Airbus pushing ahead in tech as it aims for single-pilot planes: CTO

European aerospace giant Airbus is working on technologies that will cut the number of pilots needed in the cockpit, a company executive said on Thursday.

“Embedding more and more artificial intelligence into our systems will enable us to start by really relieving the pilots from more mundane tasks, routine tasks — so really to keep the human element in the chain for the strategic thinking and decision-making type of tasks,” said Grazia Vittadini, chief technology officer at Airbus.

That will take the company “on the way to possibly one day achieve the single-pilot operation target we are aiming at,” she told CNBC at the Innovfest Unbound conference in Singapore.