And in reality, the operation of an aircraft is not the principle point of failure. Rather, mechanical failures, weather, sabotage, etc. are much more easily eliminated by rigorous inspection and heuristics with multiple failure points.

The fact that commercial pilots (with numerous hours of experience, strict certification and simulator requirements and often, military backgrounds) are considered a principle risk point is only because the safety standards of all the other modes of failure have been so robustly reduced.