Langewiesche thinks that, and I think he's wrong. The only craft we've ever managed to automate well enough to eliminate the human operator is the elevator.
In a generation, we'll probably add fighter pilots to that list. Commercial pilots? Nah. Not with the current paradigm of passenger planes.
Interesting, so the purpose of linking the article wasn’t to support your point?
Regarding the elevator comment - what about light rail at airports? Terminal to terminal “air trains” don’t have human drivers.
Also, how would you counter the statistic that 80% of commercial aviation crashes are caused by pilot error (see my above comment for source)? This would seem to suggest that continuing to improve automation with the goal of removing the human altogether would reduce the number of crashes, assuming the automation wouldn’t make the same mistakes as the human.
The story I linked had a lot of information about automation. I've taken the information from that story and combined it with my interactions with computer programmers, business executives, and pilots to synthesize the opinion that fully automated commercial airplanes aren't viable.
"Air trains" and some subway lines/systems are automated. Interesting that the only systems that have successfully been automated are literally on rails, and are generally enclosed.
It's a fair assumption that the automation won't make the same mistakes as a human, but it's quite a stretch to assume it won't make it's own special flavor of mistake.
Also, you've pointed out the crashes that humans caused, but not the crashes that were avoided by humans. This is getting far from my field of expertise, but you've got to be careful to avoid selection bias.
In a generation, we'll probably add fighter pilots to that list. Commercial pilots? Nah. Not with the current paradigm of passenger planes.