The military is working now on getting pilots out of aircraft, though remote operation is likely to become common before autonomous fighters become a reality.
That involes combat aircraft in a warzone, not flying mum and the kids to their holidays
Sometimes I get annoyed with pilots who devalue our profession. It's bad enough when members of the public loudly proclaim we just "sit in the cockpit and watch the autopilot fly the plane", but when pilots themselves do it?
I would argue now (and I know this is going to go against the general trend), that the profession of airline pilot is in some respects harder than the "good old days". With more congestion in skies and on the ground, cheaper budgets, tighter turnarounds, huge pressures to save costs and fuel, increased public awareness of our activities through social media, more competition and more complex aircraft, I believe we need our work to be valued more higher by ourselves first.
Patrick Smith is a currently serving airline pilot who hosts the blog "Ask the Pilot"
He writes about the myths of automated airliners with a passion, some links on this are below:
We are told that planes basically fly themselves. How true is this?
Cummings and Kelly: More Media Claptrap About Cockpit Automation
Automation and Disaster
And this quote from one of the articles:
Pilots too are guilty. “Aw, shucks, this plane practically lands itself,” one of us might say. We’re often our own worst enemies, enamored of gadgetry and, in our attempts to explain complicated procedures to the layperson, given to dumbing down. We wind up painting a caricature of what flying is really like and in the process undercut the value of our profession.