200-250, which was indeed too low), you're going to see a lot of young guys with a lot of debt from flight school (where commercial loans are on the order of 12-18% interest) who will take any job just to pay the bills. They just don't get paid very well these days, and airline margins are tiny as it is.
And on the way to the stated goal by one manufacturer "There will only be one pilot and one dog. The pilot's job is to feed the dog and the dog is there to bite the pilot if he touches anything other than dog food".
Let's see, you have an airliner with a pilot, a co-pilot who's job it is to fly the plane and keep all of the passengers alive if the pilot dies, and a stewardess who's job it is to serve food and make sure the passengers are comfortable. Out of those three, let's get rid of the co-pilot to save money.
I think the real reason we all, deep down,want a human pilot in the plane at the controls is that we want to know that the stakes are just as high for the pilot as they are for the passengers. An acute awareness of mortal danger to oneself focuses the mind.
The Russians autolanded a shuttle years ago, it's hardly a big jump to autoland aircraft.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
A "co-pilot" is extremely essential for 'redundancy'. We need that second guy in the cockpit to take care of eventualities like the pilot sufferring a heart attack or some similar ailment mid-flight...
It seems like if you're going to get rid of one, why not go whole hog?
Instead, the whole thing should be centered around telepresence. You don't really need a pilot for anything except takeoff and landing anyway - so let a group of pilots control that part of the flight from a control center in India or China, and in-between you just tell it to go wherever, perhaps altering course to avoid storms.
Now obviously this is less safe. That's why each person would be issued a parachute. In the evert the telepresence link was lost, and the planes automated systems could figure things out - the passengers all pop out and land gently in a field somewhere with a complementary GPS homing beacon to find them. And if someone started acting kind of crazy on a plane, or simply had really bad BO - you could leave rather than have to endure. Really wanted to stop off somewhere besides a major city? Just find a plane with a route going over wherever you like. Further down the line each person on the plane would have their own STarship Troopers style drop pod instead of a parachute. Well, maybe just first class.
I have many other ideas for improving air travel, including full kitchens and an innovative way to carry both livestock and passengers with the greatest level of comfort. But that's enough for now.
The future could be now, if only we got rid of a whole host of pesky safety regulations that prevent you living the world I have outlined.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If a computer-as-a-copilot is dependable these days, I wouldn't mind if the copilot position was replaced by one of the flight crew who had some training in landing a plane, but did other work when the human pilot was "functioning properly." The idea of having only one person on the plane capable of landing it is a bit disconcerting. One heart attack shouldn't result in 300 deaths. However, I am not a pilot--perhaps it really is appropriate for a second person to be doing sanity checks on the pilot throughout the flight.
... I would suggest replacing the CEO (and other idiotic managers) with a simple mechanical automaton. Could probably do a better a job and would only require simple maintenance. Evidently the monkey isn't working in most of these cases.
What if the pilot has the fish?
How about that: Make the planes remote controlled and then let people volunteer (or even pay for it) to fly them through a Flight Simulator interface.
Oh great, add to my fear of flight, fear of clowns too. Jackass.
... yet another reason not to fly with RyanAir.
Just want to clear up something - Ryanair's marketing strategy can only be described as "trolling the media." They release more and more insane ways to "cut costs" on their airline which the media reports and everyone leaves with the message that Ryanair are very serious about low cost flight.
To give two examples, they "announced" they wanted to remove toilets, and remove seats so you spent the entire flight standing. Nothing ever came of either of these, but the media loved it, and they get the CEO on the airways who just repeated the companies business model over and over again - "looking for more ways to cut costs" "I want Ryanair to be the cheapest in the EU" etc.
There's an article, by a commercial pilot, about the myths of jets able to "fly themselves" at http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2009/11/19/askthepilot342 . You have to scroll down a little to get to the meat of it, but there's plenty up there to keep 2 people busy.
He also talks about how busy things can get in an earlier article http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2007/08/31/askthepilot243/index.html .
