Airline Wants Flight Attendants to Land Planes In Case of Emergency [Airplanes]

A low-cost airline wants flight attendants to fly airplanes in case of emergency. The rationale: Having two pilots within the cockpit is simply too expensive. That’s great, because I actually can’t wait to work out Steven Slater landing a 747 at JFK.

The father of the concept is none as opposed to Michael O’Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, the most renowned low-cost airline in Europe . O’Leary does many of seemingly stupid things , but he’s a really smart man too. Hence, he could be completely right too.

Authorities and aircraft manufacturers are actually looking into this. Embraer is planning to have a one-pilot-only commercial jetliner by 2020, and General Electric and Lockheed Martin are actively working in incorporating remote control capabilities-now used in military Unmanned Air Vehicles-into civilian aircraft.

This is absolutely not crazy. These companies argue that, nowadays, airplanes can be easily flown by just one pilot. The only real explanation for having a co-pilot, they say, is in case the pilot becomes incapacitated, that is an odd circumstance. Civil aviation authorities are already considering the belief. Within the UK, officials say that, if a one pilot plus high technology solution can offer ” equivalent safety” to a two-pilot solution, it is usually admitted.

It seems crazy, but consider David Learmount’s-operations and safety editor at Flight International magazine-description of aviation 60 years ago:

Some 60 years ago, airliners with about 30 passenger seats on board needed a pair of pilots, a flight engineer, a navigator and radio operator because the workload was so high in each of those roles. The justifications the sort of crew is not any longer necessary are too obvious to want rehearsing here. An aeroplane today can be extremely complex, but automation and large advances in system reliability has reduced the human operator’s workload dramatically.

Technology-with the incorporation of UAV systems-is sort of at the point by which one-pilot operation is likely to be considered safe. In any case, it’s not a true one-pilot system, since another pilot can take control from the ground in case of emergency. And, indeed, flight attendants might possibly be trained to activate or override systems in case of emergency.

Learmount even goes further and imagines no-pilot planes, fully automated and supervised from the ground by real pilots. But forget that not-so-remote future. The question now’s: Are you ready for one-pilot airplanes?

Before you answer, examine this plane landing in heavy crosswind:

Or this one landing in Honduras:

I know what my answer is. [ Flight Global ]

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This post is tagged: aircraft manufacturers, civil aviation authorities, commercial jetliner, control capabilities, flight international magazine, magazine description, unmanned air vehicles