[petertodd]

Ejections are pretty rough, and occasionally career or even life ending. So there would be a lot of pressure on the engineers to try to avoid it. Plus, this plane is very expensive. The cost is multiple times the average lifetime earnings of a typical person. It's not entirely wrong to say that they were attempting to save the life's work of multiple people.

[SoftTalker]

Also the now-pilotless aircraft could potentally kill people on the ground when it crashes. If this had happened in a more populated area it very likely would have.