Career Pilot: Flying solo

You are based in Seattle and you are scheduled for the red-eye to Atlanta. You head over to flight operations where you look at the weather, review performance numbers, and scan the flight release. Tonight’s flight is on a brand-new Boeing 797. You make your way to the gate, perform the walk-around, chat with the lead flight attendant, offer her a briefing, and enter the flight deck.

Something is eerily strange tonight: Nobody is taking the second seat.

You are alone. As you drone along in the darkness, there is no colleague with whom to share the load or pass the time discussing NFL scores, the latest news on the kids and family, or that 1967 Corvette you are yearning to acquire. Oh, sure, you will be electronically tethered to some stranger in central command, but he or she is probably both faceless and nameless. You know your partner on the ground by an employee number: 68356 is assigned to your flight as the Earth-based shepherd.

Fantasy? Fiction? Or your future?

The 797 is a twin-aisle concept jet termed as a new mid-market airplane (NMA). Some industry analysts believe this newly designed flying machine will be offered with the capability for just one pilot up front. A second pilot could be ground based and be able to monitor several aircraft at the same time.

From a financial viewpoint, imagine the savings for airline executives and stockholders if their fleets can eliminate that second pilot. Between fewer pilots on the payroll and a reduction in training costs, the savings for a company could tally well into the millions.

Prognosticators at UBS Group AG estimate a profit potential of $15 billion for the industry for flying cargo and passenger flights with a single pilot and $35 billion if airplanes were to fly themselves. Even Congress has in its budget bill funding the FAA language that would start a “research and development program in support of single-
piloted cargo aircraft assisted with remote and computer piloting.”

Industry analysts maintain that the technology to accomplish the single pilot concept is about 10 years away, but those same analysts claim that single-pilot capability is valuable.

Boeing Vice President of Research and Technology Charles Toups has said that one-pilot jets would likely begin with cargo flights and it would be a “couple of decades” before passengers would be convinced of their safety. In the meantime, Boeing has stated that the 797 flight deck “is being designed for two pilots and we’ve been consistent that we don’t see NMA as a technology push airplane.” And at best, given Boeing’s challenges with its 737 MAX, energy for the 797 has been somewhat diverted.

Yet airlines and airplane manufacturers continue to be intrigued with the idea of reducing flight deck crews in time. The temptation is great.

For someone already firmly on the airline pilot career track, this development might be considered an interesting curiosity. However, for the fifth-grader hoping to realize a dream of flying an airliner when grown, it may be a way different industry when he or she is ready.

Certifying airliners for single-pilot operations would require technology advancements, regulatory changes, and a shift in public perception—obstacles that may well be overcome. But displacing more humans by technology also renders more of our kind obsolete, which raises a philosophical question: If we can, should we?