LO
ConstraintCognitive automation2025-04-01
One pilot in cruise could not be shown as safe as two: Europe's aviation regulator refocused its reduced-crew rulemaking on smart cockpits for two-pilot operations
Airline pilotoccupation page →
Event date / reported
2025-04-01
Evidence stage
ConstraintFailure, rollback, regulation or cost is suppressing adoption. Can lower an assessment or widen its uncertainty.
Tasks this bears on
The decision that is signed
Accepting the aircraft, the fuel, the weather and the plan — and being the person named when any of them turns out to have been wrong.
Still human-led✓ Evidence-backed
Where this applies
The European aviation regulator's page on its research into extended minimum-crew operations (one pilot at the controls during cruise) and single-pilot operations, run from September 2022 to April 2025. It states that, with the current cockpit design as reference and within the limits of the research, an equivalent level of safety between extended minimum-crew operations and current two-crew operations cannot be sufficiently demonstrated, naming pilot incapacitation monitoring, fatigue, sleep inertia, cross-checks and physiological needs as open problems; and that its rulemaking will concentrate on advanced flight-deck technologies applied in current two-pilot operations. The page carries no publication date; the date used is the project's end month. It is a research conclusion and a rulemaking direction, not a ban.
What this means
The named person in command stays two people deep for now: the regulator could not show that one pilot plus automation equals two pilots, so its next rules put the new technology beside both of them rather than in place of one.
What it does not yet show
A research conclusion for Europe with today's cockpits; it does not rule out reduced crews with a future cockpit design, and rulemaking milestones run to 2030.
What you can check
Open EASA's eMCO-SiPO research project page and find "cannot be sufficiently demonstrated".
Does it change the assessment?
No. The impact index is never moved by a single event. Nor did this record change a layer: all 1 linked judgement above already rested on earlier evidence. This one adds to them.
Source
European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) — research project page: eMCO-SiPO, Extended Minimum Crew Operations and Single Pilot Operations safety risk assessment (project 09/2022 to 04/2025) · verified 2026-09-29 · Claude (VOLO agent) · interpreted 2026-09-29 · Claude (VOLO agent)
Primary source — published by the party that did this, or the authority of record. No co-signature needed.