As aircraft get more sophisticated flying will become increasingly easier on the crew. At some point it will simply be too technical and controlled of an environment that "anyone" will do up front. We'll have clearances on-screen that only require you to push a confirm button, I don't think it'll be long before we have planes with 4 buttons. T/O, cruise, land and emergency. We're being squeezed out of the flight deck gents, that's the way it is. It'll get easier to fly, people will be prepared to pay less and less for it and new guys keep lining up around the block to sell their soul for a chance at work. Most John Does refer to pilots as "nothing more than bus drivers" anyway, soon enough they'll be right too. We can talk on and on about the human factor and safety, how some decisions need people's skills and nobody would ever fly planes without pilots but ultimately it'll be a self-serve machine in the back, and some low-pay techie on the flight deck who can push the override switch when the 8 independent control systems all fail at once. We're being invented out of our seats that's just a fact.
I'm not so sure the passengers on the United Airways flight would have agreed with you there!
I do acknowledge your point and I do believe there to be a certain degree of validity to it, but I firmly disagree with your opinion regarding sticking one guy up front to monitor things (just stating it in its bluntest form, not incinuating single trackedness on your part) - my reasoning behind this is I don't think there would be too many people out there willing to travel on an aircraft configured as such, the media would be all "What if he suffers a stroke?" this and - more likely in this day and age - "What if the single guy up there is a terrorist, there's noone to stop him!" that, I don't know, I just think there would be enough uproar over single pilot ops in the common airline industry (not taking into account routine SPO) that most of us use, let alone eliminating the human element altogether.
What I do find alarming, however, is when you look at the big picture and examine raw data charts displaying population growth, traffic levels, third world development and so on so forth over the past fifty years, it's all increasing at a highly exponential rate - where will we be in a FUTHER fifty years? What will become of the aviation industry? I just hope the next generation (when I have a family of my own, when my friends have kids etc) aren't made to suffer for our selfishness and lack of ability to take care of our own planet. I know it's perhaps an immoral thing to say, but some part of me is glad I was born in this era and not in another fifty years time. The world's gone crazy!
Anyway, where's my scotch, that always numbs the pain
Regards, Ad