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I wonder where most of the complexity lies in ATC. Naively you’d think there would be some mega computer needed to solve the puzzle but the UK only sees 6k fli

I wonder where most of the complexity lies in ATC. Naively you’d think there would be some mega computer needed to solve the puzzle but the UK only sees 6k flights a day and the scale of the problem, like most things in the physical world, is well bounded. That’s about the same number of buses in London, or a tenth of the number of Uber drivers in NYC. It would be interesting to actually see the code.

tjohns 3y ago
Much of the complexity is in interop. Passing data between ATC control positions, between different facilities, and between different countries. Then every airline has a bidirectional data feed, plus all the independent GA flights (either via flight service or via third-party apps). Plus additional systems for weather, traffic management, radar, etc. Plus everything happening on the defense side. All using communication links and protocols that have evolved organically since the 1950s, need global consensus (with hundreds of different countries' implementations), and which need to never fail.