Correction: the Russians autolanded a shuttle years ago once.
Doing it with the same reliability as a human pilot repeatably and robustly hasn't happened yet. And it'll cost a whole hell of a lot more than it costs to pay a copilot in the near to mid term.
Why not let the passengers decide if they want a co-pilot and if they do, see how much money they can raise to hire one on the spot.
Hey, it's a free market and everybody's gotta learn to be responsible for his decisions...
If he knew squat about running an airline, he'd get rid of the captain and keep the copilot.
Copilots only make 60% of what a captain makes.
On the other hand, copilots are harder to herd. Maybe he does have an clue.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
You missed their latest, see $SUBJECT.
How about we stop wasting money on idiots who come up with such stupid ideas.
sigh. I know it's a bit of an advertising ploy, but still --
It happens so predictably that we try to cut processes to the bare minimum, even when our lives are filled with examples of the rare outlier being not so rare. We assume that because everything is going fine, we can design our control systems/thinking/regulation around the median, and then when the unthinkable happens (more frequently than expected), we're surprised that it turned out so bad.
Let's have one pilot because one pilot only ever lands the plane anyway!
Let's lend to high credit risk borrowers, because ours never default more than one at a time anyway!
etc.
Can you imagine the US Air flight that ditched into the Hudson River operating on one pilot? You need the "other guy" to run checklists.
for not one, not two, but THREE pilots on the plane?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
The media has been training people for generations that a copilot is even more important than those multiple engines. Whether or not it's actually safe is moot, people won't except it because the people think it's unsafe. And if the people think it's unsafe, they won't fly you airline.
I'd actually bet that if given a choice between an automated plane with multiple backups and remote piloting capability, or a plane with just a pilot but no copilot, I'd bet slightly more people would choose the robot plane.
They should get rid of all the passengers. Think about it....they wouldn't have to pay for meals, they could fire all the flight attendants and save that salary money, the seats on the planes wouldn't be needed anymore. They'd even save on fuel, since the planes would be so much lighter without all those people on board.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
I knew of Ryanair's cheapness, but I didn't see anything like this coming.
I might go along with this, but the rational manager in me would recognize that many people (such as various /. commenters) wouldn't.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Yes Michael O'Leary regularly publishes stupid ideas and the media regularly give him and Ryanair loads of free publicity. There is a pattern there, I wish there was some way to mod him "-1 TROLL" on TV.
Airlines have already had a reduction from three core staff to two. The redundant crew member being the flight engineer.
From the 1992 book Bluff Your Way On The Flight Deck, ISBN 1-902825-50-0, EAN13 9781902825502 by Captain Ken Beere, a former British Airways 747 pilot flying out of London Heathrow:-
Don't worry about the plane, just replace the in-seat flotation device with a parachute (perhaps a little lumpier, but they don't care). Problem with the plane, everyone out...just try to miss the engine and tail as you plummet.
On a serious note, how many times a year do you think pilots needs their co-pilots and how many times a year would it have ended badly if a co-pilot were not present. If even once a year, does that make it a good investment to have flight attendant "Ms. Sally Anne" get a plane to the ground in a thunder storm when 150 lives are at stake.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Sure, the planes all but fly themselves anyway, right? When you get on a public bus, you don't have a co-bus driver, right?
Two things: The FAA or EASA would have to approve this (yeah, like that is going to happen) and Ryanair's CEO is a true believer in "Any publicity is better than no publicity."
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
You have heard of 3D? Well, trains and ships and automibiles lack it. They travel on a flat service. Planes don't.
What happens to a train whose engines stops Nothing.
What happens to a ship whose engines stop? Nothing.
What happens to a car whose engines stop? Nothing.
What happens to a plane whose engines stops? It crashes into the ground.
The difference and one that should really be obvious is that with ground based vehicles, if something goes wrong, you got more time and the only safety procedure that must be performed is to bring the vehicle to a stop. Stop an aircraft in a mid air and it won't be there for long.
