>but that's also all a plane needs to do Quite the opposite, there are common scenarios when the plane needs to deviate from pre-programmed course or otherwise

>but that's also all a plane needs to do Quite the opposite, there are common scenarios when the plane needs to deviate from pre-programmed course or otherwise can't rely just on an autopilot. All of them are handled either by higher-level automation (eg. ILS for landing), or by pilots themselves. Unsurprisingly the hand-over is signaled similarly to what Tesla does - audible and tactile cues for the pilots. A pilot can also initiate take over at any time by the way of flight control inputs. Lastly, regardless whichever automation is active, the pilot in charge is held both morally and legally responsible for the airplane and passengers or cargo, and expected to turn off the the automation when proper. All in all Tesla's "Autopilot" already does more than an autopilot does. And while I'm somewhat pessimistic on how quickly it can become better than humans both statistically and also in rare scenarios, there is constant progress by all major vendors. Common scenarios for an autopilot to be disconnected, or to initiate handover: - collisions avoidance; the air corridors are busy places, and maneuvering to maintain safe distance from other planes is expected - take-off and landing, though those can be performed by higher level automation - pattern holding around the air-port, where course change is frequent - re-routing to avoid severe weather or handle emergencies - handling major turbulences (autopilots have limited maximum rate of change for safety reasons) - loss of instrumentation, due to icing, foreign object ingestion, malfunctions; a common setup is "2 out of 3 sensors need to be in agreement" As you can see, the equivalents of some of those scenarios are already handled pretty well by self-driving cars, like self-parking, or collision avoidance.