How reliable would an autopilot system need to be for you to use it for takeoff and landing?
It's true that I have not used city FSD or flown an aircraft. I'm just going from watching the videos and how many situations I see where an error by the car would require extremely quick correction. I agree that highway autopilot is a great workload reducer and Is safe as long as most people are not abusing it. The problem with trying to learn the "quirks" in the system is that it might do something correct 100 times in a row and screw up on the 101st time. Becoming comfortable with it is the problem. I guess we'll see what happens.
Autopilots are not used for takeoff roll, it's up to the pilot flying that leg when to turn it on. They are usually turned on once the aircraft is stabilized in the climbout, but it varies pilot to pilot. I like hand flying, so I might keep it off a little longer.
Autopilots are used in most aircraft on approaches to the airport, usually right up until just before touchdown, especially if the weather is bad.
On some equipped aircraft, they can be left on through landing and rollout This is usually when the weather is very bad, when landing in zero/zero conditions, that is zero visibility (not actually zero, but maybe measured in feet instead of mile percentages) and zero ceiling height, such as a really foggy day in London. Both pilots are closely monitoring the approach, and the aircraft has to be certified for these type of approaches, and the pilots trained. The autopilot will take the plane all the way to touchdown and through rollout, handling the power settings, attitude, and directional control all the way through, following radio signals from the ground, and the sensors in the aircraft I do not have experience in these aircraft, so I have never landed with an autopilot on personally, but it is very commonly done, and were I trained for it, I would trust it to land, but like my car I would be monitoring it all the while.
My first few encounters with phantom braking surprised the crap out of me, but once I learned to follow other cars, or turn off TACC and/or autopilot at certain times, I felt I had a better handle on it. I still don't fully trust the car, so I try to be ready for unanticipated behavior, but it's still less stressful for me than not using it, because, for the most part it does a great job.
I think that's what it really comes down to, how many times will we have to intervene during a city FSD drive? It's true that the car could do one thing correctly 100 times, then fail. Some of the videos, the car does very well, others not so much. I do expect if it's really that bad overall, Tesla will delay the wider release. I hope that doesn't happen, I am looking forward to trying it.
Flying is not 100% safe, and never will be, aircraft will still continue to crash, but the rate is low enough that most people feel pretty safe getting on them, and they should. Same thing will hold true someday for driverless cars I expect. But I will never fully trust any machine or software to be perfect 100& of the time, and am too old probably to ever feel comfortable getting in a driverless car, or getting an pilotless aircraft. I'll leave that to future generations. But I am enjoying immensely having a car that feels to me like it's out of a science fiction story from when I was young.