IATA Director Debunks Hopes for Single-Pilot Flights: "Not Likely to Happen Soon"

Health reasons, both physical & mental (Germanwings 9525); should dictate two person crews for the foreseeable future. The outcome isn’t good if a single crew pilot gets food poisoning or slips through the mental/or otherwise physical health screenings. ?

The single pilot issue is a big deal because a commercial aircraft has a lot of passengers. Most of the time a private general aviation aircraft has one pilot, so does a complex fighter jet. In WW2 British bombers only had a single pilot. If things go wrong then only a limited number of casualties. In commercial aviation to me it is better to have 4 eyes and 2 brains on the flight deck given the potential negative consequences with a couple hundred passengers on board.

If this proceeds anywhere, I await the freedom of information disclosure that the airlines analysis is the cost of compensation following an accident is less than the savings in crew costs, so single pilot operations are "worth it". The Tombstone Principle yet again in aviation.

"Hopes"? Who is "hoping" for this? Certainly not passengers.

I strongly oppose Single-pilot flights... Humans are scientifically proven terrible at monitoring things.

The bottom line is, we can't even keep planes in the sky with two pilots monitoring autopilots...

After Bering a commerical pilot for 27 years and racket up some 16 thousand hours I would NOT like to see the airlines set up to fly single pilot operations!
After been in situations where I had no choice but to go IFR I am a firm believer that it’s no place for flying passengers around the country side in a single engine airplane IFR!!!!

Just looking at google results, it seems a 747 costs about $25,000 per hour to operate. So their cost savings model is to eliminate paying for a human pilot that costs what? $70/hour to operate? $100/hour? Maybe upgrade to more fuel-efficient engines, better scheduling, more efficient routes. Seems about like health care, where they go to chopping nurses when they need to cut spending to make that bonus check.

I can't remember where I saw it, or when, but there was an old joke that went something like this-
"in the cockpit of an airliner of the future there will be two occupants -
A Man, and a Dog".

The Man is there to feed the Dog.
The Dog is there to bite the man if he touches the controls.

Wait till they go to ZERO pilots... Can't wait to see that lawsuit

No way would I fly on a flight with a single pilot, way too dangerous.

To me, it's all about eliminating the possibility of human error. I'll be long gone by the time this happens but I can foresee a time when the flight deck is fully automated from start-up clearance to push back to taxi to take off to landing to rollout to taxiing back to the gate and engine shutdown without the need for pilot intervention. Oversight certainly, but no longer the need to do any flying unless the automated system breaks.

"I don't expect to see a move to single-pilot operation, if ever, but certainly I don't see it in the next 15-20, even 25 years," Walsh said during IATA's Global Media Day last month.

Ok, guess I don't have to be concerned in my lifetime. But I do believe a single pilot is a bad idea. So while crossing the Atlantic, or Pacific, etc.....

Single pilot airline operations are insane unless the cockpit is specifically designed for it, and even then, the possibility of pilot incapacitation (from any number of factors) is to too much of a risk.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here. We went from four people in the cockpit (pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer and navigator) to three and now two. Flying now is safer than it has ever been. Granted, the cockpit of a 787 today is different than that of a Lockheed Constellation in 1945.

The Germanwings tragedy would have been 50% less likely to happen if we only had one pilot on the flight deck.

With only one pilot, the pilots can get twice as much hand-flying experience.

Almost all of part 91 is flown by single-pilot crews- including turboprops like TBMs and Pilatuses. These planes are not routinely falling out of the sky. Add I would argue that the flying done by high-performance GA planes is more challenging than part 121, and it's done without dispatchers and ground support.

A few things have to happen before single-pilot part 121 operations are a reality. The plane needs to be able to perform the entire flight without human intervention. The pilot needs to be able to perform the entire flight without a co-pilot. This might mean heads-up displays for IFR approaches. Automatic uploading of communication frequencies and routing changes.

When the day comes that single-pilot part 121 is a reality, none of us will care. Just like the day that navigators and flight engineers disappeared.

Only until Air Force One is piloted by a single crew member would I ever think this would be a good idea.

Airbus is developing an autonomous automatic deviation capability that while currently described as for emergency use only could be a precursor to single pilot ops as iot blunts the argument of incapacitated pilots. Single pilot is coming-it just may be a way off in the future right now.

They said the same thing about ETOPS..

I will never step foot on a plane with one pilot after the forced "vaxxing" of pilots.

"Died suddenly" is not in my game plan.