Originally Posted by
galaxy flyer
Google is just demonstrated "driverless" cars and some think "pilotless" planes are a century away. It will happen and probably sooner than anyone guesses.
In my career, it was thought large airliners couldn't fly without a flight engineer and four engines were required for overwater. The L1011, DC-10 were conceived as transcontinental planes, not international.
GF
You are under-estimating the contribution that the human mind makes to aviation during irregular conditions.
Engines became more reliable (ETOPS).
Systems become more automated (no FE). But these are systems which are very cut-and-dried...it's not to hard to guess every possible switch and valve line-up and program the computer accordingly. The real-world outside the cockpit contains myriad shades of grey and the occasional surprise (Sully's geese).
The pilot is there to pick the best shade of grey, and to get creative when necessary (Sully). The SIC serves two purposes.
1) Backup the pilot's human weaknesses
2) Redundancy in the event of sudden pilot incapacitation.
Computers don't exist which can do the pilot's job. I am familiar with the state-of-the-art, and it's nowhere near being able to do what Sully did. The SIC's has two points of job security, neither of which are going anywhere until they get rid of the pilot.
Sully (and Al Haines) are likely to go down in history as the bench-marks by which a pilot-replacement computer will have to be measured. Actually there is already some R&D to develop flight control systems which can fly a damaged airframe using any combination of control and power inputs. But the Sully problem is much harder IMO.