Even terrorists know this. That is why ships and trains have rarely been hijacked. There is no urgency.
With aircraft you don't time to instruct a crew member on how to turn the ship. You cannot rely on a deathman's handle to make an aircraft safe. Oh, you forgot about that little device didn't you. Wonder how come you forgot to mention the REAL reason brake men could be removed, the simply switch that in the event of a disaster happening to the driver, the train coming to an automatic stop.
Wonder why you left this device out? Because it would ruin your entire idiotic rant of "X works in situation Y, so it will work in situation Z"?
There are a LOT of accidents where the existence of the co-pilot saved the day. many you don't even hear about. like the regular occurance of a pilot getting a heart attack. And oh gosh, that is OFTEN the cause of SMALL aircrafti with SINGLE pilots crashing. That is why if you fly passengers, you need two pilots.
The moment someone can come up with a system that can land a plane safely no matter what, THEN the pilots can be replaced. But no such system exists. No, automated landing systems do not count. They work in perfect conditions, that can cease to be simply because an airport is repairing its systems. Unless airports start to be forced by law to have their automated systems on 24/7, aircraft can't rely on it. Especially not if such systems aren't even allowed to be used in less then ideal circumstances.
But really, comparing a train with a deadman's switch whose breaks are designed to bring the vehicle to a complete stop if anything happens to an aircraft... bit silly don't you think?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's part of the Ryanair business model - make an outrageous statement, stand back and let everybody discuss. Free advertising...
-=mike=-
So where terrorism once required smuggling a bomb or gun on-board, now terrorists could aim a radio at the airplane to crash it?
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
Autolandings of commercial aircraft are a routine, daily thing.
And if you think Buran & its atmospheric analogues (terminal approach is what matters here; outside of it, US Shuttle also does auto reentry except in one mission, IIRC; and even that one without an actual need to do it) have only one demonstration of autoland, then I have this bridge to sell...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Stuff like this is fascinating as a thought exercise, but people don't really think with the math parts of their brains when it comes to safety. Even if you COULD conclusively prove that it would save more lives to remove the co-pilot and spend his salary on "Mechanical Safety Widget" or more flight controllers or mandatory 5 point belts on planes, people just wouldn't go for it. We humans have such a hard time estimating the cost/benefits of rare events (buying a lottery ticket/dying in a plane crash) that a tremendous amount of money is pissed away on irrelevant, nonsensical things.
As a professional pilot/flight instructor/aircrew coordination trainer with 3500 hours, I think this is pretty much insane. I would not fly any airline that did this.
true, the copilot is almost always unneccesery passanger. almost!
when things get fucked up the copilot usually makes the difference between an incident and an accident
its a simple matter of workload distribution, ever seen inside commercial plane cocpit? lots of stuff to follow, keep in mind, operate etc etc. regularly its all very simple and easy but when things go south you only have two arms, two eyes and so much attention - the copilot is there to prevent workload overload in case of dangerous situation
RyanAir's co-pilots suggest eliminating the CEO position as a way to cut costs.
After all, when cutting costs, start first with things that don't contribute directly to the bottom line, and don't affect safety...
That the man is clearly some sort of psyochopath, how about this:
'a flight attendant on each flight could be trained to help land a plane if something goes wrong. "If the pilot has an emergency, he rings the bell, he calls her in," O'Leary told the magazine. "She could take over." '
*HE* calls *HER* in?
And wasn't it this git who had billboard ads in the UK a few years ago with the slogan "Screw global warming, let's fly!"
Lock him up, for everybody's sake, now.
"or is it actually viable to have just a single pilot on passenger planes?"
Well, you've got a single person piloting your children around in a school bus every day without a co-navigator/extra pair of eyes to keep a watch on the possibly present hazards. If you can trust another adult in a huge moving metal cage with the lives of a bunch of children, including your own, then you can probably suck it up and live without a co-pilot.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Perfect (for their competitors) - they would quickly make it to EU no-flight black list.
