[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by gordner

There are multiple drone types that are fully autonomous and some operate in commercial airspace for HOmeland security on border patrols. these are not ground controlled drones, but fully autonomous with human interaction only in an emergent event. My brotehr is an ATC controller and deals with him all the time. The funny thing is it was very quietly done when they began rating them for commercial air zones, they were not very open about it at all, but they are there.
The MD80 was retrofitted witth a customs avioncis package, it was a private 19 seat aircraft with a 13 hour plus range due to fuel mods. It was far from a standard aircraft, but the systems were in place for auto take off as well. However very few destinations are rated to the proper category to accomodate it, so it is not a very utile system. Truth be told I do not think they had ever used the auto take off feature, and very very seldom were able to use auto land as well. Mostly going into corpoprate airports.
I only contracted on the aircraft for a while years ago, but a pilot ran me through the autoflight system as I had never seen another like it. He showed me a ground to ground flight plan that theoretically the aircraft could carry out autonomously. They had definitely never used it to that degree though.
My point is simply that the technology is out there. One of the biggest issues, from my very light research on the systems, is that people and machines react very differently to emergencies. Basically if all aircraft are automated, everything works well but if you have a mix, when seperation is lost on aircraft it is harder to ensure that the reaction of the machine and the human pilot in the other aircraft will not drive them together. Hugely simplified of course but that is apparently one of the larger hurdles to overcome.

I believe the only US airspace that allows operation of UAVs is in a MOA, or Military Operating Area. The FAA is working on new regulations that govern the use of UAVs in civilian airspace but they are not yet complete.

Technology to auto takeoff and land has existed for decades, my employer converted a single engine piston airplane to do so quite a few years ago (with NASA funding). But it doesn't yet have the capability to deal with the incredible number of variables, both known and unknown, that a pilot can.