I can see that, knowing that a pilot has skin in the game is definitely reassuring. I do think that at some point we will get to the point where such taxis are completely automated. It does seem like this is a simpler problem than self driving cars. You have a lot more space to work with and there aren't pedestrians, or random obstacles to worry about. The weather is the only really hard problem here. And if all flying taxis are automated then they can be aware of each other and plan routes around one another.

And electric flying taxis might actually work better for longer range travel than road based ones since they can cover a lot more distance in a short time. If you have predictable routes then you know exactly how much battery you need. Landing stations could even provide swappable batteries, so a taxi could land, swap out for a charged battery and be ready to go.