Originally Posted by
kimba
Thank you for the replay.
That gives me the chance to clarify two things:
1) if regulation and insurances require two pilots on board of an aircraft that can also be flown by a single pilot, that's got to be for a reason. Safer? More proficient? I don't think is a simple requirement.
And that leads me to the second point.
2) thank you for the little piece of history on the Strategic Air Command, but it looks like that this makes my point: two pilot is better than one (just to summarize).
You are obviously letting the bias of your viewpoint cloud what I was saying. The only case of two people (not necessarily pilots) in an aircraft that can be flown single pilot that I mentioned was aerial photography. And the second person there doesn't need to be a pilot because all he is doing is handling the camera. The other references involving regulation were for aircraft too complex to be handled by one pilot.
And my SAC comments were how important PIC time was before commanding an aircraft that not only had two pilots, but 2 - 4 other required crew members as well needed to accomplish the mission. So your "summary" of my remarks is totally OFF the mark.
Finally just to add another piece of information:
the future of the Military Aviation is not a two pilot crew but single pilot again (because of new advanced technologies that can reduce the load of a single pilot and a copilot may not be necessary anymore) look at the new genreation of fighter plane: F22, F35 and the European EFA- Thypoon.
All single pilot to be used in a swing role from A/A to A/G to EW.
First off, there are many more aircraft than just fighter/attack types and ALL of them (bomber, transport, tanker, AWACS, etc.) require two pilots, again because of the complexity of the aircraft, not just to make the basic flying safer. And for fighters, there are only a handful of types that HAVE been two crew (F-4, F-14, older FA-18s, a couple of F-15 variants, A-6.) And for the most part, the second crew member was normally a pilot. So I don't really see the change in the fighter ranks you are alluding to.