As daigoba66 says, air traffic control (the equivalent of which is a large part of driving) is still done by human beings. Two other points. 1. Driving happen

As daigoba66 says, air traffic control (the equivalent of which is a large part of driving) is still done by human beings. Two other points. 1. Driving happens "in 1-and-a-bit dimensions" (i.e., cars are on roads, which are 1-dimensional plus a bit of width) and aviation happens "in 2-and-a-half dimensions" (i.e., planes are in the air, fairly close to earth, but with quite a lot of flexibility as to height), which means that there's far, far more space for planes than for cars. If all the world's drivers were completely unable to tell where other vehicles were, all the roads would be filled with crashed cars within seconds. If all the world's airline pilots were completely unable to tell where other planes were, the effect would be minimal. Except that there'd be a bit of danger at takeoff and landing -- which, not altogether by coincidence, are two other things that are best done by human pilots rather than unaided machinery. 2. Cars operate in a world where there are also pedestrians, buildings to crash into, etc. Planes, not so much. It seems to me that, to a very good first approximation, none of the problems self-driving cars need to solve apply to planes in sufficiently similar ways for "we can do it with planes, so why not with cars?" to be a good argument.