Originally Posted by
parabellum
Talking to a friend recently who is heavily involved in the (military) development of drones of all sizes, it is true that pilotless technology has been around for quite a while but it is still in its infancy. What we don't get told, because the manufacturers don't want the information made public, are the amount of uncontrolled crashes that occur regularly.
Before the first pilotless commercial flight takes off there will have to be thousands of hours of faultless trial flights in a variety of environments and with a faultless control system that cannot be hacked, hijacked or interfered with by terrorists. Right now and for the foreseeable future there simply are not the R&D funds available, nor any incentive to produce a commercial pilotless pax carrying aircraft, it is cheaper to employ pilots.
The military accept an attrition rate far higher than for civil systems. The important issues are mission accomplishment, followed by cost. It is a completely different market but it exercises the systems and software informing the civil development.
From research I am seeing now I expect commercial drone systems inside 10 years for package delivery, reduced flight deck crews around the same time. By 2035 expect autonomous UAS in all airspaces.