Because of computerized autopilot systems and a greater understanding of wind shears, flying has never been safer than it is right now. Boarding a domestic carrier in the United States is a particularly low-risk means of travel. But increasingly automated aviation can cause human pilots to experience skill fade, something which has alarmed Nicholas Carr, and now Steve Casner of Slate is concerned about two-pilot cockpits being halved. My assumption is that if accidents remain the rare exception, the automation process will continue apace. An excerpt:
Now that we’ve gone from four pilots to two, and with more automation on the way, you don’t need to be a mind reader to know what the industry is thinking next. The aircraft manufacturer Embraer has already revealed plans for a single-pilot regional jet, and Cessna has produced several small single-pilot jets. (I’m rated to fly this one.) And as my colleagues at NASA are busy studying the feasibility of large single-pilot airliners, a Delta Air Lines pilot made it look easy a few weeks ago when the other pilot was accidentally locked out of the cockpit. But should we be a little nervous about the idea of having just one pilot up there in the front office? The research says maybe so.
Studies show that pilots make plenty of errors. That’s why we have two pilots in the airline cockpit—to construct a sort of human safety net. While one pilot operates the aircraft’s controls, the other pilot keeps watch for occasional errors and tries to point them out before they cause any harm. NASA engineer Everett Palmer likes to sum up the idea with a quip: “To err is human, to be error-tolerant is divine.” Keeping the error-maker and getting rid of the error-catcher may not prove to be very error-tolerant.
Besides, automation doesn’t eliminate human error—it just relocates it. The engineers and programmers who design automation are humans, too. They write complex software that contains bugs and nuances. Pilots often speak of automation surprises in which the computers do something unexpected, occasionally resulting in accidents. Having only one pilot in the cockpit might compromise our ability to make sense of these technological noodle-scratchers when they pop up.•