Originally Posted by Romulus

The technology is developing rapidly, but still not up to Part 121 standards. The cargo pilots are the most vulnerable since most people don't care if a planeload of boxes goes down in the Pacific.

My best guess is that we'll eventually see a third pilot again in the cockpit, but it will be a robotic system. After a decade or so, the second human pilot will be redundant and eliminated. After that, maybe even the first human pilot will go too or simply replaced with a software engineer.

The cost and weight of such a system would be too much for small aircraft, but large international airliners would be perfect for it.