Originally Posted by
Gone Flying
airbus test autonomous takeoff on a350
So?
Auto takeoff tech is theoretically way easier than existing auto land tech. Existing auto land tech is no where near ready for pilotless "prime time". So its basically a gimmic. Like asking Alexa what the temperature outside is. It tells you, but it only saved you 2 seconds. Full gate to gate no pilot ops (to the current spoiled rotten and fully expected and taken for granted 121 safety standards) will require levels of actuation and failsafe redundancy many, many orders of magnitude over existing tech. Single pilot ops will require 100% of that level of safety and redundancy because you'd always be "one heartbeat away" and the political capital of a tragedy easilly preventable by a second pilot would be financially unaceptable. Once that is achieved anyway, to impliment it will be far more expensive than an FO in the first place.
I do agree that 4 pilots ops may be targeted, and eventually 3. i think 2 is safe for quite a while, not because of lack of tech but due to costs.