There are limits to what I am prepared to countenance in Part 125 operations:
(Ryanair CEO) Michael O’Leary claimed that air stewardesses could instead be trained to land an aircraft in the event of an emergency.
In an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, Mr O’Leary, who has previously suggested that planes could fly with “standing-only” areas for passengers, said: “Why does every plane have two pilots?
“Really, you only need one pilot. Let’s take out the second pilot. Let the b—– computer fly it.”
When asked what would happen if the single pilot fell ill while flying a plane, he said: “If the pilot has an emergency, he rings the bell, he calls her in. She could take over.”
If this is what O’Leary is willing to state to the media, one wonders what he says in the boardroom.
Other ideas mentioned in the article: standing-room-only passenger areas, and extra fees to use the bathroom.
Note to self: NEVER fly Ryanair. Ever.
“Let the b**** computer fly it?” He still has employees? I’d rather be homeless and looking for scraps in a dumpster than work for a b@stard like that. A pox upon him… may he frickin’ rot.
Mr. O’Leary:
You are cordially invited to place your wife, children, mother, father and 20 most senior executives of Ryanair aboard the most maintenance intensive aircraft in your fleet, with the most…um…”challenged” single pilot in your employ on a delay filled 6 leg day of flying in heavy northern European weather.
No flight attendant can be over age 20, be able to articulate standard announcements from memory, or have any knowledge of all the “lights and button thingies in the little room with the two chairs and big windows”.
Note: The fatiguing day must end at night, in low visibility, with a sporting crosswind (no autoland), on a wet runway that is 5000′ in length or less. Extra gas is cheating…
Got a pair Mike? Take the challenge.
What a rabble-rousing idiot…
well, between this twit and the ones at TSA, i won’t be flying anywhere any time soon.
Well there’s a motivation to get a pilot’s license.
My friend works in RYR (http://sky-hopper.livejournal.com/17118.html). I asked him about this innovation. He says it’s spice PR of their boss.
Thankfully, this idiot is only in charge of the airline and not safety of flight standards. Good grief!
Spice PR or not, certainly not a good way to drum up business. What’s next? Offer discounted airfare to GA pilots, with annual cockpit checkouts, who’ll volunteer to sit in the front office?
Sorry. My business goes elsewhere.
All that said, he’s quite right that it would be a good idea if flight attendants could take over in case the flight crew were incapacitated.
Pipedream of course, as that would likely mean serious damage to the aircraft as well, and flight attendants are not trained pilots (most of them) with type ratings etc., but as an idea it’s not the worst that’s come out of the man.
Now wait just a darned minute. I was right on board when they took the navigator’s out of the aircraft. After all, what pilot wouldn’t trade a Nav for an extra 500 pounds of fuel? But cut the number of PILOTS?!?!?!? Purely outrageous!!!
mostly serious. . . .sorta kinda.
Zipper
Your Navigators must have been awfully fat.
Well, there’s all those charts, a sextant, a Smoleys, a slide rule….
the extra flight attendant so he too has one in the overnight hotel ;/
And I don’t think he’s going to pay the sort of money for a man-rated UAV system, either.
Surely not one plane, one pilot all at once. You’d have to start off with special crew, if you can call a solo pilot a crew, training; special requirements, ala ETOPS, extra rest; demonstrated mean time between disqualifying illnesses; maybe add in some random placement of relief pilots on a certain percentage of flights; maybe offer discounts to the passengers if they bring their own Dave Clarks? maybe charge by the pilot instead of by the mile, too.
And in related news, “Thank you for flying Kulula. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”
Sounds like a good reason never to fly Ryanair.
Eric Hines
as if you needed one…
Ryanair is one of the most successful airlines in Europe, maybe the world, right now, yet everyone you speak say they’ll never fly them because of O’Leary’s hairbrained ideas like this one.
He’s smart, suggest something really wild to get people take notice, then implement something lass radical.
He even got Boeing angry when he contacted them with a demand to remove one of the lavatories and the pantry from the cabin design and fit more seats to the 737-800.
and no, they’re not Part 125. They’re a European operation exclusively so have to comply with JAA rules, not FAA
Of course most JAA rules are stricter than their FAA counterparts, and most others identical.
O’Leary is a famous corporate nut job who loves to say these sorts of things as frequently as the media will publish them. He has suggested removing the seats and having standing passengers. Fitting coin operated locks to the toilets. Now this. Probably other crazy shite.
I have flown with them – I needed to get from Ireland to the UK in a hurry. Ryanair 30Euro. Aer Lingus 300Euro. I would never plan to fly with them, but sometimes needs must.
What most people don’t realise is what Mark alluded to earlier. Airlines aren’t really paying pilots to do get the job done when everything is going right. They get paid for getting the job done when everything goes wrong.
My thought is O’Leary may not mean a word he says. I’m sure he knows something like that will never happen. It does get some attention, and, for better or worse, attention tends to pay off in the long run. People, like Chris above, ride, see it’s not the flying nut house they think it is, then they tell others, and RyanAir wins at the box office.
Of course, most of the airlines are flying nut houses these days, even beyond the idiocy you have to endure at the hands of TSA.
How about SRO flights to Asia/Australia? Sure, it’s a good 15 hours, but you hoi polloi are a tough lot…
Let us hope that (judging by the guy’s name) this is just Irish exaggeration, and not intended to be believed.
I seem to remember large commercial planes having a cockpit crew that included a flight engineer. Haven’t seen many lately.
Are we sure this guy’s name isn’t MacLeary?