Neil Gould wrote:
Recently, Chris Colohan posted:
[...]

So, you are left with two choices: 1. Try to design a communication
system which is so robust that communication failure is virtually
impossible; or 2. Include some sort of autonomous system as a backup
for when communication fails.

Do I think this is impossible? No. Do I think it is quite hard to
get right? Yes. It certainly will take quite some time to get this
right enough to win the trust of the average passenger.

I completely agree, but as I wrote earlier, by the time this idea is even
a remote possibility, we'll have all kinds of autonomous machines running
around us, and we'll take it in stride.

I see that they ran the 'robot/remote controlled ground vehicle trials
again and some actually completed the course.
If they're that unreliable on the ground where you can stop and rectify
faults I don't think the possibility of pilots being removed from the
cockpit is going to arise...