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Comment by ashtonkem | Hacker News Reader

I would actually be surprised if that’s legal. Flight attendants perform some critical safety functions, they’re not glorified wait staff that can be replaced on a whim.

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And that's why the flight attendants aren't being replaced by untrained randos; they're being replaced by pilots, who have even more training than flight attendants do. And yes, that training includes how to evacuate passengers and other relevant procedures, because this is already something that pilots can and do get involved in in emergency situations.

Once the plane is down they have no further piloting needing doing and need to help with the evacuation. Witness Sully Sullenberger on the Hudson -- he was the last person out of the airplane, having already assisted all the passengers in evacuating and then gone back to perform a thorough sweep to ensure that no one else remained.

It’s usually 3–4 months of training to be a fully qualified flight attendant. Surely a pilot is already well-versed in 90% of that training material. A week or two training may be all that’s required.

I don’t mean to be ignorant, but what are these critical safety functions? The closest thing to safety that I’ve seen is they give the speech at the beginning about oxygen masks and remind you to buckle up.

Given that the inflight safety demonstration is on video now, what’s the critical safety role?

My safety worry wouldn't be the lack of flight attendants per se, it would be distracted pilots. The pilots have enough to keep track of already. The last thing we need is having planes start crashing because a pilot was distracted dealing with a passenger.

You're misunderstanding the linked article. There will still be flight attendants, just now they'll be pilots. I.e. there will be two pilots solely in charge of flying the plane, and then additional pilots in the cabin doing the flight attendant duties.

The critical role is if something goes wrong to be able to help the passengers be safe. E.g. non-normal landings and medical emergencies.

Another less "critical" role, but still not something I want a pilot doing, is dealing with disgruntled passengers.

They also ensure that rules are followed and that people, e.g. in an exit row, understand what they need to do. If pilots couldn't begin preflight until passengers are seated and buckled it would take forever to depart.

Speaking of boarding, flight attendants also deal with seating and baggage issues. Again, it would delay departure.

Just what comes quickly to mind: Door in flight / in park. Helping put the oxygen masks on (if that's required, I'd assume that pilot/copilot is otherwise occupied). And of course getting people out during an evacuation.

First aid, detecting issues in the cabin, firefighting, checking the emergency exits and opening them or directing passengers elsewhere in case of an evacuation, ...

Dealing with passengers that have an sociopathic entitlement complex who get violent..

Literally flight attendants exist to help with the safety of passengers in any sort of abnormal situation. That they serve beverages is just kind of the thing they do when there's not a critical safety function.

An extreme example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neerja_Bhanot

Any time you have hundreds of members of the general public in a confined space, you're going to need a staff to manage whatever they throw at you, or to run an evacuation. Same reason theaters have ushers.

My wife is cabin crew at BA. The best example I can give of things they need to know is how to let a bomb explode and leave the aircraft going. There's a procedure on how to cover a found bomb with layers of chairs, wet blankets, etc. She also needs to know all the ways to extinguish a fire, depending on its source.

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