Agreed, the NAS is not ready for single pilot ops on a large scale. Add an emergency aircraft into the mix and it gets really interesting fast. It is not going to happen in my career.

 

But weren't there two pilots on that?

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Piddlepacks are the wave of the future.

 

There was, up until the point one went to the bathroom (the captain) and was locked out of the flight deck by the remaining pilot (The FO).

 

I know. Just sayin

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Which changed policies for foreign operators. US carriers were already safeguarding against such acts.

 

It certainly appears to be an intractable problem to me. Gotta have someone on the airplane to control it for reasons of potential jamming/interference/etc. Person on plane must be able to override any external guidance for similar reasons. Can't have one person riding around who can crash the airplane unopposed (remember the old joke about the pilot and the dog...). Therefore two pilots until perhaps onboard AI, and I don't think that's exactly right over the horzion.

I am also no expert.

 

For passenger aircraft, just saying...

 

Maybe that's why the lav is in the cockpit on the 767

 

Amazon is going to continue to use the 2000's legacy/regional airline model of a "portfolio of carriers" that they can whipsaw against each other. Amazon owning the planes only makes it that much more viable, because they can really pressure the competing carriers to cut costs, or they take the planes away and give them to someone else. They would be stupid to start an in house carrier, on their own certificate, and take on all that overhead.

Amazon would have to have a 500 aircraft fleet to carry all of their own stuff, plus have room to carry for others. AWS is successful because it doesn't take a huge investment in infrastructure like running an airline does. I wouldn't be surprised to see them spin AWS off at some point either. Like someone said above, Amazon has reached the top of their growth curve. Everyone who is going to use amazon already does. Amazon already has their money in Prime fees, and needs to move the boxes as cheaply as possible. They don't care about quality like FDX and UPS do, if there's a problem, they just refund your money. It's pennies on the sidewalk to them. FDX and UPS will always have the niche of carrying for everyone else who cares about quality. Let amazon be amazon they're no threat to UPS and FDX.