Originally Posted by
Less Hair
I really don't understand why an aviation authority would initiate a paradigm change away from redundancy out of airline cost control or staffing concerns? Or does this tell us the other message "only at the same level of safety we will permit single pilot ops" as in "never"?
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. There are obviously some clever tech heads out there now developing this technology and proving concepts. This is all fine, but it doesn’t consider the commercial factor.
A chocolatier could make a chocolate fireguard, it would look like a real fireguard, but I don’t think it would get through the H&S risk assessments to be used as a fireguard. The chocolatier would therefore find that demand for these would mean mass producing them would not be commercially viable.
Glib analogy perhaps, but is the tail wagging the dog here? Do the airlines really want to reduce/eradicate the pilot role altogether? I suspect the answer is only if it saves them a lot of money. With the exception of long-haul cruise pilot, I don’t see how unmanned or single pilot operations would provide a cost saving for the foreseeable future.