Originally Posted by frmrbuffdrvr

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.



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.