Airlines and regulators are pushing to have just one pilot in the cockpit of passenger jets instead of two. It would lower costs and ease pressure from crew shortages, but placing such responsibility on a single person at the controls is unsettling for some.
Over 40 countries including Germany, the UK and New Zealand have asked the United Nations body that sets aviation standards to help make single-pilot flights a safe reality. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has also been working with planemakers to determine how solo flights would operate and preparing rules to oversee them. EASA said such services could start in 2027.
The plan doesn’t sit well with pilots. It’s a hard sell for passengers, too.
Tony Lucas, an Airbus SE A330 captain for Qantas Airways Ltd. and president of the Australian & International Pilots Association, is concerned that a lone pilot might be overwhelmed by an emergency before anyone else has time to reach the cockpit to help.
“The people going down this route aren’t the people who fly jets every day,” Lucas said. “When things go awry, they go awry fairly quickly.”
That’s what happened on board Air France Flight 447 on its way to Paris from Rio de Janeiro on June 1, 2009. With the plane cruising at 35,000 feet (10,670 meters) over the Atlantic Ocean and the captain resting in the cabin, the two co-pilots in the cockpit started receiving faulty speed readings, likely from frozen detector tubes outside the aircraft.
By the time the captain got to the cockpit 90 seconds later, the plane was in an aerodynamic stall from which it never recovered. Less than three minutes later, it hit the water, killing all 228 people on board.
Lucas, a check and training captain, also worries about the lost opportunities to mentor junior pilots if flight crew are working increasingly on their own.
The planned changes bring many challenges. It’s not yet clear what would happen if a lone pilot collapsed or started flying erratically. Automation, technology and remote assistance from the ground would somehow have to replace the expertise, safety and immediacy of a second pilot.
Aviation has been moving toward this point for decades. In the 1950s, commercial aircraft cockpits were more crowded, typically with a captain, first officer or co-pilot, a flight engineer, a navigator and a radio operator. Advances in technology gradually made the last three positions redundant.
“We are potentially removing the last piece of human redundancy from the flight deck,” Janet Northcote, EASA’s head of communications, wrote in an email.