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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

This makes no sense to me. The cost of having a copilot is one shared by every carrier. Eliminating that does not give one a competitive advantage as all carriers will get a similar cost reduction. It smacks an elitist "fuck employees, we hate having them, it's our money"

That's not even considering the safety implications.

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Maybe its not competitive advantage against other airlines but is definitely competitive advantage against other forms of transport. If they can reduce cost they can reduce price and this may result in growth of the market. It will also increase the supply of human resources which would make fast market expansion possible.

I don't know about the security implications but I'm inclined to believe that lowering costs is good for business.

What form of travel are airlines competing with in the US? Travel by train is basically so bad that it’s for entertainment purposes only and any distance over 300 miles is more expensive and time consuming by car.

The fact that the airport/TSA experience can be so difficult and airlines are still fine is a testament to the lack of viable alternatives.

I don't know, are interstate highways empty? Price reduction can compete against the trips not taken at least.

Also, it might be about the availability of pilots. How is the demand for air travel doing? If it is very strong then 1 pilot per plane would mean twice the pilots in the market. Then it's up to hardware producers to supply the pilots with planes and increase market.

Not even other forms of transit--if transit is cheaper, people will travel more.

My understanding is that qualified pilots are in short supply and by removing the position of copilot, the collective pilot pool doubles which also somewhat reduces the leverage pilots have over airlines due to supply shortage.

Safety implications are total bs, the moment a plane that has one pilot goes down congress will pass a law than requires a minimum of 6 pilots for every plane. So that would be idiotic on the part of airlines to lobby for if they suspected significant additional risks. Also keep in mind buses have one driver and it's just as bad if a bus crashes, but I suppose you don't care since you don't take buses much, talk about "elitists".

No one is "fucking employees" when that leads to bottom line growth in a crippling and money losing industry with insane regulations and red tapes like required no smoking signs in brand new airplanes.

So you say that no way a company will prioritise short term profits at the expense of a small long term risk ?

I'd agree that risk is not affected only if the plane can take off, navigate, land and park on the runway entirely on its own (effectively replacing a pilot)

Several international airlines still allow smoking in the cabin. Passengers transferring from those flights need to be told what to do.

>Also keep in mind buses have one driver and it's just as bad if a bus crashes,

Buses go 400MPH at 40k feet? I guess I should travel by bus more often.

A difference without a difference. A bus crash at 60MPH on a freeway can be just as deadly for everyone inside. There is a deadly bus crash with multiple fatalities almost once a month: https://www.google.com/search?q=bus+crash+multiple+fatalitie...

Maybe, although you still can recover the bodies.

FWIW i wouldn't take Google as a source of information.

Yea, that's some pretty poor research.

When a deadly bus crash occurs in the vast majority of cases a few people may die at the impact zone (for example a semi hitting the back of the bus).

When a deadly plane accident occur it is very common for there to be no survivors at all.

> This makes no sense to me

It maximizes earnings through reduction of the cost, not through competitive advantage (i.e. bigger sales volume).

In other costs: it's saving more vs making more money. Two non-exclusive ways of improving your overall financial status.

I view this as more of a public safety concern. There are plenty of areas to cut costs imo.

I suspect it has more to do with the availability of employees rather than the cost. But I’ll admit that’s based on my hearing anecdotal tales rather than hard facts.

Isn’t that the same thing? What I’ve heard is that the pay isn’t attractive enough to get enough new pilots and a ton of older ones retired when the airlines screwed them during the pandemic. If you have a reputation for dumping your employees any time you can save a little money, the base pay expectations are going to need to go up.

And what happens if THE pilot has a heart attack or similar problem that prevents it from flying the plane?

It’s the insurance company’s problem. /s

Plane crashes are a major problem for the airlines. When it happens, we all hear about it, often with horrific imagery of wreckage and talk of hundreds of dead people. That's a problem for the popularity of the industry and they'd probably rather pay the victims/insurance than have people lose trust in their safety.

Clearly they don't believe it's a zero sum game.

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