What I find ironic about these threads are the turning of blind eyes to facts and the use of emotion to back up points. Like saying that it's been "promised since the fifties" and "would you put your family onboard one?"
Many technological promises of the fifties etc were made by advertising agencies and dreamers so I fail to see the point there. And today no one is promising anything, just that they are looking into it.
As for putting your family onboard, well yes of course people will get onboard because people just choose the cheapest option (see Ryanair for lots of talk and no action). And removing pilots and all the associated cost of training, cockpits, etc will make the airline cheaper. And a computer does not have to be 110% safe, it just has to be as good as humans. Look at the regulatory requirements for engine failures etc, manufacturers don't make components that can't fail; they make components that can be reasonable expected to not fail and to achieve their design goal with a margin of safety. Not 110% perfect and safe. Why do we calculate V1, have depressurization, incapacitation drills? Because the systems are designed to cope with failures, not have zero failures.
The idea that a single computer fails and leads to a crash is also farcical. If you have ever flown an Airbus you will have seen computer failures and resets being carried out daily or at least weekly. And what magical powers does that require? Opening up a book with a list of resets and pulling a CB. You say that can't be automated? Really? At least 75% of the resets and ECAMs that the Airbus throws at you could best be described as spurious like temporary data link failures and momentary fuel low levels as the outer tanks transfer. You think a monitored, backed-up, redundant computer can't handle that? And yet at the same time Sully trust his life and the lives of his passengers to Normal Law on the A320 as he held full back stick into the Hudson. Do we trust these computers or not?
Well look at what's been automated in the last few years - the A380 has BTV, brake to vacate. The aircraft will modulate braking to the desired runway exit. No more of this magical pilot airmanship to modulate the brakes which a fair few do quite poorly anyway. Look at TCAS RAs in the Airbus family. The A380 now handles them via the autopilot and this will follow through to the rest of the family shortly. One of the most poorly flown maneuvers is being taken out of the hands of pilots and into the control of automation. Why? Is it because the computer is so useless or because the pilots regularly handle it poorly(in the sim mainly)?
Any thing we do as pilots can be broken down into it's component parts and then it becomes a series of simpler decisions. Something which automation does better than humans.
(PS The London Underground hasn't been fully automated purely due to the Unions)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automa...on_Underground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...subway_systems