I wonder if there isn't an easy way to automate the parabolic flight - the autopilot should be clever enough to do it by itself without needing human intervention.
I bet it does. Parabolic flights aren't really a huge market.
In the ideal 'zero-g' flight, you can release a ball at the start, and it should stay stationary (relative to the cabin) for the whole flight.
That means the plane body must be to within a few inches of the exact perfect location in the sky 30 seconds later.
I haven't flown planes, but I imagine that making sure they follow precisely a path with an accuracy of an inch in all three dimensions while travelling at 600 mph is no easy feat. But an autopilot with a fast control loop might be able to do it.
(besides large storms, of course)
EDIT: Turns out there is sometimes some turbulence at altitude, caused by large mountains, storms and the jet stream - but these are all predictable and avoidable.
More importantly, actual position isn't that important - you care about relative acceleration being as close to 0g as you can.
And with the 3-pilot setup the A310 zero g flights have, they maintain +/- 0.02g. Now you add to that the fact that developing an autopilot you can trust in that situation costs a good chunk of money, the fact that it's a specially modified plane (so it's more or less a one-off effort), and the fact that pilot costs are negligible compared to the rest of the flight cost.
At this point, you can get a minimal increase in precision for a large expenditure up front. You'll still have the 3-pilot setup (you want to be able to recover on malfunction), so operational costs aren't reduced.
At that point, the question becomes "why would you"
And that's kind of the point - nobody except the few planes that fly parabolic trajectories needs this. So good luck mandating something affecting all of aviation with no practical use except for a handful of flights.
Autoland already exists. And can handle crosswinds up to 25kts. It's just that using them is an incredibly intense task - your reaction time to fix mistakes is a bit short.
That's why most landings are still manual, unless visibility is so bad that you have no choice.
(Also, the idea that meteorological radar could give you enough info about air density to preemptively handle air gusts is... a bold future)
On second thought, it could pay for itself in preventing aborted landings.
But you probably want better than 8 bits resolution on sensors and output.
Mel Brooks, where are you!
But they don't care about high climb angles until you eventually stall.
Another for radio and another for “general everything watching; the captain” makes sense.
Under normal conditions, sure it’s a one time maneuver, within limits, etc. This is much more of a risk-laden undertaking with the repeated stress on the airframe, the human body, and so having individual attention on important individual tasks - with experience and brain computing speed machines still can’t match for a brilliant stick and yoke pilot in unexpected conditions - this is for safety.
Also considering my background with French culture, I imagine the discussion went something like “we could do it with fewer personnel, but why? This works.”