Direct Law
@BBK, exactly. One of the enduring lessons from AF447 is that of a sophistacted automation system giving up & dropping out; leaving the remaining people in a worse off situation than had the automation never been provided. Any fully autonomus system must be failure hardened to orders of magnitude greater than currently economic (note i didnt say possible..)
More automation will come, it allows aircraft to operate more efficiently over more direct routes and at optimum altitudes, but the economics of pilotless aircraft are a very long way away.