When a Pilot seats on his cockpit and buckles-up his seat-belt he "offers" his own life as a warranty and proof of his proficiency. (A UAV pilot would only do his job when trying to safely land a crippled UAV, full of pax, knowing his own life would never be in danger...which is a completely different thing...).
Any pilot with a minimum of experience knows that flying is a very complex and dynamic task. (I didn't say it was difficult, but there are so many parameters to cope with, millions of them). Its more easy to send a rocket to Mars than to make a self-sustained new generation commercial aircraft able to fly without incidents to every suitable runway on Earth, full of passengers.
Aircraft do loose liability with age and computers do not gain flight experience. There are emergencies that need to be interpreted because the monitoring systems (ECAM on Airbus A/C) are unable to properly identify them and rely on the pilots to cope with. Manufacturers are always finding bugs on their won aircraft systems (we receive hundreds of OEB's per year). Aviation is a dynamic world that will always need human handling. If the technology is there, why then do aircraft manufacturers tend to leave to the pilot the handling of several emergencies which lead to auto-pilot disconnection?
I'd love to see the millions of inputs that would have to be entered into the "new generation pilot-less airliners" each time one of those would have to fly to third world countries like Zaire, Angola, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc, whose facilities are always under-maintained or simply in "maintenance".
I know that pilot error is the main cause of airline accidents but they are also the main obstacle to an accident to happen. Thousands of accidents did not happen because pilots were simply there, and did their job. And the number of accidents that did not happen are hugely compensating the industry for their presence in the cockpits. But pilots are humans and have their weaknesses and needs. Lack of resting can lead to lack of attention or awareness and that is why we do need two in the cockpit.
Last edited by aguadalte; 20th Mar 2010 at 00:08.