MSB, you make some very good points (some of your comments on Tesla are spot on - as another automotive CEO put it 'it's really easy to build good cars when you're losing money on every one you build').
But you're still thinking "short term" (and by that I'm talking 20-50 years). Like you, I'm involved in aviation software (or more accurately
was involved - I retired about a year ago
). I witnessed massive changes in the 40 years I spent in the industry before that retirement. I clearly recall pilots stating they'd "
NEVER" get on an aircraft with "plastic" (composite) wings, computer flight controls (Fly By Wire), or electronically controlled engines (FADEC). Being an engine guy, I'm particularly familiar with the reservations regarding FADEC engines, and some of the concerns I heard were quite simply laughable...
Yet as you certainly know, all these things are now commonplace. Software coding today bears almost zero resemblance to what we did in the 1980's - "coding errors" as such basically no longer exist since the coding is done by computers - the weak link now is in the requirements and how they are translated into flow diagrams.
Basically, anything that has
ever happened can be accounted for (yes, Pugilistic Animus, that includes a failed gear extension), the weakness being the 'unknown unknown - it's really hard to incorporate human ingenuity into a computer program given today's technology (the often mentioned Sully's Miracle on the Hudson is actually pretty trivial - likely with an even better outcome of making it to an airfield - since it would take a computer milliseconds to determine what Sully did in roughly 20 seconds)(that's not to detract from what Sully did in any way - by human standards he was exceptional).
But that's todays technology. With computer capabilities increasing exponentially via Moore's law (comment - Moore's law isn't a law - it's an observation - but it's an observation that has held remarkably accurate for several decades), can any of us even imagine what computers will be capable of 50 years from now?
As I mentioned, it won't happen soon - likely not in my lifetime. But we're already in a world where pilot error, CFIT, and suicidal pilots result in far more aircraft accidents than mechanical failure. The major auto manufacturers are prediction fully autonomous cars within five years - even if they are off by ten years, it's the future of transportation. When autonomous cars become perfected and commonplace and driving to the airport is no longer the most dangerous part of flying the public tolerance for pilot error accidents will vanish (not that it's ever been very high).