Amazingly visceral responses to an innocuous newspaper comment. Luddite tendencies much?
Uncrewed aircraft are certainly possible, but getting there will be slow, if only because they still need to share the air and terminal space with conventional designs. Passenger reactions will be nil imho, even now they only interact with the cabin staff, apart from some pro forma welcome allegedly from the pilot.
The driver for the shift to unscrewed would be economic, because crew is a sizeable chunk of operating costs. If McDonalds can justify replacing its budget burger flippers with robots, then the benefit of ditching highly paid crew that can operate only 80 hours/month has to be really compelling. The evolution would plausibly begin with drone rules for ATC, followed by an extension to unscrewed cargo carriers. Corporate and passenger flights would presumably be the last to switch, a process maybe accelerated by some ultra low cost 'Automatic Airlines' that offers a true self loading cargo experience.