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Before we get too excited about self-flying planes, watch the following video, which is the NTSB's animation of US Airways 1549 landing in the Hudson River after having both engines knocked out by geese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S5hRRio-E8

If this happened to a self-flying plane, would someone on the ground be able to remotely take the controls in a matter of seconds and land it safely (or at least avoid crashing it into a densely populated area)?

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This is a good example of why anecdotal evidence is a bad way to make decisions (also - why the entire world is making the humongous mistakes of ditching nuclear right now because of a couple examples of things going wrong; despite nuclear having saved millions of lives vs. the few it has cost).

For every example like this, there are many more you can point to where NOT having self-flying planes cost everybody on board their life. From hijackings like 9/11, to rogue pilots like MH370 or the Germanwings crash, to simply human error like the SFO Asiana crash, the SFO Air Canada almost-crash, or the Tenerife collision, or the Air France Atlantic crash, or many many more…

Counterpoint: the number of NTSB reports that end with 'controlled flight into terrain' is non-trivial.

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