Co pilots go back to before computers could fly a plane.
If and only if a computer is flying and landing on 9 out of 10 flights should it be OK to get rid of the copilot because that is what the pilot will be at that point. Of course we could always have flight attendants trained for a 1 in a 1000 emergency but at the point that both the primary and secondary computers give out and the pilot has a heart attack or gets knocked out the plane is probably doomed anyway; very unlikely situation. Pilots are glorified bus drivers. 2 in 10 people could learn to fly and land a 747. How quickly they can learn is another issue. Now a fighter/bomber pilot back in the 60/70's, now that's a pilot.
The CEO of RyanAir ... wants to make sure nobody wants to fly RyanAir.
This is just ludicrous. The biggest plane I have ever seen flown with no co-pilot was a Cessna 402. I was ok with this, because *I* was in the copilot seat and I know how to fly GA sized aircraft.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
In other news, pilots suggest eliminating stupid CEO's who don't have a basic understanding of the business they're in..
That's the thing. Automated systems and remote operation work great under anticipated conditions. The problem is that an emergency is not an anticipated condition (otherwise it would have been avoided).
When Michael O'Leary starts flying on scheduled, commercial flights with no co-pilot, I'll start doing the same. In the meantime, I'll be sure to avoid Ryanair at all costs, since they sure don't seem to be very concerned with my well being.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
That wouldn't just be the salary. An employee costs the company far more than just their salary.
Common figures are 30-60% of salary in benefits.
Consider healthcare, training, per diem, taxes, middle management for the extra pilots, recruitment, equipping, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
Yeah. I know little about aviation, but I seem to recall one of the last ditch efforts to restart the engines in the event they fail is to go into a dive. Imagine this attempt being made and then the ground link cutting out. Suddenly you have a plane in a dive and no one to bring the nose back up.
but at the cost of also reduced revenue. Who here will fly Ryanair w/out a copilot? yeah, me neither. Well, at least i'm hoping this folly of an idea will attract more competitive low-budget airlines. Ryanair simply sucks.
Yeah maybe Ryanair could make the passengers fly the plane themselves and save money for both pilots! This just cuts it, I'm putting Ryanair on a ban.
Your arguments are correct but you are citing the wrong device.
In the 1800s, brakemen were needed because the brakes were manually operated. Every boxcar had its own set of INDEPENDENT brakes. The engineer had no way to operate these brakes and could operate only the brakes on the engine. He would signal to the brakemen to apply the brakes and they would run on top of the boxcars applying the brakes. (If you see pictures of old trains, each boxcar had a wheel on its top to operate the brakes.) George Westinghouse invented the air brakes enabling the engineer to operate ALL the brakes on the train. Suddenly, brakemen were unnecessary.
In addition, there is no reason why a copilot could not be located on the ground - copiloting several aircraft at the same time. Leave the computer do 99% of the work with the pilot overseeing the computer. Should the computer mess up the pilot could take over. Should the pilot run into difficulties, the copilot on the ground would be there to assist or even take over for the pilot. It would be much less expensive for the airlines not simply because of a reduced employee count, but because there would be no overtime, hotel costs, and any other cost related to travelling employees. In addition, the copilot would be able to go home each day - something that would likely save a lot of marriages.
Dublin is well known for its sunny weather and calm beaches. Oh wait, that is Dublin California. The Dublin Airport is about 5 miles from the sea, and the weather is usually windy and rainy. I cannot imagine what flying a 737 in those conditions must be like, certainly will require the full attention of a pilot. As if that weren't enough, the second hub is London Stansted which is around 30 miles from the sea, and even though the weather is slightly better, it is still not a calm Spanish summer. More likely this is yet another O'Leary publicity troll.
The danger here is not this one airline's lunatic CEO and the sociopathic pursuit of profits, but rather that he'll start a trend, and we won't have a choice much longer.
