WASHINGTON—A federal advisory committee of pro-corporate aviation “experts” is telling the corporate-friendly Trump regime there should be only one pilot, not two, in an airplane’s cockpit. Citing safety reasons, the Air Line Pilots (ALPA) strongly oppose that scheme.
And so do 43 senators, from both political parties.
The plan came to light when ALPA disclosed the lawmakers’ July 24 letter to Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, urging him to reject the scheme. They said having only one pilot in the cockpit while the other rests elsewhere on the plane is dangerous.
Capt. Jason Ambrosi, the ALPA president, agrees vehemently.
Current U.S. regulations require two pilots in the cockpit, and ALPA wants to keep it that way. But European airline bosses are pushing their regulators for only one. Through the International Civil Aviation Organization, they’re pushing the corporate-friendly GOP Trump regime to agree.
“To prevent this risk to safety from reaching our country, we must work together with aviation regulators and stakeholders to discourage it across the globe,” said Ambrosi when ALPA posted a link to the senators’ letter on its website.
“We cannot allow foreign regulators to persuade ICAO to establish global standards for single-pilot operations. That would create market pressures in our nation to adopt practices that undermine safety. (As it is labor shortages and relaxation of regulations are causing dangerous near-accidents in the air over the U.S. on a weekly basis.) And we cannot allow for unsafe conditions for American passengers traveling in and out of the United States on foreign carriers.”
The senators cited current research by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is part of Duffy’s department, and NASA, plus “common sense and experience” of countless pilots.
A single pilot flying the plane would have a much higher workload, and there “would be significant decreases in pilots’ subjective perception of safety and performance,” said the senators, led by Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.—a badly injured helicopter combat veteran—and Tim Sheehy, R-Mont.
“Redundancy, afforded by two well-trained and well-qualified pilots on the flight deck, is a key guardrail for aviation safety standards. There is no replacement for human talent and judgement… especially for the rare instances when challenges and potential tragedies develop,” the lawmakers said.
An FAA advisory committee late last year sided with the one-pilot-in-the-cockpit idea, burying it in one paragraph in a 71-page set of airline pilot flying and training recommendations. The Transportation Department has not indicated, one way or another, if it agrees.
“One pilot at a time (i.e., pilot flying (PF)) is responsible for controlling the flightpath,” it says. “Controlling the flightpath refers to adjusting the trajectory and energy state of the airplane using any appropriate combination of manual or autoflight inputs. Other pilot(s) on the flight crew should always be ready and able to intervene if necessary. This capability should include normal and applicable non-normal situations.”
The advisory committee did not say how pilot switch-offs, if any, would occur, especially on long flights.
The one-pilot plan mimics, in a way, the open lobbying by another big corporate transportation lobby, the Association of American Railroads. AAR, which represents the big freight carriers as well as smaller lines, has pushed for just having an engineer, and nobody else, on miles-long heavy freight trains.
Rail unions vehemently oppose that and insist on two-person crews. They’ve convinced key states in the nation’s rail system—New York, which is the gateway to New England as well as a commerce giant, Illinois, which is the nation’s rail hub, and Nevada, through which most freight to and from California flows—to mandate two-person crews.
There was no indication in the advisory committee’s recommendations about who advanced the one-pilot plan. A check of the airline lobby’s website disclosed no citations about it.
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