I have no wish to continually argue but "disengenous" is a bit rich IMHO...
You did state "there are autonomous aircraft currently flying that achieve vastly more tricky tasks than that required of an airliner", and then went on to state "they are not carrying passengers, but that is not a technical difficulty."
Now maybe it's just me but TBH I'd say the question I asked was a fair one in the context of a thread about pilotless airliners.