Single Pilot Airline Operations: Designing the Aircraft May Be the Easy Part

Don Harris

doi:10.1017/aer.2022.110

Single Pilot Airline Operations: Designing the Aircraft May Be the Easy Part

Don Harris

School of Future Transport Engineering

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

607 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

For financial and operational reasons many aircraft manufacturers are working on the development of single-pilot commercial aircraft. It is suggested that cargo operations may commence in the early 2030s followed by passenger flights later that decade. Two technological approaches for the development of single-pilot airliners are being developed either based upon extant technology and operating concepts derived from uninhabited aviation systems and military aircraft, or alternatively based upon high levels of onboard autonomy/automation. This review considers the economic, technological, regulatory (safety) and societal acceptance of the single-pilot airliner, and examines some of the operational challenges that airlines may face. It is suggested that while the technological and safety challenges may be resolved, it is the operational challenges that may determine if the concept is ultimately viable.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1171-1191
Number of pages	21
Journal	The Aeronautical Journal
Volume	127
Issue number	1313
Early online date	1 Feb 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/aer.2022.110
Publication status	Published - 1 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

© 2021, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

This document is the author’s post-print version, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer-review process. Some differences between the published version and this version may remain and you are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.

Funder

This work was co-funded by Innovate UK, the UK's Innovation Agency, with support from the UK Aerospace Technology Institute. The author has no competing interests. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s).

Keywords

single pilot operations
societal acceptance
safety
system architecture

Access to Document

10.1017/aer.2022.110

Post-PrintAccepted author manuscript, 870 KBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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Single Pilot Airline Operations: Designing the Aircraft May Be the Easy Part

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