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Here's a classic example of a controller noticing a pilot is hypoxic, indirectly testing his competency and ability, and likely being careful with how he routed traffic around the unreliable pilot until he got better. This alone seems pretty hard to imagine automated with current technology without some overkill prone-to-failure solution.
I mean, I've seen quite a few cases where inordinate amounts of effort are expended to create automation to fit the needs of humans and legacy human-oriented interfaces, whereas redesigning the entire flow for the capabilities of modern tech can be significantly cheaper and more reliable.
I'm sure that there are a million various complications in this area that I have no idea of, but still would hope that the people in charge are looking to redesign the whole thing rather than just each piece individually.
I suppose because it's not fully automated?
I’d image air control for a whole airport is even more complex than that, you can take any conclusion you’d like.
There's already semi-automated collision avoidance. If two planes are on a collision course, TCAS tells one plane to climb and another to descend. This works because outside of tightly managed scenarios like a holding stack, and planes shouldn't be anywhere near each other horizontally. There are no other planes above or below you (or anywhere nearby) and by fixing the directions as up and down, TCAS doesn't even have to calculate compass bearings that would work for avoidance.
What you can probably do is create software which observes traffic and simulates it into the future and notifies the human ATCs about risks. It might even be a good idea to try and digitize it for the ATCs so they talk less and press buttons more (which will feed into the simulation) and use TTS for the legacy transmissions to pilots that don't have an updated interface. Given the regulation on that industry it seems unlikely anyone competent enough to do it will have an interest to even try.
Even then you'll probably run into the long-tail distribution issues, similar to self-driving cars. 99.9% of all situations are pretty standard, but once in a while something so abstruse happens that it's not pre-programmed and requires some creativity to solve.
> What you can probably do is create software which observes traffic and simulates it into the future and notifies the human ATCs about risks.
Fully agree. Some of the recent close calls really were "obvious" much earlier, meaning they were not caused by late course changes.
Most big planes can land themselves now - in calm weather, at least. It's done regularly when fog is worse than a certain point, because the necessary radio signals pass through the fog. Both the airport and the plane need certain equipment. The same navigation equipment is used on many manual approaches, but with a human in the loop.
Out of curiosity, about a year ago I queried a few models about how to fly a particular instrument approach. It was an ILS approach using a DME arc transition. Other the basic concept of lateral and vertical guidance, most of the models got literally everything wrong. Wrong headings, wrong NAVAID frequencies. Wrong procedures. Maybe they’re better now in this domain, but they were confident in their claims of the ability to read an approach plate. But it was terrible.
I now know 100% that you are not a pilot. No thanks! 100% no thanks.
Clippy: "Cessna 123, cleared for takeoff runway two-seven."
Cessna 123: "Cleared for takeoff runway two-seven, Cessna 123."
[seconds later]
Clippy: "Piper 456, cleared for landing runway niner. Where do you want to go today?"