Comment by 0xB31B1B
2 months ago
Sort of. There’s like 5 conditions of automation commercial planes can be in. The automation mostly functions to make the pilots workload manageable, not to make their workload non existent. Commercial flights used to have a crew of 3, captain, first officer and flight engineer. The automation has reduced the workload to eliminate the flight engineer role and make flights operable by 2 people.
There's a lot of automation, but it's the same situation with "self driving" cars. Until you get to nearly 100% trustworthy full automation, you need people actively making decisions constantly, so automation is mostly in the form of assists rather than full automation.
Flights are operable by 1 person, and this is in fact the normal state of affairs in general aviation. The second person on commercial aircraft is there mostly for redundancy, although obviously having another pair of hands makes things easier.
Redundancy is definitely part of it, but 2 people also make things much much easier and reduce accident likelihood when unexpected things start happening and the workload increases. Lets say there is some severe mechanical issue, you want someone to run through a checklist to address the mechanical issue and fly the plane which is likely now out of autopilot, and another to find alternate places to land, etc.