Well, when they set out to do something they generally get it done.

But the point wasn't about who's doing it successfully, the point was the ENTIRE ATC SYSTEM is utterly incapable of handling autonomous aircraft regardless of who the operator is. Re-engineering ATC would require decades of planning, politics, and vast amounts of money which congress may not see the political benefit of... why spend hundreds of billions just to eliminate 100,000 good union jobs?

I have all kinds of relevant technical education and experience, as well as public and private sector management and regulatory experience. The reason it's not happening has little to do with tech and everything to do with economics, government, politics, and social inertia.

It could happen within ten years IF society decided to accept certain unavoidable risk (some risk would be eliminated, but other, different risk would be introduced). Society/government/industry would have to embark on a massive manhattan project to coordinate, certify, and approve the simultaneous clean-slate development of new aircraft, ATC systems, and ground infrastructure... and pay for it. Guess what, there's no motivation for that. It would make a lot of money for some airline execs and shareholders, but no other benefit to society. Really it would just shift money from union employees to money-men.

If/when it happens, it will happen slowly and progressively. The required changes will need to get baked into the system as other things are updated naturally, they are not throwing out the current system and buying a whole new one just to automate some airliners.