If autopilot can control an airplane, then couldn't someone also pilot the plane remotely (as if it were a drone)? That would provide some pilot redundancy. I imagine airlines could also save money on staffing if the copilot didn't have to be physically present.

1) the autopilot is actually quite dumb ("keep altitude", "fly on course X", "maintain set speed", "change altitude at rate X / to level Y"), doesn't handle exceptions (in fact, autopilots are designed to disengage in case of exception), and is generally totally blind to environment other than heading, speed, altitude and optionally position (but not, for example, detailed environment on the ground)

2) The latency issues are literally deadly.

Modern autopilots can taxi, takeoff, and with a supporting airport, even autoland.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland

Out of those three, the only one actually working anywhere is Autoland, and majority of airports don't support it.

No airport supports autopilot taxi nor takeoff (takeoff is done half-automated at most).

Airlines are fighting tooth and nail to not spend money to implement video feeds on the black boxes, a rather doable upgrade with huge safety benefits, and you want to mandate expenditures on converting all air ships to full remote drones? That is never going to happen.

My gut feeling is that when companies cut costs by cutting safety features, it doesn't play out favorably for consumers.

-- interesting - total opposite for me - #1 cause of commercial aircraft accidents is pilot error - by a long shot - personally - looking forward to the day humans are not involved in flying an aircraft --

https://nci.edu/2021/06/08/the-most-common-causes-of-aviatio...

https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam...

Main reason pilot error is #1 cause is that hardware problems can be fixed once and for all, while pilots take care of all the exceptions.

Also, doing a CFIT while flying on autopilot is still a pilot error, because they gave the autopilot's orders.

-- https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam... - page 6 tru 16 are interesting --

After pilots are eliminated, the #1 cause of accidents will be autopilot error.

-- it will likely still be a human factor - maintenance/mechanical is the second cause after pilot error --

Think it through, get rid of human engineers designing those aircraft, get rid of human mechanics and engineers maintaining them, human pilots flying them and human managers driving all of that. While we are at it, get rid of human passengers, without those there won't be any dead people neither if the machines get it wrong.

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And get rid of the surface population of earth what we're at it so the flying robo-bombs don't fall on anyone.

Better to have the final say come from someone at the controls rather than a desk in Silicon Valley. Humans aren't going anywhere.

We should really just petition the FAA to eliminate all pilots entirely right now: it'll eliminate the #1 cause of commercial aircraft accidents.

Maybe this will be fine when the technology is there, but it's very obvious that doing this change today -- especially when it's being lobbied to be applied to cargo planes first (historically much older former passenger planes w/o modern creature comforts) -- is going only going to increase deaths by pilot error.