I am reminded of the scene from the movie "A Bridge Too Far" when General Sosabowski says to "Boy" Browning, who has just presented his plan to take 3 bridges over a 65 mile stretch of road, "the Germans General, what about the Germans?" All said with a truly appalling Polish accent by Gene Hackman. With statements such as:
Cars operate in a chaotic, unpredictable environment in very close proximity to other cars/pedestrians/obstructions which are operated by chaotic, unpredictable individuals many of whom are not competent, whereas aircraft operate in a tightly controlled environment,
the question that needs to be asked is "The weather, what about the weather?" I am going to make a broad assumption that the person making the quoted statement is an engineer of some description and not an airline pilot. Even in a country like Oz with weather considered to reasonably benign thunderstorms, passing cold fronts and unforecast fog very quickly turns a "tightly controlled" environment into the chaos that they associate with road transport. It always is assumed that the aircraft are simply flown from point A to point B without any deviation or variation demanded by ATC. What Airbus is proposing is not a great leap in technology but a significant change to regulation. The great leap in technology is still many decades away. When I see the major manufacturers announce the design and production of an autonomous airliner with commitments from the airlines only then can the tech heads claim victory over analogue biology in the flight deck.