Originally Posted by
OldWeasel
The regulations will be interesting. Currently, two crew must be on the flight deck for safety sake. This is to prevent a repeat of the Germanwings incident. Now how do you summarily prevent such an occurrence unless you eliminate the ability of the sole pilot aboard from taking control? In the flight levels, you’ll be on O2 every flight. That can be managed with an annoying alarm and consumption figures after each flight.
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The automation forbids flying the airplane into the ground in the same way you can't stall an Airbus.
Set an altitude below the EGPWS floor for that area and it stops. No matter what you do. "I can't let you do that, Dave".
And don't say shut the engines down. Without abnormal indications the computer won't let you do that, either.
Jeez you guys are so last century thinkers.
Think about how a drone works. You turn it on, without ever operating one. It knows where it is. You tell it to go to xyz, it takes off, flies, and returns and lands all on its own.
That is where we are headed. The technology exists. It works. The only thing stopping it is regulations.
How did that work out for the radio operator, navigator, or flight engineer?
Not to mention, if you think about it, your argument for having TWO pilots is because one might fly it into the ground.
IMO, that is a reason to have ZERO pilots. In the same line of thinking, since the vast majority of accidents these days are pilot error, that is also a reason to have ZERO pilots - it will improve safety.