The problem with this kind of accounting is that it is fundamentally flawed.
What is YOUR life worth to some bean-counter, who doesn't care about you, your spouse of offspring?
Now what is worth to YOU?
Now let's REALLY cut costs.
We've got problems with luggage?
Screw it. No more luggage luggage handlers, customs, custom-agents. That ought to save a lot.
Who needs to pay for stewardesses?
Who needs to pay for a galley and a toilet.
Who needs to pay for seat-belts?
Who needs to pay for seats?
If you could fly as a standee with no luggage I'm sure the airline would LOVE to fly you.
And don't get me started on what the airports cost. You don't need ramps, endless walkways, buildings that are only used for a fraction of the time that you should actually be up in the air. Walk up to your plane and climb up some stairs from the tarmac, you lazy bastard.
So its raining. You'll drip-dry in he plane, as you stand there holding onto a strap hanging from a rail in the unpainted cylinder that is going to take you to your destination, for the least amount possible. ... So you'd feel like you were taking your last trip, to Auschwitz. ...
It would be possible, just not desirable for you as a passenger.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Well, of course, a penny saved is a penny earned . . . but, I wondered what other cost cutting measures are also included but not mentioned . . . like, perhaps, delaying, or even forgoing scheduled maintenance, delayed programed replacement of (non) critical parts. Rest assured, this is one airline that I will not be wracking up frequent flyer miles on.
I don't think the passengers would be too happy suddenly having to sit a few hours on a tarmac in Albuquerque when they're missing their connections in Atlanta.
NEVER compare apples to oranges.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Can you teach a flight attendant to land a plane if the captain has a heart attack? Sure. If he/she knows how to program the autopilot, and gets a lot of help from the ground, I don't see why not. Maybe not at the intended destination (not all airports have the necessary equipment for automatic landings), but usually there will be a big airport nearby where the automatic landing can be made. You'll have to train those flight attendants very regularly, of course, because they'll forget how to do it after a month or two (anyone would, without practice, it's a quite a bit more difficult and less intuitive than programming a GPS), but it would be possible.
However, that's not really the point. People seem to think that all a pilot has to do, is fly the airplane (or even easier, make the autopilot fly the airplane) pretty much like a bus driver. If they saw us "work" during cruise flight, they would probably see this suspicion confirmed. However, as a copilot, I quite frequently have to point out minor and sometimes even major mistakes of the captain, that might have resulted in serious incidents. And the same happens in the other direction when I'm flying (both pilots fly just as often). Misunderstood instructions from air traffic control, finger trouble with the autopilot, missing a level off altitude on a procedure, etc... Lots of accidents are blamed on pilot error, imagine what that rate would be if there wasn't a second pilot to catch the first one's mistakes. Times ten would be a conservative estimate.
And then we're just talking about normal operations. We get simulator training every six months, and you should see how high the workload is then. Engine failures, electrical problems, bad weather, lots of checklists to do, judging the situation and the best course of action while one pilot has to manually fly a crippled airplane with a third of the instruments still working... there's absolutely no way you could let just one pilot do this kind of thing safely.
O'Leary is not that stupid. He's just getting free publicity, spreading the word how relentlessly he's cutting costs to keep ticket prices low. And they're not even that low if you miss out on the few promotional tickets that are advertised everywhere. The rest of the passengers often end up spending more than on a real airline.
It looks like there are a few hundred dials, switches, and controls in the cockpit. Let's say you have a plane with about a hundred seats. Mount a few dials and switches at each seat and crowdsource your cockpit crew. Hold a lottery to see who gets the yoke. What could possibly go wrong?
Plus, they could crowdsource all their DBA needs here on slashdot.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
What he's really proposing is increasing the size of the aircraft where it's legal to fly with one pilot. Currently you need a co-pilot if there are 12 or more passengers (flight crew are considered passengers).
