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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
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.
Part of the job of a pilot is to keep an eye on all the automation. The problem is that its very difficult to stay alert for long periods of time waiting for a very rare failure. Two pilots tend to keep each other awake and alert. (Yes I know about the plane the overflew its destination while the 2 pilots were looking at something on a laptop - but that is such a rare event that it made the national news).
Humans and automation tend to fail in very different ways - humans are much better at dealing with unexpected situations, automation is much better at doing repetitive jobs without mistakes.
Having a second pilot probably adds about $1/hour per passenger seat (including all overhead etc) - at the moment I think its still a good deal.
You've never seen a passenger throw a hissy fit, have you? Or start screaming? The FAs may be useless until the shit hits the fan, and then there aren't enough of them. They aren't there to serve drinks; they are there to keep the passengers in line.
I have 2 pilots in my family; it's hard, stressful work that takes a toll on their families and their own health.
Eliminating more staff is not the way to go. Do you really want the cheapest, least experienced person at the helm and in the cabin? That's fine when the weather is fine. Try it in a typhoon, when the plane is bucking, the passengers are puking and screaming, and then tell me they can eliminate staff.
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.
Yes I know about the plane the overflew its destination while the 2 pilots were looking at something on a laptop through their eyelids
FTFY.
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 .
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.
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.
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...
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
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
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.
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.
To be a flight attendant in Australia you have to have your First Aid level 3. I bet you're one of those passengers who yells "where's my beer, honey" whilst wiggling an empty cup in the air and the reason I hate other passengers. I'd like to remind you who you'll be relying on when you get hurt on an aircraft (wont be me, I have a first aid level 1 (workplace) and absolute contempt for most other travellers).
Arm doors and cross check.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.