Airbus is pushing itself to develop autonomous aircraft and technologies that will allow a single pilot to operate as commercial jetliners, helping cut costs for carriers. Earlier Airbus was focused on convincing regulators and passengers to embrace the pilotless planes due to two Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft that went down within six months difference of each other owing to a glitch in the plane’s computerized flight control system hence killing everyone onboard.
Now, Airbus is looking to develop autonomous aircraft and technologies that will allow a single pilot to operate commercial jetliners that will help cut costs for carriers, chief technology officer. Airbus planning to introduce single pilot airliners has been exploring potential, and also conducting tests in some cases. Such changes will bring many changes and solve many problems like the shortage of pilots.
Plane manufacturers like Airbus are racing to develop artificial intelligence that might enable computers to fly planes without human beings at the controls. Though turning that idea into a practical reality won’t be that easy as it seems in an industry where two pilots in the cockpit have been the norm in commercial flights for several decades as the scenario of planes going fully autonomous and may take more time since it took 60 years to have four pilots from two pilots.
However, single-pilot technology will solve the industry’s reportedly shortage of trained pilots. Boeing in 2017 estimated that 637,000 pilots would in need over the next 20 years, while just 200,000 have been trained ever since the dawn of the airplane age.
