A few years ago, Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary caused a stir in the industry with the demand that passenger aircraft should only be flown by one pilot in the future. At that time there was a rejection of the project from all sides - also from other airlines. But on the manufacturer side, the concept is being pursued.

The background to this is that numerous airlines are definitely interested in saving one pilot per flight. The discussion is strongly reminiscent of the time when the first larger machines that could be flown without a flight engineer came onto the market. At that time there were strong safety concerns and, for example, Ansett Australia had extra workplaces built into the Boeing 767, which can actually be flown without an engineer, and flew it for some time with a three-man cockpit. Today these can only be found in older aircraft, because the flight deck crew, captain and first officer, is a worldwide standard. The technical advancement has cost most flight engineers their job.

In view of the fact that air taxis are now being developed that are supposed to fly from A to B completely automatically without a pilot, it is not surprising that the industry is now thinking about only having one pilot in the cockpit. The big security question is; What if something happens to the man or woman sitting alone in the front? Nausea or a little nap have to be enough?

The German pilots 'union Vereinigung Cockpit strictly rejects the latest proposal by EASA boss Patrick Ky that the cruise phase should be relaxed and that one pilot will be sufficient in a few years' time. "The Cockpit Association is very critical of these efforts at the moment and has a clear position: We reject the reduction of the cockpit crew to a single pilot regardless of the flight phase," says Björn Reimer, Director Flight Safety of the Cockpit Association ( VC). “With the current technical possibilities, reduced crew operations would endanger the very high level of safety in commercial aviation. Maintaining and increasing flight safety must also have priority over economic interests in the future. "

The VC emphasizes that discussions about new technologies, which could also lead to flights with a reduced crew, will not be avoided in due course. However, one does not believe in rashly doing this at the expense of security.

VC also fears cyber attacks

The workload for individual pilots in critical situations is significantly higher than in the two-person cockpit. In the foreseeable future it will not be possible to use the system to compensate for a failure of the remaining people in the cockpit. There is therefore a considerable risk that the current level of safety cannot be maintained with reduced crew operations. The loss of human redundancy could therefore jeopardize the previous trend of increasing safety through increasing automation.

The VC also rates a pilot's relocation from the cockpit to a ground control station as critical to safety. At a moment, a corresponding data link infrastructure is technically not feasible in terms of cybersecurity and latency of data transmission for commercial air traffic. This would also significantly impair the cooperation of the pilots, which calls into question the development of adequate situational awareness.

Other serious obstacles to flight operations with only one person in the cockpit are factors such as fatigue / exhaustion and a possible complete loss of ability to act. This could not be adequately compensated for with only one person in the cockpit. Medical and licensing regulations are also unclear.