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In 2026, with how much money their is in aviation, it seems wild to not have digitized this ages ago. The runway should be essentially 'locked' when in use, if

In 2026, with how much money their is in aviation, it seems wild to not have digitized this ages ago. The runway should be essentially 'locked' when in use, if they don't want screens in every ground vehicle that may cross a runway, at least display it at runway entrances. That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point. And there's pretty much no way to make ATC's job not stressful, its inherently stressful. Taking out how much of their job is held in the current operators mind versus being 'committed' seems like low hanging fruit 30 years ago. The whole system's just begging for human error to occur. There's 1700+ runway incursions a year in the US alone, each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed. Like when an accident occurs.

bronco21016 7mo ago
> The runway should be essentially 'locked' when in use, if they don't want screens in every ground vehicle that may cross a runway, at least display it at runway entrances. It does, the Runway Status Lights System uses radar to identify when the runway is in use and shows a solid bright red bar at every entrance to the runway. I'm curious what the NTSB has to say about it for this incident. From the charts LGA does have RWSLs. I didn't check NOTAM to see if they were out of service though.
- bombcar 7mo ago
  Emergency vehicles almost always can override/ignore warning devices (think firetrucks running red lights) which can cause "fun" for some value of "death/dismemberment/vehicle loss". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Xf7aU5Udo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Xf7aU5Udo
  - red_admiral 7mo ago
    Airport emergency services are presumably trained in this, but since a plane cannot stop easily (or not at all on takeoff after V1), I seem to remember the general rule is that even emergency vehicles with lights and sirens on give way to planes, and don't enter runways without permission from the tower. In the audio released by the BBC, the fire truck DID get permission from the tower to cross something, I can't tell if it was the runway in question. However, to cross the red runway lights if lit, you normally need that spelled out too something like "truck one, cross four delta, cross red lights". This did not happen on the BBC audio, which could mean one of many things.
    - f1shy 7mo ago
      They got clearance, which was overruled by a STOOOP! The guy was alone operating 2 frequencies, had an emergency of another aircraft going on… is not so easy as many commenters from the armchair are insinuating
      - bombcar 7mo ago
        From where I'm sitting, it's not really "the fault" of ATC (even though it is) simply because I'm not trusting enough of ATC even when they're on "my side". When cleared across a runway I'm still going to be looking in all directions, and proceed as fast as I can. I also look both ways at railway crossings even if the guards are up and silent.
        __turbobrew__ 7mo ago
        I wonder if visibility was good enough that looking both ways before crossing the runway would have prevented this.
        bombcar 7mo ago
        That'll be one of the things the NTSB investigates. I also wonder if you're down to a "one controller" scenario if it would be better for there to be once frequency, not a ground/air split.
        alistairSH 7mo ago
        Or perhaps a "one controller" scenario is just terrible policy.
        f1shy 7mo ago
        No. it wasn't. Delta crosses 04 in diagonal, so basically they should have taken the head out of the window and look behind. They had the clearance, so they just tried to cross. The problem is for some reason they did not hear the "Truck 1 stop" call.
  - toast0 7mo ago
    All vehicles can override/ignore warning devices. Doesn't make it right. Emergency vehicles should not override/ignore train or plane crossings. Trains and Planes don't care about flashing lights. Crossing an active runway requires clearance for safety. In this case, from the available information, the drivers of the fire truck thought they were cleared, and proceeded to cross while a plane was cleared to land. I'm not familiar with ATC ground radio to know if they were actually cleared or not, but it seems clear that that the drivers thought they were cleared. Investigation reports will give us more details.
  - bronco21016 7mo ago
    From the FAA’s site [1] on RWSL: > If an Air Traffic Control clearance is in conflict with the Runway Entrance Lights, do not cross over the red lights. Contact Air Traffic Control and advise that you are stopped due to red lights. (ex.: "Orlando Ground, Ops 2 is holding short of runway 36 Left at Echo due to red lights"). Airports are highly controlled environments unlike typical motor vehicle roadways and generally the same rules apply for aircraft, vehicles, and equipment on airport surface movement areas. From all sources I can find, if the RWSLs were working they should have been red and nobody should have entered the runway without further clarification from ATC. [1] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
  - kaliqt 7mo ago
    Anyone can override if needed, not just emergency personnel. However that is not permissible here. Airplanes are similar to trains, you have to stop and wait and there are no exceptions.
- deathanatos 7mo ago
  > From the charts LGA does have RWSLs. I didn't check NOTAM to see if they were out of service though. Just to add… The vehicle in question got clearance from ATC to cross the runway. ATC revoked it shortly afterwards (by radioing "Tower, Truck 1. Stop truck 1. Stop! Stop Truck 1, STOP!" (followed by the incident; the next transmission is go-arounds.)); presumably, ATC realized the impending danger. I am assuming that requesting permission from ATC to enter a runway in an emergency is a permitted action, so RWSL aren't going to prevent this type of incident. I don't think we know why Truck 1 did not heed the stop warning (e.g., if it came too later, got lost, etc.), but I am thinking that if they understood the indication from the RWSL, they overrode it by getting clearance, because they needed to cross the runway due to the (first) emergency. So, same. Will be curious to see what NTSB says. I suspect something about resource management: there seems to be too much happening, too quickly, for that one ATC controller. While perhaps the controller makes mistakes, the mistakes appear to my untrained ear as "reasonable", and I'd like the system to be such that reasonable mistakes don't cost lives.
