Originally Posted by
stilton
I believe that a young pilot starting out today will see total autonomy take his job away before he or she retires
But that's true of most jobs these days. Mine didn't exist thirty years ago and won't exist in anything like its current form in another twenty years.
Personally, I doubt automated aircraft will be in operation in significant numbers before VR makes travel obsolete for most of us. I won't be making many more business trips once we have VR drones installed at our customer sites so we can move things around and install new hardware from here, without having to physically ship a body to do it.
Combine drones with things like Google Earth VR for sightseeing, and I'd say that VR and local manufacturing are the real threats to aviation jobs. And to driving jobs, for that matter.