Top pilots’ union sounds alarm as regulators consider smaller crew sizes

Aerospace giants have been accused of putting profits ahead of safety as officials consider cutting the minimum number of pilots required on commercial flight decks from two to one. The move, which is currently being evaluated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), would weaken standards to the “lowest common denominator”, the world’s largest union of airline pilots has warned. “This threat is not something that is 10, 15, 20 years away,” Capt James Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents more than 78,000 pilots in the US and Canada, said. “It’s something that, quietly, Airbus, has been working on. It’s not what they are marketing it to be. The US has the safest aviation record in the world. We need to improve the standard for everybody, not just go to the lowest common denominator.” EASA is looking at the safety of extended minimum crew operations (eMCO), where one pilot would leave the flight deck to rest during long flights, leaving one pilot at the helm. While many long-haul flights currently staff three pilots on the flight deck, so that pilots can alternate rest, eMCO would eliminate this standard. The reduction was proposed by aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Dassault. EASA is also investigating the safety of single-pilot operation for cargo flights. “Technologically, it is feasible,” Christian Scherer, CEO of the commercial aircraft business at Airbus, said in a February interview with the Sunday Times of London. “And bear in mind, if you go to a one-man cockpit, you might as well go to a zero-man cockpit. Because it all needs to cater for the eventuality that this one guy just ate a bad oyster and is incapacitated and the aeroplane has to take over. So one pilot or zero pilot is effectively the same thing.”<br/>