Kind of like selling tickets for regional routes with 1000hr pilots previously served by big legacy airlines with 20,000hr+ pilots? Tickets don't really have to be much cheaper, but that aside, everyone is being quite dramatic. We'll see a slow shift, just like we are with cars that have become increasingly automated. It's not like one day we go from a 3-speed manual with drum brakes to a self-driving bmw with 8spd auto gearbox, everything happens in little incriments, self parking, cruise control slowing/acceleration, ability to stay in the lane in cruise, self arresting, and so on. At some point, it meets the definition of "fully automated" and the ability to screw stuff up starts dissapearing (but it manifests in new ways that were not previously thought of). Such is the same with airliners. As I've said, it'll be one person and maybe a FA-type up front, airplane will fly itself, but fully rated person is avail and a "button pusher" that can do some things in a pinch. Possibly some command center will have the ability to "take" the airplane. Then it'll be one person in the cockpit that can fly, just as a backup to the multiple systems. Then a FA...then finally a totally automated airliner with redundant systems and the ability to think logically, it may still have the ability to have someone "sit" up front, but eventually it will get there and we'll have completely automated airliners. This may be way in the future, past our lifetime, but it's the gradual movement that will get it there, not some breakthrough in the next 5 years. Say what you want about the russians, but they sent a space shuttle into orbit and had it land unmanned. That technology may not have been ready for air-transport, but it was also more than 30 years ago, amazing by any standards. Automated high speed trains may prove even better, I don't know, but we'll see a lot more before we see less. There are few problems we don't try to solve with technology and human performance keeps making the case over and over for it.