The near future?
 

Rear-rey?....

Not ever going to happen in the US. What happens if the single pilot becomes incapacitated? What's to keep the single pilot from falling asleep? What's to keep the single pilot from pulling a GermanWings?


According to the article, an airliner is involved in an accident every 36 days. Why does that seem a little high?

But if it does, hopefully I'm a Captain.

Look at her collar size

Why is there so much research and development into this? Presumably one pilot would be paid at the Captain wage (or above). I believe pilots are generally around 7% of an airline's operating costs these days, but the FO is a smaller portion of that, call it 2.5%. So billions of dollars into R&D to cut 2.5% of airline operating costs with reduced safety margin. What's the point?

Well, politicians love to fund projects. They get jobs, votes and maybe cousin Emil has a little side business that will benefit. Or maybe it's a way to get funding for some military single pilot bomber or something that otherwise wouldn't get funding or would attract too much attention. Maybe they are sending a shot ACROSS Google's bow. Maybe they think they can develop and sell it to Asia who can't train competent pilots fast enough. Maybe its just good ole lobbying by airlines to put pilots in their place before we get too uppity. It's not about cost or safety. There's no way to ensure a data link couldn't be hacked or wouldn't malfunction.

I find it interesting that in the US, DARPA is funding a similar project with Boeing. I wonder how much money they are really getting through black budget funds.

"A pilotless airliner is going to come; it's just a question of when," said James Albaugh, the president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airlines"

It's about time: greetings to your new robot co-pilot - Aviation news | AeroTime.aero

And without FOs, where would CAs come from?

The drones ARE coming...

These threads always make me chuckle... It's not IF the technology exists for this to happen, it pretty much exists now.

HOWEVER... If we can't keep China/Iran from hacking our super secret military Intel drones, why would anyone think that we could prevent some random terrorist group from hacking a commercial airliner?

Can you imagine the fallout the first time an airliner with 200+ people on it is hacked and crashed? Unmanned airliners aren't coming anytime soon and IMO single piloted large commercial airliners aren't coming soon either.

With that being said, it probably will happen far into the future, but highly doubtful during my lifetime.

You'll see mass market self driving cars a decade before self flying airplanes. You'll see cargo go first and pax much later. I'd estimate at least two decades.