Originally Posted by lolwut

My view..

There will either be 2 pilot airplanes or 0 pilot airplanes. Not single pilot. It doesn't make sense. A single pilot airliner would have to be designed to function without a pilot at all. And if it can do that, why put a pilot there in the first place?

Any critical system has a backup. A pilot is, currently, a critical system.

For the 3 crew vs 2.... airliners have (mostly) always had 2 pilots. They just started out with navigators, radio operators, engineers, etc. Slowly those positions got replaced by computers and the pilots themselves, but there has always been 2 pilots.