Because the airline allowed the FO occupy the flight deck alone and to lock the CA out. Not all airlines allow that (IMO none should).

Yeah, that must be the reason.

Pearls before swine.

Invest appropriately.

For instance, the people who shorted Tesla lost 5 billion dollars because electric cars will NEVER HAPPEN.

Money where your mouth is I guess.

CrimsonEclipse

Is you job background one in tech/engineering?

Boeing invests in AI company...
 

I love these threads. All the unmanned experts that got their Intel out of the terminator movies come out of the woodwork.

We, absolutely, will see single pilot 121 operations within 25 years.

Yep! Avionics, signals, etc.

You'll see single-pilot heavy military transports and Part 91-operated business jets WELL before you see single-piloted transport aircraft operating under 121...and after decades of single-pilot FAR 23 light jets, there still aren't any single-pilot certified FAR 25 bizjets.


25 years is an eternity in this business so we'll see...but I'll not yet be 60 in two and a half decades and I'm not concerned it.

I suspect the frieght ops will be the first place they show up, on the civilian side.

As much as people say: "I'll never trust a computer with my life." They're just spouting off, that psychological leap has already been made. Autopilots in cars was pretty much the final thing that needed to happen before the public is ready to board and single pilot, data-linked aircraft. As soon as the accountants and insurance agents can justify it you'll see it start to happen.

Honestly, I don't see self driving cars as happening in our lifetimes. There are simply too many variables that have to be processed, and decided upon too quickly, in an uncontrolled environment, for it to be viable. People want to get drunk, and then have their car drive them home, and that isn't going to happen.

A self flying aircraft however, is enormously simplistic to make. I even have my own that I built last year, you just program in waypoints, and it flies itself. You don't remove the pilot from the equation, and self flying aircraft will generate a series of optimized routes, and the human technician decides which one the aircraft flies. The reason we can't do this now, is because the ATC system requires cross verification of instructions, that a computer simply can't do. Furthermore, the ground based navigation systems are too unreliable to use as a reference, this is simply replaced with on board navigation based on doppler shift lidar. All of this can be retrofitted.

The reason I say we will see single pilot soon is because the aircraft are already made, and currently in service, they just need FAA certification to remove one pilot.