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I'm not sure how feasable AI or automation is. How would you respond to a failure in the automated system once there are more planes in the air than ATC control

I'm not sure how feasable AI or automation is. How would you respond to a failure in the automated system once there are more planes in the air than ATC controllers in that area? That could be a single point of failure. ATC Can optimise for severe degradation of service but how would automation be able to respond to a sometimes unavoidable impossible situation? You can define rules how planes should and shouldn't fly, verifying that this is always possible would be a nightmare.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
Simple, just build in some escalation mechanism. Pilots should be able to get to talk to a human, and be listening in on the exchanges in case their attention is required. Of course, insisting on heavy handed, laborious, and error prone human exchanges all the time has its own risks. ATC getting overloaded with more traffic is a given either way. Loads of electrical drones will start showing up in the next decades. Some piloted, some autonomous. ATC will have to adjust to that. And keeping everything the same with more human controllers is not going to scale.