I don’t think that large passenger aircraft will ever be designed for a single (human) pilot. I think that the transition, when it comes, will be from two to zero.
Unless the pilot is chained into his seat (which is feasible) and guaranteed never to become incapacitated (which isn’t feasible), the possibility exists that the cockpit will become unmanned at some unpredictable phase of flight. The control system will have to designed to take the aircraft all the way to a safe landing with no human input at all.
SLF are going to love Peter the Pilot. He has 5,000,000 hours and has memorized all the arrivals and departures at every airport in the world. He knows more about the effect of moving any control surface of his airplane than any of his human designers. He can call up and execute a non-normal checklist in a heartbeat. He is so efficient that he can even adjust the control parameters for a particular airplane’s quirks during flight.
Airlines are going to love Peter the Pilot, too. He can fly any airplane that shows up at the gate. He never complains to the Chief Pilot. He doesn't suffer from circadian lows. He remembers every lesson from his very first flight. He can train a new co-pilot in a minute with a USB stick. And, neither of them need any time in the sim.
Designing Peter the Pilot isn’t going to require artificial intelligence, or machine learning, or quantum computers, or any of a plethora (today’s word) of other fancy processes. Nope, he’s going to be developed in the traditional manner, with engineers trying to imagine all of the possibilities and to come up with strategies to achieve an acceptable outcome for each.
Unfortunately, the Peter they develop won’t be perfect. There will be accidents, and even fatalities. But that doesn’t mean that SLF will demand humans up front. Peter has almost unlimited capacity for being improved, unlike humans, who are effectively at their limit now.
Sully might be the cat’s pyjamas, but who gets to fly behind him now?
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