Wind the clock forward 20 years into the future.
On telly is an episode of Autonomous Air Crash Investigation (Mayday) narrated by an artificial intelligence powered cliche generator that harvests platitudes from previous episodes to save on hiring a real presenter.
The story is about Juan, a catering truck driver, who in the process of having to reverse his truck out of the way of an autonomous aircraft taxiing to an adjacent gate next to him (out of 12 other empty gates), he accidentally bumps into the wing of the aircraft parked behind him.
Juan, is horrified, as he pulls forward to assess the damage to the aircraft it is looking very serious. At other less modern airports he would radio the control tower and report the situation but this airport has been fully automated and the towers are no longer manned. So he decides to drive back to his base to deal with the problem there.
On his way back to base, Juan notices in his rear view mirror that the aircraft he damaged has pushed itself back and is now taxiing towards the runway for take off. Juan quickly turns around and floors it. Eventually he catches up with the slowly taxiing aircraft and pulls to a stop in front of it. The aircraft detects this and taxis around him. This little game of hopscotch continues until the aircraft lines up at the start of the runway.
Juan has run out options, now desperate to save all those on board he pulls in front of the aircraft on the runway. Juan is now hyperventilating and sweating profusely as a stand-off ensues, however after 4 minutes of this he realises he has appeared to have successfully stopped the damaged aircraft from taking off.
Just as Juan breathes a sigh of relief, both he and the aircraft he saved are wiped out by another aircraft landing in degraded autonomous law mode 4.
In conclusion, we learn that the truck Juan should have been operating on that fateful day has a big red button that sends an alert to the automated tower, but it was stuck in the maintenance yard of an IT workshop that wasn’t releasing it until the annual license fee was paid in full.