When I see all I have to solve on the ground as captain with my FO (oh I m so glad we are 2, to respect our short turnaround of today) and I just speak about ground stuff, pax problems, bag loader, cabin crew request, ... I m always thinking, the flying part is the easy part ... So if a full automated plane come, they need to change all the way to operate this plane, from the gate agent to the ground staff and ATC ... Thinking those plane will have to operate same time as the good old fashioned 2 crews one, I m wondering how they want to do this transition.
Oh, ofc, they will have a single crew plane, but one small problems I believe is : it works when you have a single pilot with past experience ... Few years later, how it will work 200hr training and you are captain to take all the decisions (I speak again about ground) it took me so long to see other doing it before I was myself able to do it ...
We all ve been promising autonomous cars ... Still waiting ... And even Tesla admitted it is more difficult than they initially thought ...
Airbus and other are telling us how we will fly autonomous flying bus in the city ... Same, it is really good to speak about that and try to develop technology, but public already don't accept a low altitude helicopter over city, noise and other ... So yo imagine even hundred of those electric autonomous flying all over London or newyork ... I take the bet it will not arrive anywhere soon (not with the schedule market people communicate to us ! )
Same as the hyperloop project, if I listen advertisement, in few years we will be able to travel so fast it will be amazing ... Same I take the bet it won't be that fast to happen ...
Fly safe.