Or you modernize the system (not just tech but potentially the procedures). Kind of stupid to increase air traffic and traffic density over decades and just expect the old systems to scale.
They accept public comments so all of the armchair aviation experts on HN should probably send them an email and explain how they can solve all the problems by connecting ChatGPT to a controller console.
For commerce tech, you switch, see what breaks, switch back and adjust for next try. You may have lost some sales. But probably just inconvenienced people.
When doing travel systems, something breaking is likely a lot of deaths.
There was also a lot of resistance to the idea that every aircraft should broadcast its position, heading, etc. because of privacy concerns. And as long as there are holdouts the tower can't rely on the information being available
Look at the railroad development in EU for example. You have to invent a lot of tech (signaling, communication between trains, interoperability with old systems), build a lot of infrastructure, train a lot of people and roll it out at scale with the goal of zero accidents.
It is just impossible to do quickly.
How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI?
Not very. For safety-critical systems, you probably want something deterministic, and doesn't break when faced with novel situations.
Solvers are probably a better solution than ML approaches, but they can't capture every possible constraint, such as airplane that can only make left-handed turns because of equipment failure.
Humans are not deterministic and can break for many reasons. It's not plausible that an AI could handle "route this aircraft for landing without any right turns" ?
Yes. Humans can also self-evaluate about their state, and have culpability. It not surprising that non-humans are held to a different standard.
They had 1 tower with 1 operator and no redundancy at a fairly busy airport, which is definitely concerning.
in this case it seems like it could definitely have been solved by tech. both aircraft were traveling at predictable paths and opertating nominally.
You could argue that helicopters, being very nimble craft, should have ADS-B receivers and provide display and sound their own collision warnings to their pilots. That's perfectly possible, I just don't think it's mandated
Doing something to distribute information differently could result in redundancy such that if the commercial craft have a 1-3 mile ADS-B view around them, they can check that ATC isn't giving them bad instructions and that others are following directions.
Why couldn't it be? We need fewer ATC than we need pilots, by a long shot. The actual requested new hires for ATC is in the range of 2k (with 1k expected to stay on staff).
With roughly a 120k salary, and assuming all 2k stay on-board that's what, an additional $200mil needed to fully fund?
Meanwhile, the airline industry had a $30b net profit, so it doesn't look like this is even something that'd bankrupt the industry if we taxed them to cover the costs of ATC. It's a 1% tax that's needed.
Even with a super duper fancy modernized system, we'd still want towers staffed sufficiently. Having just 1 person there is a problem even if everything is super modernized. When an issue comes up that the system can't or isn't handling well that's 1 person to make all the calls. Hopefully 2 things aren't happening and hopefully they don't need or want a second opinion.
As for hiring competent people, the DC metro has 6.3 million people. I find it really hard to believe there's not 3 more in the area that could handle being an ATC operator.
And it's not like we don't already have 99% of the existing buildings, infrastructure, and computers already setup. It's literally just the personnel that's lacking.
They might be capable, but why would they want to?
"Why couldn't it be?"
Things like coordination and communication in high traffic environments don't scale well. Finding efficiencies in the procedures and systems can eliminate potential miscommunication and missed handoffs.
"And it's not like we don't already have 99% of the existing buildings, infrastructure, and computers already setup. It's literally just the personnel that's lacking."
Actually only some airports have been upgraded while others are waiting. Do you think another person would have prevented this incident? From the recordings and facts so far, it doesn't seem like it.
There is no choice but to do the alternative: modify and modernise all our critical systems piecemeal over decades while they are running, covered by the business cliche "We are building the plane, while flying it."
We all naively desire (especially politicians) the software concept of the big rewrite, the version 2, project phoenix, Second-System Syndrome. With development experience we learn both the psychological pull of the concept and we learn why it is so hard to do successfully. It always seems so simple how to fix societal systems we have no experience with.
Successful systems slowly improve, slowly introduce and prove new ideas, slowly accrete changes: we accept the costs of vestigial path-dependent aspects and technical debt.
One of the incredible learning experiences of developing software systems is that it is a huge melting pot of different techniques that are iterated quickly (fast parallel evolution and proving) and the knowledge diffuses between people and teams and organisations. The waterfall model is rarely used! I believe we are now seeing those skills and techniques be applied to other system domains - especially high growth businesses.
Already exists, it's called TCAS
https://www.twz.com/news-features/heres-what-air-traffic-col...
So there's already tracking on a map that's available to the pilots. During landing, pilots are looking outside and not glued to their instruments.
The real issue is trying to cram too much aircraft in such a small space and time.