Self-flying planes are now a marketing issue more than a technical one

I think this is the most crucial aspect. Machines are excellent at executing patterns and adhering to constraints. Improvisation, not so much. And really, in emergency situations when things go awry and off script, it's that "clutch" factor that makes all the difference.

The potential for disaster is absolutely there, but aircraft crashes rarely do cause that many deaths, they are just the ones media loves to cover. The survival rate of aircraft crashes are at about 90%.

Every year millions of people die on the road, amounting to several thousand each day. That means that just a bump of 10% in the death rate of automobile accidents would mean hundreds of thousands more victims every year, they're just distributed across many accidents that would only be reported on during a slow news day. A bump up in aviation death rates would mean a couple thousand more.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/odds-surviving-plane-cra... http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/traffic_deaths_...

Meanwhile flights have been almost completely automated for years already

If there's one consistent view Americans have expressed about flying, it's that they'll choose the cheapest flight over almost anything else. Bring a cheap self-flying route to market. People will get over their qualms.

> Cargo flights strike me as the much clearer entry point for the technology

Agree. That said, a helicopter seat from Manhattan to the Hamptons costs about $700. If you cut that to $200 or 300 the demand would be massive, pilot or not.

You lack control whether it's a pilot or an AI in the cockpit, so rationally this shouldn't make much difference from this point of view. Of course, people are anything but rational. :)

I think it would be amusing to let an AI fly some commercial routes without telling people -- after all, I bet there's nothing in the carriage contract about having humans at the controls. I'm sure the FAA wouldn't approve, though.

In terms of public acceptance, I wouldn't be surprised if you have the psychology of it right, especially when you consider that for commercial flights you have to get buy-in from nearly all of your potential passengers or you will lose them to competitors. Maybe there will be a period of automated and non-automated flights with the latter more expensive.

For other uses like cargo and business jets, adoption could be much faster.

Most of the flight is spent on Autopilot these days so you would not know if there's someone at the commands or not anyway.

You can probably also factor in a large component of overhead just managing 12,712 people. Scheduling, logistics, HR, etc, etc.

Even if you said it's in the range of $17-30 per passenger, that's pretty significant on many routes - particular high-volume short-haul.

You can also probably fit a dozen more seats on the plane.

That is not a small number.

$354 average domestic fair x 143M passengers = $50.6B in total fairs.

So $2.5B pilot cost is roughly 5% of their total costs. You can not lower gas costs nor airport costs nor plane costs much, but if you could eliminate $2.5B in salary, and add more flexibility, then yeah, I'd say there is massive incentive if the marketing and safety issues can be overcome.

For every example like this, there are many more you can point to where NOT having self-flying planes cost everybody on board their life. From hijackings like 9/11, to rogue pilots like MH370 or the Germanwings crash, to simply human error like the SFO Asiana crash, the SFO Air Canada almost-crash, or the Tenerife collision, or the Air France Atlantic crash, or many many more…

The reputation damage for the airline is more or less the same.

Also note that while pilot error is the conclusion of about 60% of all aircraft accidents it's not the case for major airlines flying big passenger jets.

That statistic is inflated quite a bit by smaller chartered flights since it counts all accidents with 5 or more passengers onboard.

Also note that that statistic also shows that the majority of accidents happen on taxing, landing or take off. You'll be surprised by how many taxing accidents there are that cause fatalities which are deemed as pilot error despite that no passenger have been killed but rather ground crew.

There are more taxi accidents than there are accidents at cruising altitude.

So yes pilot error is a big factor, it's smaller for hull loss accidents for large commercial jets but it's still the case.

I should also note that a fatal accident can also still be pilot error despite it having a different root cause like a bird strike or a mechanical problem if the pilot did not perform correctly.

> In the meantime, it seems unlikely that we'll see mass unemployment of pilots. Mandatory retirement will see 42% of US pilots retire in the next ten years. If anything, this shortfall will push the automation case forward faster than ever.

This is a misnomer. There is no pilot shortage. Next time you fly a commuter flight, ask your pilot how much they make (it's about $20k-50k/year). There are an overwhelming number of available pilots in the training pipeline.

Just as with truck drivers, its not a labor cost problem. Its a corporate disdain for cutting into profit margins.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/-smokey-a...

"The annualized driver turnover rate at large truckload fleets was 74 percent in the first quarter and the industry was short about 48,000 drivers at the end of 2015. That shortage is expected to balloon to almost 175,000 by 2024, according to the American Trucking Associations."

"Raising salaries is another option, but it would cut into profit margins. The University of Pennsylvania’s Viscelli said companies would have to double driver pay -- now about $41,000 -- to reduce turnover. About 30 percent of new drivers quit in the first three months, according to Stay Metrics."