Originally Posted by
vilas
Discovery of more and more human factors is one of the reasons for more and more automation and development towards pilotless aircraft. It's almost an advertisement of how humans are unsuitable for the job. For the industry and the travelling passengers what matters is if accidents have to happen then with pilotless aircaft will fares be significantly less and will accidents reduce?
Absolutely.
The problem is IMHO about the suitability of the candidates in the industry. We can take the Air Force as an example ; they have always worked with very small numbers compared to the airlines world (for obvious reasons) and thus the selection process has always been very demanding in terms of psychomotor skills. Now it is definitely a different job but on the other hand the civilian job went to the extreme with a race to the bottom whereas we need to demonstrate that the most average pilot is suitable to safely operate in a cockpit and we need to design rules and procedures around that.
The wrong assumption is that single pilot highly automated airliners and/or pilotless aircrafts will get rid of the human weakness component because the bar today is set at an incredibly low level.
Experienced, knowledgeable and skilled pilots are expensive, or at least they should be and this does not go well with ultra low cost business models.