A self-flying aircraft is easier than  

How would would know what people thought in the past? You got me there. If only there was a way to look things up and learn about them. It is called research. With the internet it is easy before that there were these things called books.

the following is from an Inc. article. You can find many similar notations in many others places of reference:

"Interestingly, although elevator operators were common through the mid-1900s, there were driverless elevators as far back as the early 1900s. There was just one problem. Nobody trusted them. Given the choice between the stairs and a lonely automated elevator, the elevator would remain empty. It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century that the tipping point came along for the driverless elevator as the result of a strike by the elevator operators' union in New York City in 1945."

As for trains with no operators, all I can tell you is don't go to an airport here in the US with a tram system or to Japan, or France, or Germany, or Venezuela if you want to keep yourself in the dark about that.

How is it remotely the same thing? Because when people find out that they don't need an operator to be safe, they don't care. They just want to get from point A to point B. Autonomous busses are already being used do you really think NOBODY will go into an unmanned aircraft if it is convenient and safe?

We know pilots safely fly every day. We also know that most dangerous component of an aircraft is the pilot. It makes sense to many that if you eliminate the component that causes 80-90% of the accidents in aircraft you might just have a safer transportation option.