IS IT SAFE TO FLY SINGLE-PILOT?
AVOIDING DISTRACTION IS FUNDAMENTAL TO THOSE WHO FLY SINGLE-PILOT
Amidst a debate on the use of unmanned air vehicles, some of them autonomous, reality overlaps with trends. In the passenger air transport, the question is still another one. The question that business aviation users frequently ask when planning their operation of their aircraft, or their aircraft fleet, has to do not with the presence, but with the quantity of crew members. In practice, aircraft or helicopter owners want to know: Shall I or shall not I fly with just one pilot onboard?
In small-sized aircrafts, this condition is almost a premise to the flight, since the available seats are very limited and adding a pilot may be unviable. In addition to the issue of seat availability, the practice is very much accepted by the market, although some passengers demand, on special circumstances, the presence of an extra pilot, even if this is not required by law. It never hurts to repeat this mantra created by Richard Collins: “Not all that is legal is necessarily safe”.
The fact of having only one pilot in the cabin does not in itself represent a risk. So much so that Boeing is developing a project to have, in the future, commercial aircrafts piloted by only one crew member. Evidently, this issue still will be discussed and it will involve not only authorities from the sector, as
