Originally Posted by
Less Hair
I think the step should be either two pilots or no pilots. However, we are a long way from the reliability and safety needed for commercial passenger operations without pilots. The flying public will not accept cheapo bot flights.
Two are needed for redundancy and educating future captains. No pilots might work for freighters electronically hooked up to a manned formation flight leader or similar. And then the freighter can leave the remote monitored formation to autoland garmin style at some remote desert airport or similar.
That’s my take on it as well. Beyond a certain flight duration, you have to assume a single pilot aeroplane will have no-one at the controls for periods of time (or for the rest of the flight if they become incapacitated), therefore the aircraft will need to be able to deal with anything the pilot could. At that point, why have a pilot? You’ve already paid for an autonomous aircraft...