Pilot Shortage affecting the Majors

[krewmeel]

Or would never enter a jet stream of 200kts over Japan on VNAV mode, or would never level off and only one thrust lever would come up, or would never start flashing the VNAV PATH on the FMA just to go back to VS and climb pass your level off altitude, or would never have a completely clean radar scope while having a 45,000 feet formation right smack on the center of the pacific route with nothing else around, etc, etc....!

A lot of speculation when something goes bad about the pilots, but nobody really dedicates time to quantify how much things we potentially stop from happening just for being there, according to some "doing nothing"

Thats because your flying a Boeing. Airbus thrust levers NEVER move on their own. Sorry, couldn't resist.

The fact that we flying around in a 75+ ton aluminum tube doing 80 percent the speed of sound at 7 miles above the surface of the earth is a miracle of technology in itself. The datalink/security issue is not minor, but it is solvable. It seems to me the hard part is already done.

I'll bet were down to 1 pilot in 10 years. None in 20-30. If you use last year to gauge the relative speed of technology then your already behind. The pace is exponential at this point. It took only 100 years from the Wright Flyer to the 787. It won't be next year but its not going to be "hundreds" either. Fast change is the norm now.

Flame Away!

 

[Ty Webb]

Well, it only took 66 years from the Wright brothers to the Concorde... In the 44 years since then .... Hmmmmm.

Single pilot in ten years? I wouldn't put money on it.

 

[tankerhead]

Thats because your flying a Boeing. Airbus thrust levers NEVER move on their own. Sorry, couldn't resist.

The fact that we flying around in a 75+ ton aluminum tube doing 80 percent the speed of sound at 7 miles above the surface of the earth is a miracle of technology in itself. The datalink/security issue is not minor, but it is solvable. It seems to me the hard part is already done.

I'll bet were down to 1 pilot in 10 years. None in 20-30. If you use last year to gauge the relative speed of technology then your already behind. The pace is exponential at this point. It took only 100 years from the Wright Flyer to the 787. It won't be next year but its not going to be "hundreds" either. Fast change is the norm now.

Flame Away!

Yeah but it took 50 years from 707 to 787...after fifty from Kitty Hawk to the aforementioned 707. Which is better? (Worse)?

 

[Flydaplane]

How come a train on rails, on the ground, with no wind shear issues or vmc possibilities still needs an engineer? That technology has been around a lot longer than jet aircraft (circa 1822). Who knows...Drones are the most crashed aircraft in the world. I predict we'll go down to one pilot within 20 years with possibly an assistant up there to keep him awake and assist with Lav breaks, who knows though 10 years ago I thought my flip phone was state of the art. Those buying aircraft now will fly them for probably 20 years or more unless fuel costs ruin everything.

 

[Downwind]

How come a train on rails, on the ground, with no wind shear issues or vmc possibilities still needs an engineer? That technology has been around a lot longer than jet aircraft (circa 1822). Who knows...Drones are the most crashed aircraft in the world. I predict we'll go down to one pilot within 20 years with possibly an assistant up there to keep him awake and assist with Lav breaks, who knows though 10 years ago I thought my flip phone was state of the art. Those buying aircraft now will fly them for probably 20 years or more unless fuel costs ruin everything.

There are two forces in play on a train. Buff and Draft. A typical road train is 9,000-11,000 tons of chain link with 13k HP up front and 4.4k HP in the middle or back as a DPU. Look at the terrain the next time you are driving. Now imagine that "chain" expanding (slack running out-draft ) or contracting (slack running in-buff) with every rise and fall in the terrain. Now imagine opposing forces acting on the same train in different sections as one portion is going up hill and another portion is going downhill. There are force limits on the couplers and the primary challenge is not to tear the train in two. Sometimes your lead locomotives are in full dynamic braking while the tail end is in notch 8 (radar power).It isn't rocket science but an engineer is still much needed.

Source: I'm a former conductor and Class 6 engineer.

 

[Whine Lover]

55 years on the planet and I'm still waiting on the day when everyone has a flying car in their garage like I was promised back in the 60's.



YKW

 

[BuckMurdock1]

Single pilot in ten years? I wouldn't put money on it.

Gotta agree..

I'm not pointing out anything we don't already know;
The modern airliner (take your pick; Boeing, Airbus, Embraer) can very competently be flown single-pilot. Think about it; when it's your leg--how much of what the 'pilot monitoring' does is stuff you couldn't (fairly easily) do yourself? Raise/lower gear & flaps and switch radio frequencies?? The older iron, granted, was a lot less automated and had switches everywhere--physically needed two or three people, usually including a F.E., to reach and interpret all the switches which computers now do in the modern age.

The reason we require two pilots in large transport aircraft is primarily redundancy. One guy keels over from some bad fish or worse, there's another qualified pilot who can take over. The government and certainly the flying public will not relent on that kind of "human factors" safety measure. Plus--a pilot will certainly need to take a bathroom break at some point; someone's gotta be minding the store while they do.

 

[waveflyer]

Plus, where do single pilots come from?
How would we mentor? How would we get better and how would we keep ourselves honest and disciplined?
But ultimately you're right- Murphy will rapidly depressurize the cabin the only time in your career, when you're taking a piss

 

[Green]

Gotta agree..

I'm not pointing out anything we don't already know;
The modern airliner (take your pick; Boeing, Airbus, Embraer) can very competently be flown single-pilot. Think about it; when it's your leg--how much of what the 'pilot monitoring' does is stuff you couldn't (fairly easily) do yourself? Raise/lower gear & flaps and switch radio frequencies?? The older iron, granted, was a lot less automated and had switches everywhere--physically needed two or three people, usually including a F.E., to reach and interpret all the switches which computers now do in the modern age.

The reason we require two pilots in large transport aircraft is primarily redundancy. One guy keels over from some bad fish or worse, there's another qualified pilot who can take over. The government and certainly the flying public will not relent on that kind of "human factors" safety measure. Plus--a pilot will certainly need to take a bathroom break at some point; someone's gotta be minding the store while they do.

So you think you could safely and competently fly an engine failure/fire after V1 with a terrain avoidance departure in a foreign country at 2am body clock time? Followed by fuel dump/overweight return while accurately taking care of all the resulting issues? How about an explosive decompression over the Northern Himalaya route with an MEA of FL260 and poor weather at your emergency alternates? Man you must be damn good....

There's a lot more to modern flying than shooting visual approaches to LAX.

It's one thing to hear this kind of garbage from the media. But from fellow pilots is a bit surprising. Boeing/Airbus/embraer have certified their aircraft as 2 pilot operations for a reason.

 

[chqflyer]

So you think you could safely and competently fly an engine failure/fire after V1 with a terrain avoidance departure in a foreign country at 2am body clock time? Followed by fuel dump/overweight return while accurately taking care of all the resulting issues? How about an explosive decompression over the Northern Himalaya route with an MEA of FL260 and poor weather at your emergency alternates? Man you must be damn good....



There's a lot more to modern flying than shooting visual approaches to LAX.



It's one thing to hear this kind of garbage from the media. But from fellow pilots is a bit surprising. Boeing/Airbus/embraer have certified their aircraft as 2 pilot operations for a reason.

Honestly, how often in ones career can you realistically expect the worst case scenario to blow up in your face? Most pilots go an entire career with nothing more serious than a blown tire or flap malfunction. There are the occasional Sullys out there that face the split second life or death scenario, but out of the thousands of flights you've flown, how many were truly struggles between life and death? As far as the airlines are concerned, there are certain "acceptable losses" before its worth their money to keep a warm body or two on the flight deck.