Is 1 Pilot Better Than 2?

While two pilots in the cockpit are today’s standard, it wasn’t always so. When the Boeing 757 came out in the early 1980s, in addition to the captain and first officer there was also a flight engineer on board to monitor and maintain the aircraft’s systems. Technological advancements and improvements to standard operating procedures made the flight engineer role obsolete. Even earlier in commercial aviation history, in addition to a flight engineer, many long-haul flights also included a navigator and radio operator. But these positions were also made irrelevant thanks to advances in technology.

It is almost inevitable that commercial aircraft will adopt single pilot operation, but before this can happen three main roadblocks need to be overcome, namely: safety redundancies, aircraft operational limitations, and public reception.

Having two pilots in the cockpit is necessary for safety redundancy, in case the captain becomes incapacitated. A proposed solution is to have standby pilots on the ground ready to maneuver the aircraft remotely in the event the captain on board the aircraft is unable to fly.

There are no commercial aircraft on the market at this time that could transition to single pilot operations overnight. NASA tested out the single pilot concept in Boeing 737 simulators and found the workload for a single pilot to be unacceptable in any conditions tested. For single pilot operations to be feasible, more systems must be automated to reduce pilot load.

It will likely be long after single pilot operations are the standard before passengers will be completely comfortable flying on an aircraft with only one pilot in the cockpit. As with most new technologies, the consumers will want the system to be proven before they adopt this new evolution of flying

Cargo aircraft will likely be the first adopters of single pilot flying. Conversions of passenger jets to freighters capable of single pilot flights are underway and they could take off in the next 5 years or so. In the meantime, airlines are watching carefully as this next step in the evolution of aviation could save them billions of Euros every year and drastically change the economics of flying.