Neville, fully autonomous aircraft are already a reality today and already approved by various regulators to fly in controlled airspace under special AOC.
Good examples include the so called Optionally Piloted Aircraft (OPA) such as the
Diamond DA42 Centaur, the Lockheed/Kaman
K-Max helicopter, and the Northrop Grumman (Scaled Composites)
Firebird.
(
Aurora Flight Sciences’ Centaur Optionally Piloted Aircraft (OPA) flew multiple unmanned flights from Griffiss International Airport in Rome from June 12-15, 2015)
These aircraft can be flown from inside the cockpit, or piloted from the ground, or programmed to fly fully automated from take-off to landing. They are not "testbeds" but are all production aircraft in service today.
The K-Max notably did nearly 2,000 unmanned sorties delivering cargo for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
They are not carrying passengers yet, but the K-Max is being pitched as a possible Combat SAR Evac (Air Ambulance) platform; i.e., as an unmanned transport to take wounded troops from the battlefield to a medical facility.
Yes we are far away from adopting this primarily military technology to the commercial transport realm, but I don't think it will be 50+ years. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think we'll see fully automated commercial cargo ops sooner rather than later, before proceeding to pioneering passenger flights.