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Comment by dustintrex | Hacker News Reader

> “You still need someone with training in communications protocols, what speed and elevation to fly and where the system is unsafe to operate,”

The use of the word "protocols" underlines that it's kind of weird that we're still handling these comms through scratchy, staticy analog radio with humans at both ends. ATC uses computers to track flights and assign flight paths, why is it so difficult to have their computers talk directly with the aircraft? And I don't even mean remotely controlled flight, just "here's what ATC is asking you to do, press button to ack".

That's mostly a rhetorical question, mind you, since modernizing ATC is a notoriously difficult problem and FAA's NextGen has been under construction since 2007, with vague hopes of getting something usable by 2025. But still.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transporta...

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There has been some effort to automate it via things like Pre-Departure Clearance (PDC) and Digital ATIS (D-ATIS) (https://foreflight.com/products/pdc/) that has improved things quite a bit at some larger airport. But you're right it is a very difficult problem, because of all legacy system (i.e. 60 year old airplanes flying around)

I'm trying to imagine any computer that would have coped with my IFR search and rescue flight last week. Non-standard requests and things that can't be seen by ATC affect things a lot. One other silly small example that feels complicated was requesting a visual approach but having to wait for a vector because there was one exactly-airport-shaped cloud in the way.

I think pilots get a lot of situational awareness as well from listening to the common frequency.

Sure, I'm not saying we should throw out the radios, but 90% of those comms are pretty standardized.

> I'm trying to imagine any computer that would have coped with my IFR search and rescue flight last week. Non-standard requests and things that can't be seen by ATC affect things a lot. One other silly small example that feels complicated was requesting a visual approach but having to wait for a vector because there was one exactly-airport-shaped cloud in the way.

I don't pretend to know much about aircraft control, but my understanding is that controllers generally are hopping between several planes in quick succession and they follow a strict subset of English when communicating with pilots. So, I'd be surprised if the task required advanced reasoning skills that would be impossible recreate in an algorithm.

> I think pilots get a lot of situational awareness as well from listening to the common frequency.

That seems like it could be solved in other ways though. For instance, the airport could publish the relevant information into a data stream and broadcast it to air traffic.

It could be displayed on a screen within the cockpit. The cockpit could also have a computer that read certain information aloud to the pilots to provide important information without them needing to look at the screen. Furthermore, airports could broadcast the same alerts on the old analogue radio channels to legacy aircraft.

> just "here's what ATC is asking you to do, press button to ack".

That's already a thing with the big aircraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS

You can decode them on your SDR, they're in-the-clear:

VHF ACARS (fairly local):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGD_GFxH9ps

and the satellite version of the system here (every aircraft shares 1 of 4 geosynchronous satellites and you can pick up some interesting things):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Nc9GPOHz0

> why is it so difficult to have their computers talk directly with the aircraft?

CPDLC exists today and has been in use for a couple of decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller%E2%80%93pilot_data_...

However, like everything in aviation, progress is slow because aircraft are expensive to buy, can last a long time, and are very expensive to modify.

And security is very important. Bugs in aircraft software can cost lives ( and if you insist on turning everything to money, faulty designs have bankrupted companies (or forced them to stop selling aircraft or to sell themselves to another company)).

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