"Well, the human pilots are there as a failsafe system. As predictable, uneventful and safe as flying is (miraculous when you think about it), there's still edge cases where a bird flies into an engine and the pilot has has to land a plane on the Hudson river, for example. Until that level of skill is totally unnecessary, I'd prefer the person flying the plane I'm in to be able to do it and be compensated accordingly. Though I do foresee a day where the pilot is in the ATC tower, and able to remotely fly a plane in those situations, reducing the need to have one on every flight. Then again given the security implications of that I'm not sure it'll ever really happen." - Eric P