“No one in their right mind can claim that the number of pilots on the flight deck having a medical emergency is normal ...Where did I read of late that some airlines were considering going with one pilot because of a shortage of pilots?...”
“Normal” is misleading. People vary. In any population, some will be prone to this or that disease, defect, malformation, or mishap. Others will be less vulnerable to the same things.
The crewing of civil aircraft with two pilots is an artifact of training requirements, control system limitaitons and bureaucratic whim.
Before World War Two, many large aircraft had only a single pilot. Boeing’s 299, which was developed into USAAF’s B-17, was just about the earliest warplane to be crewed with both a pilot and a copilot. Many aircraft of the RAF and the Luftwaffe had only a single pilot.
Airlines have fiddled with experience requirements, currency intervals, and proficiency levels since they first took to the air. The risk of having problems because of an inexperienced or unhealthy crewmember has to be weighed against the risk of losing business because there aren’t enough crews to launch an airplane.
It took a lot of deaths in early aviation, both in aircraft and on the ground, for the aviation industry to implement effective safety procedures. As they taught us in flight school, behind every Federal Aviation Regulation there are a number of tombstones of those who would have lived if the FAR had been place at the time of their death.
Get stuffed Troll.