How come Airplanes need a co-pilot but not helicopters?

Question

How come Airplanes need a co-pilot but not helicopters?

Answer 1

Not all airplanes require a copilot.

Commercial airliners usually require two pilots (older airliners also required a flight engineer). There are many controls to operate and instruments to watch, and it's easier to do this with two pilots.  A single pilot can fly the aircraft in an emergency, but two are legally and technically required.

Having two pilots also improves safety, since either pilot can continue to fly the airplane alone if the other pilot becomes incapacitated.

Helicopters are much more difficult to fly, but they are less complex, and so they usually need just one highly skilled pilot, instead of two.

Answer 2

You have misunderstood something.  Smaller airplanes do not require a co-pilot, and larger helicopters often do.  Two-person crews are common in military rotorcraft, and in the larger ones used in commercial operations.

It is absolutely outrageous to say that airplanes are more complex than helicopters.  Helicopters are far more complex than airplanes, in general.

Answer 3

liablity reasons. Much Much bigger. carryig 100's of people. Cause more destruction if crashed. And They are Way harder to fly & land than a helicopter is. More Complicated to fly to.

Answer 4

Aviophage is correct.  I only know of a few helicopters that require only one pilot -- and are mainly like that for bureaucratic or logistical ease rather than any serious differences.  It is apparently a risk we are willing to accept, but it is a risk nonetheless.  Of the helicopters that require only one pilot, they are either as simple and light-weight (as simple as a helicopter can be), or incorporate A LOT of automation measures that other helicopters might not.  The vast majority of helicopters require two pilots, and all large helicopters require two.

One Mi-26 is every bit as complicated as a DC-10, just on a smaller scale.  There is probably no one person on earth who FULLY understands either one – just a lot of people who understand enough to make them work.  Not only is monitoring the systems in a large helicopter a full-time job, so is handling the controls.  Any helicopter's controls require your constant attention.  If you are relying on automatic flight control systems/trim in a helicopter, you are just hanging it out there for murphy's law to find you.  Worst-case, if a servo controlling the main rotor head goes into a "hardover" condition (un-commanded/un-retractable extension of a hydraulic control servo), a pilot can become quickly overpowered and fly out of control, so it's a good thing to have another pilot there to make a mad dash for the flight control buttons to revert the system to a degraded mode that is controllable while the other wrestles the biggest bull ever.  We're talking about 1 – 1.5 seconds to make the right moves here or you're dead.  Most helicopter cockpits don't run like fixed-wing cockpits in the sense that someone needs to be physically manipulating the controls at all times because the first sign of this kind of danger will be felt rather than seen.