And yet there's plenty of evidence that having three pilots in the cockpit is usually a better option when the inevitable happens.
Richard de Crespigny, who flew the Quantas A380 that blew one of its engines after a departure from Changi, explains very clearly and in a gripping way the amount of stuff happening while trying to save an aircraft.
Lots of accidents happen today already at the seams of automation, I don't think we're collectively ready for a world with much more automation, especially in the name of more shareholder value of a 4 dollars discount.
The Air France Rio-Paris crash is a good example of sudden full mistrust of automation and sensors by the crew after a sensor failure appeared and then recovered. Very, very sad transcript and analysis... I'm arguing against myself here, singe it was also a huge case of crew management failure and it might not have gone to crash with only one person in the cockpit.