Jose writes:

I don't know how much of a factor pilot salaries are in
commercial aviation (I suspect gas costs far more than pilots) but I do
not for a moment think that this kind of technology (UAV) is impossible
to shove down our throats.

Crew salaries (in total) cost about the same as fuel, each being about
a fourth of total operating costs. Pilots are a small minority of
employees in most companies, but they are also the best paid by far,
especially for large commercial transports at large airlines, so they
may represent a significant percentage of total crew salaries, but I
don't have a figure for that. I know that at Air France, the
president of the company ranks #300 in salary, after the pilots.

Eliminating pilots would provide vast savings. However, there is
still nothing more versatile than a human being when it comes to
handling the unexpected. (For normal and abnormal situations
anticipated by designers of automated flight systems, the automation
usually handles the situations much better than a human pilot.)

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.