Editor’s note: Exposing the dangers of reduced-crew operations has been and will continue to be an ALPA priority. In this nine-part series, Air Line Pilot will educate, inform, and advocate support for maintaining the most vital aircraft safety feature: two experienced, well-trained, and well-rested professional pilots on the flight deck. Catch up with Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4, and Part 5.

“As the global supply chain crisis has deepened, we’ve learned more and more about the true costs of delays and weak points in these processes. Any error can produce ripples that impact countless others, both locally and aboard. The same applies to aviation. No one likes delays, passengers and pilots alike, as our industry works diligently to shave minutes and seconds. But to add an unnecessary delay to routine flight deck procedures as would be introduced by the presence of a remote operator—when the standard of two well-trained, qualified, and rested pilots is proven to be best—is simply against the common good and common sense.”

Automation technology has advanced significantly over the decades. And while it serves as an important tool pilots employ to keep flying safe, ALPA strongly advocates that technology’s role in the commercial airline industry is to supplement safety—not to replace two experienced, well-trained, and well-rested professional pilots on the flight deck. Perhaps the biggest technological hurdle to safe reduced-crew and single-pilot operations is an advanced form of artificial intelligence called artificial general intelligence (AGI). Unlike existing or emerging forms of artificial intelligence that can handle specialized individual tasks, AGI, as envisioned, would effectively replicate human judgment across a broad spectrum of sensing, analytical, decision-making, and implementation functions.

Such a capability might someday safely replicate the redundancy on the flight deck that a second pilot provides. However, this technology is still a theoretical construct. The recent “FAA Aerospace Forecast” reports that true AGI is at least two decades away. And according to a 2014 NASA paper, short of being able to act, sense, and react like a human pilot, artificial intelligence will have to perform at least two key functions to enable single-pilot operations: interaction and task exchange with the human pilot (captain) and monitoring the health and cognition of the captain.

Interaction includes tasks such as the machine informing the captain what it’s doing, confirming important parameters such as altitude settings, and recalling information and instructions provided by air traffic control. Interaction is complicated by the fact that different tasks might be better suited to the captain than the machine—and vice versa—at any given time. The ability to reallocate tasks between the two, especially during off-nominal circumstances, is needed. If the captain becomes overloaded with tasks, they must be able to offload certain tasks to the automation with full confidence. If the machine must offload for similar reasons, it must be able to provide a reason and other situational awareness information ahead of time, which is well beyond the capability of current technology. A well-trained and experienced first officer who is able to see and understand the task saturation the captain may be facing has repeatedly been proven to be a vastly superior alternative.

Automation Obstacles

In addition to whether the level of automation required for single-pilot operations is technologically feasible, concerns remain about relying on such technology. Increased dependency on automation in aviation may not be advisable, as a key requirement for its implementation is advanced automation that provides onboard support functions at a level well beyond what’s currently available in modern airliners. While it may be tempting to simply automate as many of the current pilot functions as possible, distancing the captain from the flight/mission could erode situational awareness and cognitive readiness.

Securing pilot trust is another obstacle. Robotic systems are prone to failures, which can undermine user trust in these systems, eroding their usefulness and benefits. Further factors such as obscured communications and an unequal degree of dependence between the human and the machine also impede trust further. While trust is necessary for humans to take advantage of autonomy, putting trust in unreliable autonomy, particularly in an aviation context, is dangerous.

Furthermore, a lack of trust and perceived safety could inhibit pilot acceptance of automated systems, which presents a barrier to their development.

Cybersecurity

Reduced-crew and single-pilot operations also introduce a cybersecurity issue due to the requirement that ground-based pilots be able to assume control of the aircraft in the case of pilot incapacitation or other emergency. Because hostile actors have attacked aircraft radio communications in the past, the possibility of exploiting weaknesses in communications links to disrupt or even commandeer airplanes in flight must be addressed. In order to prevent reduced-crew operations from opening up powerful new avenues of cyberattack on aircraft, countermeasures must be taken. An authentication mechanism to ensure trust of communications is needed to make certain that only authorized personnel or systems on the ground have access to aircraft systems. Similarly, a means for the pilot on the flight deck to deactivate the automation would be necessary—which is at odds with the need for automation and ground pilots to intervene in case of a partially incapacitated pilot. Another baseline capability to address cybersecurity threats would be to encrypt communications between the aircraft and ground, which raises issues of communications redundancy and latency.