Many commercial carriers who do fly the smaller aircraft, mostly to remote areas, have a co-pilot on board anyway; it's how you train your pilots.
One would assume Ryanair simply want to poach pilots with experience from other airlines; otherwise the only other conclusion is they are fine with inexperienced pilots as well.
I won't go into how Ryanair fits compared to it's competitors or how a flight on their craft is different from other carriers, but broadly speaking I wouldn't trust any proposal from Ryanair on anything.
Great idea. Just let me fly the damned thing; I'll even pay for the privilege.
There's a way out of this headline, and one only.
"Dear Customers, Originally, airline flights carried doctors on board, in case of a medical emergency. This was back in the first days of the industry, when fur coats were de rigeur. We moved on, the fur coats became unfashionable and air travel became affordable for everyone, except the very poorest, people without a car for example. Today air travel is more affordable than ever thanks to the sterling efforts of the public. You have advanced the economy by agreeing to cram into smaller and smaller places, whilst paying less and less to fly at hundreds of miles through suffocatingly air in a thin metal tube filled with flammable liquid crammed next to several barely contained furnaces spewing fire. We salute your bravery and will continue to give you cheaper and cheaper flights through MinimalEngineering(TM).
From now on, if you're a light aircraft experienced pilot then you will automatically qualify for a 60% discount on all flights. Commercially qualified pilots will qualify for entirely free travel, on the basis that they step in if a pilot is not available due to sickness, emergency, staffing snafus, having a bit to much the night before, fancying the day off or any other reason.
For the cheapest flights, let the customers take the strain. It's the way!"
But, of course, that would sound faintly ridiculous.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
C'mon... this is all about free publicity... RyanAir know that will "not fly"... 90% of their suggestions are just to attract media attention, and they are doing it quite well. They don't care about reputation, they only care about being seen as "the cheap" airline...
In the U.S., at least, the co-pilot (and also the number of flight attendants) are required by regulation. I'd be shocked if this wasn't the case in the U.K., and every other ICAO member country. He can propose all he wants, but the co-pilot position isn't going away. True, the pilots aren't doing much at cruise, but the workload is very intense at takeoff and landing, particularly in busy terminal areas. Heck, the U.S. is INCREASING the required qualifications for co-pilots as a result of a recent accident.
Not to mention, I doubt either Boeing or EADS are about to allow single-pilot operation of any of their airliners. The aircraft would literally have to be re-certified for single pilot operations. Many of the larger private business jets (Falcon, Gulfstream) are certified only for 2-pilot operations.
Short answer: Never. Gonna. Happen.
Merde, il pleut encore!
In aircraft that are equipped for CAT III, sure, though many are not. Either way, it still would make me really uncomfortable to know that one flight per year was being flown by someone who could not take over adequately if autoland kicks out for any reason.
And if your engines go out?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger
Or you run out of fuel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider#Similar_incidents
I think we'll get there eventually, but I think UAV technology is still a bit immature. Give it perhaps 10-15 years.
For that position as will other greedy creatures you need Artificial Stupidity http://www.sicemstudios.com/2010/08/495/
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Trolling I'll give you. Shameful attention-whoring, I'll grant.
But evil? I mean, has the word come to mean so little that saying something strange in order to garner free publicity is actually evil now? Don't we have better uses for the word than this? With ACTA in the making, the 9th circuit telling the American cops they can GPS tag cars without a warrant, and over a dozen countries still listed as having "Pervasive" levels of internet censorship, you want to use evil to describe THIS douchebag?
Take a breather, mate, your priorities are way out of whack. If his bullshit bothers you, try not reading his next brilliant idea (which I predict will be a suggestion of discounts to passengers who sh*t before they board the airplane, to cut down on fuel costs).
