Sky,

I gotta disagree on this. Airliner automation is the 3-D equivalent of cruise control in your car. Saves workload but is a long way from replacing the driver altogether.

It may well happen someday, but not in the working life of anyone who is old enough to read this. The engineering challenges can mostly be solved with existing technology, although the glaring gap is that you need AI to deal with events which cannot be readily predicted in advance (ie bad weather). You can program the plane to turn back at the slightest hint of precip on the radar but that's not very cost-effective is it. Also the required levels redundancy would be cost prohibitive as well...two pilots are a very flexible backup to automation, and can even fly with some gadgets written up.

Not to mention to global infrastructure, political, regulatory, and public perception challenges.