Pilotless planes
I think all the speculation about "is it technically possible or isn't it", sidelines the major commercial issue. Would your bog standard pax WANT to fly on an aircraft with ONE or NO pilot? Regardless of how well travelled they may be, people still have that "how does it stay up in the air" feeling at the back of their minds. Okay, a train takes the control away from the pax, but I think at 38000 there is a more acute sense that their lives are in someone's else' hands, because coming down to earth makes a bigger bone crunching bump than coming off the railway line. I think few people would be willing to fly without the reassurance of pilots up front, so it would take a braver man than MOL to actually put this into practice.
The argument that pilot error is responsible for XX per cent of accidents is spurious. As with all news reportage, it is only disaster that makes headlines. How many times a day across the world is a potentially nasty situation averted by good pilots?