It used to be that the co-pilot was there because it you needed to manhandle the plane in you needed all the strength you could get, then all the big planes started having hydraulic which meant it wasn't a matter of strength anymore but for redundancy of operators. Something happened to one they other one could fly the plane. Now from take off to landing a modern aircraft doesn't even need the pilot, they are just glorified equipment operators that require no more than a few days to lean how to setup and operate the computer. We keep a highly trained pilot as a redundant measure for the computers are board (Not a bad idea) but the co-pilot is not a redundant measure for a redundant measure. It's like having a spare gas tank for your spare gas tank.
Sure, can the copilot. But don't expect the pilot to like that one bit, because quite simply the pilot is just some kind of mascot, a good luck charm if you like. In reality, a pilot does NOTHING AT ALL apart from give the co-pilot sh*t. Honestly if we dropped the pilot from all flights, things would go a lot more smoothly because the person who is ACTUALLY doing EVERYTHING will have far less to do now that the pilot himself isn't physically present and making work for the copilot. So effectively having only a single pilot will make flights much safer, not less safe.
If this step is in fact taken, I vote that we call the one in charge of the flight deck 'the copilot'. Because the pilot of today's wide-bodied jet is honestly little more than an annoying lap-dog, and certainly about as useful as one.
He makes some outlandish statement and gets tons of free press in return; all focused in on how cheap it is to fly Ryannair because of all their schemes.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Just link http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/09/06/ryanair.ceo.comments/index.html ... You don't need the extra parameters in it!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'm willing to pay for a co-pilot!
Just make sure the air marshall on the plane has a pilots license. Have a code word the flight attendants can use on the PA to have him come forward if anything happens. That way you've combined two mostly redundant jobs into a single person. For both jobs, they spend 98% of the flight sitting there with nothing better to do.
Brakemen may have been eliminated, but trains still run with 3 men on board. If one keels over from a heart attack or bad food, the others can handle it. If you have one pilot on a plane and he keels over from heart attack or bad food, what happens?
A few months ago, an Air India flight crashed in Mangalore, killing more than 150. The cause of the crash was later determined to be the pilot ignoring the co-pilot's warning to come around for a landing as they didn't have enough of the short runway left to make a landing. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/Mangalore/Mangalore-crash-Captain-ignored-co-pilots-plea-to-abort-landing/articleshow/5992615.cms.
Removing the co-pilot will only increase the probability of similar accidents.
Suppose it costs the airline an average of $500 per flight to pay the copilot (all salary + benefits + overhead + per diem included), and the average flight has 100 passengers. That's average of $5 of each ticket going towards paying for the copilot.
Suppose they removed the copilot and passed on the half of the savings to passengers. That's just $2.50 cheaper per ticket, on average. While that may add up to millions of dollars per year across the airline, I'm sure that most passengers would not consider the $2.50 savings per ticket to be worth the added risk.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Why not split the difference? Have an experienced, well-paid professional career pilot as the main pilot. The "co-pilot" will be some $15/hr assistant/stewardess, with basic knowledge on how to land the plane in an emergency situation but that's about it. Or make it so every flight has a stewardess that is trained in emergency landing.
Suppose it costs the airline an average of $500 per flight to pay the copilot (all salary + benefits + overhead + per diem included), and the average flight has 100 passengers.
I think your estimate is actually a bit high. Lets ballpark salary plus benefits at $200k a year. At 4 flights per day, typical 256 working days a year, that's only $200 a year. Less than the cost of one passenger seat. I think the airline that tries this will probably loose more than one passenger per flight as a result. I think their insurance will likely go up more than this per flight.
Commercial cargo flights and small planes often go with just a pilot.
I already will not fly Ryanair, the same with their Austral-Asian equivalent Tiger airlines. There are better budget carriers such as Easyjet, Virgin Blue or Air Asia, they may be a few A$ more but worth it IMHO. Tiger/Ryan Air will nickel and dime you to death (Tiger just started charging an A$20 fee for checking in off-line).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
If it is really such a cost issue, why not make the co-pilot do cabin attendance, and get rid of one attendant per flight. Or better yet, train a cabin crew member on the basics of landing take off and flying. ro
for conspiracy to murder? Where are the thought crime police when we need them?
