What about fighters? The F-15, 16, 18, 22 and 35 are all single seat aircraft capable of flying at least mach 1. The pilot is tasked not only with flying his plane, but communicating, navigating, searching, and targeting. This is an extremely complex weapon system and we place our trust in a single pilot. In an emergency, he can off-load some of his workload to his wingman, but he is still essentially alone in a multi-million dollar, complex aircraft. Most modern planes are capable of flying themselves from the time the pilot lines the plane up on the runway to the time the pilot takes the controls to turn off the runway on the roll-out. This level of automation allows a single pilot to easily fly an aircraft under normal circumstances... ...Emergencies are often compound on aircraft, they never seem to happen singlely. A malfunction can affect multiple systems, and automation could be one of the systems affected, or the automatic systems may not have been programmed to handle that emergency, or cascade of emergencies. Automation systems are advancing quickly, and the time may soon come when an aircraft can fly itself under all circumstances, but there will still be a pilot there for passenger peace of mind (it definitely helps sell tickets)

Its not really a matter of what impact the hurricane has on the east coast, but what other processes are controlled by water surface temperature in the South Atlantic? This could change ocean currents, wildlife and weather in Europe, Africa, South America...but hey, we averted another hurricane disaster, right?