God Is My Copilot

Der Spiegel reports that the Brazilian firm Embraer, the world's third largest producer of commercial airplanes, is contemplating a future, in which only one human pilot is needed to fly a passenger jet. He or she would be assisted by either computers onboard, flight control on the ground, or satellites in combination with the above.

As Der Spiegel's Gerald Traufetter explains,

In doing so, Embraer is challenging the cockpit's last remaining taboo. Now that radio operators, navigators and flight engineers have fallen victim to cost-cutting measures, the pilot's right-hand person could also fall by the wayside. Until now, airlines have made only very discreet inquiries about the possibility of having one-pilot cockpits....

With so many pressures to cut costs, airlines are attracted by the idea of cutting the numbers of such highly paid employees. What's more, the industry's rapid expansion is also threatening to bring about a shortage of pilots. For example, over the next 20 years, the US aircraft manufacturer Boeing predicts that 448,000 new pilots will be needed.

Not that we should expect one-pilot flights to happen any time soon. The article goes on,

"There are thousands of situations that a human being can creatively master," says Holger Duda of the Braunschweig-based Institute of Flight Systems, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). But to get the approval of aviation authorities, he adds, a manufacturer would have to prove that the computers would make the right decisions in all of these situations. And this, Duda believes, is "virtually impossible."

Not only do the computers have to make correct decisions, they also need to function adequately and not let you down in the midst of a crisis, as happened famously in one 1980 incident.