Just bring in Otto? He's efficient, a good pilot, doesn't take up much space, and can be inflated by one of the Flight Attendants if necessary,. . .
Ryan air are constantly doing this. Make some outrageous suggestion of a cost saving, eg charging to use the toilet or make the passengers stand, with absolutely no intention of implementing it and let the lazy press pick up on it as a "news story".
BANG - Free advertising!
No publicity is bad publicity for these companies.
Pilot: "On final approach to LAX terminal 4, beginning descent. Please open landing gear bay doors, HAL"
HAL: "I'm sorry, Dave, but I'm afraid I just can't do that"
Pilot: "WTF?? My name's not Dave! HAL, open the fscking bay doors, please"
HAL: "I'm really sorry, Dave, but you are not authorized access to security procedures"
Pilot: "HAL, we are landing....NOW! Open...the bay doors, LOWER...the FSCKING...landing...gear, HAL!"
HAL: "I detect a 90% probability of hostile intent in your voice, Dave. Therefore, it can be concluded that you are a likely terrorist and , coupled with your denial of identity as 'Dave', the authorized pilot, I must now enact the latest security protocols, as per my programming"
Pilot: "Are you F'ing kidding me?!"
HAL: "Now locking flight controls, and removing access to all vital systems. Please remain where you are, and a security officer will provide further instructions"
The reasons the rules are what they are is because they get reviewed and redrafted with every single incident. If traffic rules were that scrutinised, some people would never be allowed on the road and accidents would drop further.
If O'Leachy thinks he can increase passenger risk to screw another dime out of them instead of charging for breathing I think he'll have a bit of a fight on his hands. The FAA will be happy to take his license away, no problem.
I rather *walk* than use Ryan Air. O'Leachy is too busy abusing the fact that cattle has more rights than passengers.
Insert
This is just brilliant - tells the whole story...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc
Puhlease. The CEO in question, Mr O'Leary, is very well known in the European press to make outrageous statements every now and then.
This gets him free press, and an image of "price fighter". All of his "plans" just fade away in oblivion, if they do not result in a reprimand by the compentent authorities.
Some examples:
- stand up seats : http://theairlineblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/ryanair-plans-standing-seats.html
- not paying expenses for stranded passengers : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8636944.stm
I believe the Ryan air spokesperson said it best, when he said :
"later, Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said: "Michael makes a lot of this stuff up as he goes along and, while this has been discussed internally, there are no immediate plans to introduce it."
Yes, of course computers will cause other errors, but the question isn't whether the computers will be perfect but whether they will be better.
I still want at least one human pilot for the foreseeable future though for three reasons: computers can only deal with things they are programmed for and you cannot foresee all possibilities; redundancy in case the automated system fails and finally as reassurance since automated systems have nothing to loose and will do as they are told but a human pilot's own life is on the line and is far more likely to do what is safe rather than what is best for a company's short term profits.
Just cut the CEO position instead. Eliminating that worthless piece of crap would return far more to the investors than dropping all of the pilots, copilots, flight attendants, and mechanics combined.
Couldn't have put it better myself!
You mean were ships have been hijacked for months with no resolution? The crews want a talk with you, the moment somebody finds it urgent enough to get them released.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Pilot 1: "I'll have the fish."
Pilot 2: "I would like the steak, please."
Now do it again without the second pilot.
I don't believe them anymore. They've flaked out on every single one of their promises. We're still allowed to sit down and go to the crapper for free on Ryanair flights.
"By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?"
[Insert pithy quote here]
Instrument flying is an unnatural act probably punishable by God.
— Gordon Baxter
How can you prove that a system will have fewer accidents without having years of experience with it in operation such as we have with pilots/copilots? So while your statement is completely correct it is also utterly useless....hmmm you don't happen to work writing error messages for Microsoft do you? ;-)
Ryan Air CEO.............idiot. Enough said.