In some ways, they started in 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transportation_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Tr

In some ways, they started in 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transportation_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transporta... There are a ton of details on the page that go into why it is so hard. One reason is that there are a lot of fundamental things to build and deploy before anything can be automated. E.g. before ADS-B (equipment on planes that detects its own location with GPS and automatically broadcasts it), ATC needed to talk to pilots and ask them where they were in a lot of cases. ADS-B has only been required on commercial flights since 2020. Then it also suffers like every large government software project where a bunch of $100+ million contracts get paid out to private companies while nothing gets built. And it's part of annual appropriations, so funding was unpredictable. It's like working at a software company that had a major layoff or hiring spree every year for the last 20 years. If we could figure out how to run major project, the value to humanity would be enormous.