yes. This is exactly what I was advocating in the Stuntman thread on Keypub/civil aviation*. Fact is that many situations are not predictable especially with the change at pace in the world (climate change that impact turbulences, weather event, the impact of ever increasing electronics, flooded airspace with with harder interferences (generalisation of powerful electronics etc...) The unknown are too numerous while the tempo and complexity of changes increases.
Still, it is perfectly concevable that a large portion of flight activity could now be handled both, remotely and be automated, leaving the pilot dealing only with all the potentially hazardous situations. My motto was to have a single onboard pilot dedicated to flight safety, a backup flight intendant with increased responsability over passengers (take-over all the ones usually handled today by the flight Captain + all the extras that the mass-air transportation incur) and an offboard team of specialists in charge of the normal flight event, from flight planning, boarding, cruise conditions, flying or communication etc...
On economical grounds, the advantages are numerous. The offboard team would be able to handle year after year even more flight thanks to the help of artificial intelligence and the onboard pilot would gain a tremendous experience in a shorter time. For that later point, it is easy to understand that to let the pilot pro-efficient and his postion kept valid on economical grounds, he would have to be kept active through in-flight training encompassing real-time piloting (or virtual stick handling where his performances would be evaluated in real-time Vs the offboard pilot or an IA for example ) and would fly way more often.
All this is explained more in the details inside the Stuntman* thread on keypub forum. Feel free to participate with your inputs.
A pilot should now be an incident specialist. A manager of catastrophic failures. A trapezist with skills selected and refined everyday trough such a hard training. Someone able to survive (with all of us behind) the most daring flight situations when it may occurs.
Is that a commune acceptance now among the airliner industry that the formations are too weak, too uncertain to let the pilots fly the plane even when all the systems are down ? No.
If a plane can't be manned, it simply never have to be manned. [...] Pilots are not here to be only the warranty of an intermediate software release.
[...]
The stuntman could have save[d] them. The hundreds of them...
*from "Let's bring back the stuntman": http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?133640-Let-s-bring-back-the-Stuntman