How many pilots do we need for that 0.1%? It IS coming and most of us will see some percentage of it in our lifetimes. Many will be retired; many more will be past retirement age but still working after getting screwed by multiple downturns and being in the wrong part of the wrong seniority list at the wrong time.

Modern soulless MBAs will spend billions with a B on cap ex to save millions with an M on labor costs. It is the way they roll. Especially if something happens to their shiny buyback scam toy. There is very little Wall Street loves more than screwing labor and automation is just the ticket.

If you are 55+ feel free to poo-poo it all day long. I suspect you are younger than that though. I put it at a 50/50 chance of affecting a 40 year old's career progression and 80/20 for a 30 year old.

Your drone example demonstrates that 1 pilot at each airport is all that is needed for LoS intervention. Add in automated ground vehicles or drone swarms and the number of airports freight haulers need to serve drops quite a bit.

I'll also point out we purposely program cell towers to ignore airborne targets because it is confusing to the algorithms when the client can 'see' so many towers. Increasing bandwidth and faster processing could change that. Communication reliability is improving.