While I'm an eternal optimist, at the rate we are going we will more likely destroy ourselves/civilization before most of this comes to pass.

ask yourself...
 

Would you rather be a passenger in aircraft "flown" by: a) a remote pilot; b) the black box designed by a pimply programmer who spent his 20s avoiding the sun in Mom's basement; or c) the soft pink fleshy human who's life is equally dependent upon his piloting skills as every other soul on board?

I think the market will resist unmanned passenger carriage long after technology makes it either feasible or affordable.

Passengers will implicitly trust a pilot who has skin in the game, far more than some nameless, faceless operator who never leaves the ground -- and they will probably pay more for the peace of mind.

My $0.02

Could not agree more

What do you think of this?

Pilotless Planes - Plane & Pilot Magazine

Re: Automation
 

UAL 232 is a good argument for always having at least one pilot on board. There was no procedure for the malfunction on board and a computer can only use logic for known problems and does not have human intuition.

Then don't become one. Your fears are justified.

McDonalds is hiring. How long until they become fully automated?

Good lord this nonsense again? No current or aspiring pilot has to worry about this for another century. There is not one single arguement that holds water for the benefits of pilotless planes v. cost/risk.

Pilotless planes are already here. How long before they cut the copilot out of 121 ops, I mean pilots don't do that much anymore as it is. And having pilotless has a lot of benefits... not that I like it, but there are benefits.

Yeah they don't do all that much right up until they do. There are two pilots for a reason. It isn't for when you're sitting in cruise with the autopilot on kicking back sipping coffee.

No they don't. Navy is building new full-size carriers to support manned combat operations. Their design life is about 50 years.

Navy is looking at the next fighter after the F-35. It will be manned. There's talk of optionally manned, but the capability will end up being to limited to justify the cost.

The UCAS, which was assumed to be a strike/ISR system has been demoted to a carrier-based tanker. So they're confidant it can take off land on the boat (no cross-wind, no flare) and fly in large circles.