Originally Posted by
411A
For a small(er) twin jet, two crew was standard, for the time, Caravelle excepted.
This is the sort of topic that runs and runs here.
When the One-Eleven was introduced, there were no other commercial jets which were not 3-crew. There wasn't much of a choice of shorter-haul jet types then, but the Caravelle, 727, Trident, old Comets and Soviet Tupolevs were around. US operators did their early jet years wholly with 4-engined 707s, DC8s and Convairs on quite short runs until the 727 came along, still 3-crew. The One-Eleven was the first two-crew jet.
Other 2-crew types like the F28 or the DC9 came some time later. Even the first 737s were 3-crew.