Two become one? Planemakers work on tech to cut pilot numbers

[Old fella]

Personally I believe there will be a minimum of 2 pilots in all airline operations for a long time to come. Also with long haul operations over great distances there will be that extra pilot up front as well. In 200-300 years, who knows that is if the planet lasts that long.

[av8ts]

All the people in the back on wifi can even pull up a live radar picture that’s many times more helpful than what we get up front

Absolutely not. That image is at least 10 minutes old, likely more. An eternity in thunderstorm land. Looking at the radar around YEG the other day, the storms were popping from nothing into red in one refresh cycle online (10 min). I’d prefer a shitty airborne weather radar to an uplinked image any day.

Your partially correct. The onboard radar is great for avoiding what is directly in front of the plane. However information from a ground based radar hundreds of miles down the line would be very helpful in deciding weather to parallel a line or try to find a way through and which way the weather is moving and which side of a line your destination in on

[C-GGGQ]

All the people in the back on wifi can even pull up a live radar picture that’s many times more helpful than what we get up front

Absolutely not. That image is at least 10 minutes old, likely more. An eternity in thunderstorm land. Looking at the radar around YEG the other day, the storms were popping from nothing into red in one refresh cycle online (10 min). I’d prefer a shitty airborne weather radar to an uplinked image any day.

Your partially correct. The onboard radar is great for avoiding what is directly in front of the plane. However information from a ground based radar hundreds of miles down the line would be very helpful in deciding weather to parallel a line or try to find a way through and which way the weather is moving and which side of a line your destination in on

With all the talks of datalinks and the like, I have to believe that is possible, just not implemented. It would be really nice to have that as a page you could check on an MFD

[goingnowherefast]

So what happens when there's a massive solar flare. Or a piece of space junk knocks out the datalink satellite? Is every single pilot airliner grounded, yet the 2 crew ones using INS and VORs are still flying around?

Everybody knows that communication is perfect and never fails....

[ahramin]

Yes that's what happens. You will not be able to MEL the datalink if it's your second pilot. The old 2 crew planes will be able to operate, the new ones will have to wait a few hours.

It like how those old VORs and NDBs keep being used every time the GPS system goes down.

[C-GGGQ]

So what happens when there's a massive solar flare. Or a piece of space junk knocks out the datalink satellite? Is every single pilot airliner grounded, yet the 2 crew ones using INS and VORs are still flying around?

Everybody knows that communication is perfect and never fails....

Oh, I just meant the weather info provided. Not single pilot.