  - bronco21016 7mo ago
    I’d love a source indicating it’s permissible to override the RWSL for emergency vehicles. In all training materials I’ve seen for pilots, it’s clear that an ATC clearance does NOT permit overriding the RWSL indication precisely for this scenario where ATC inadvertently provided a bad clearance. The direction to pilots is to query the controller to give them a chance for a second look and trap the error of the incorrect clearance. I linked the FAA page in another post where it provides direction to ground vehicles as well. Tomorrow I will have more time to research but this might be one of those things buried in a difficult to find Advisory Circular or something.
    - deathanatos 7mo ago
      (Obligatory IANA-ATC.) https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl From what I've found it seems like the indication of the RWSL should match the clearance from ATC. This to me suggests a ground vehicle is permitted to request: > • DO NOT proceed when the Runway Entrance Lights have extinguished without an Air Traffic Control clearance. Runway Status Lights verifies an Air Traffic Control clearance, it DOES NOT substitute for an Air Traffic Control clearance. > • If an Air Traffic Control clearance is in conflict with the Runway Entrance Lights, do not cross over the red lights. Contact Air Traffic Control and advise that you are stopped due to red lights. The page never directly states it¹, but the implication is that a ground vehicle can request clearance, and the clearance from the ATC can be granted, & RWSL should match. If they do not match, red RWSL prevails, and green RWSL are not a substitute for clearance. Truck 1 did request clearance. So then the question for this incident would be "what was the status of the RWSL when Truck 1 entered the runway?"² If they were red, according to the linked page, Truck 1 should not have entered the RW regardless of the clearance, and the mismatch between ATC verbally granting clearance & the RWSL system seems problematic. But, I don't know what the actual status of the RWSL was, so. … hopefully, the NTSB report in a few months will contain an explanation. ¹I am treating this page as a non-authoritative explainer, not as legal regulations. ²The one video I've seen of the incident is not clear enough for me to make out the RWSL.
- fnordfnordfnord 7mo ago
  Video has been released showing that the REL's were operational at LaGuardia during the crash. It isn't definitive that the REL's that are facing the fire truck's view are working but they will have video and we will know soon. Tweet showing the video of the collision: https://x.com/MCCCANM/status/2036131991792550351?s=20 https://x.com/MCCCANM/status/2036131991792550351?s=20 Here is a diagram showing their locations. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/media/LGA.pdf https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/media/LGA.pd...
thomas_witt 7mo ago
How would you exactly "digitize"? While that sounds like a nice idea in theory it's the same as "digitizing" road traffic. In the end the air traffic system is a highly complex but also a highly reliable system, especially when you compare accident rates. I am sure the working conditions of ATC staff might be improved - but being both a pilot and a programmer, I know that there is no easy digitalization magic wand for aviation.
- ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
  >In the end the air traffic system is a highly complex but also a highly reliable system, especially when you compare accident rates. 1700 incursions a year, and other articles mentioning multiple near misses a week at a single airport [1]. It is safe in practice, likely largely due to the pilots here also being heavily trained and looking for mistakes, but it seems a lot like rolling the dice for a bad day. >I am sure the working conditions of ATC staff might be improved - but being both a pilot and a programmer, I know that there is no easy digitalization magic wand for aviation. I didn't say it'd be free. Just hard to believe radio voice communication is the best way to go. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airline-safety-close-calls.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airl...
  - thomas_witt 7mo ago
    [flagged]
    - guzfip 7mo ago
      Lmao the one hope I have for this country is that I know for sure that the American people will rise up to put a violent end to techbros once they try to “ ban non self driving cars”
      - thomas_witt 7mo ago
        And I suppose people flying an 40 year old Cessna 172 will share the same feeling if someone wants to "digitize" it.
smallerize 7mo ago
The BBB allocated $12B for ATC modernization. https://www.faa.gov/new-atcs https://www.faa.gov/new-atcs Money isn't the only reason it's so old. The coordination problems are huge. https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/us_air_traffic_control_system_upgrade/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/us_air_traffic_contro...
throw0101c 7mo ago
> There's 1700+ runway incursions a year in the US alone, each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed. Like when an accident occurs. How many runways crossings are there in a year? How much is "1700+" a percentage of that total?
- bombcar 7mo ago
  The point is that it doesn't matter what percentage of the total they are, it's that 1 is too high without adequate explanation (the Gimli Glider caused vehicles to be guilty of a runway incursion by turning an abandoned runway into an active one, for example). And the cost of investigating 1,700 should be within the budget.
  - criddell 7mo ago
    Of course it matters. All of these entities have limited budgets and personnel and almost unlimited ways they could apply those resources. They have to choose what to chase and they do that by deciding how big of a problem it is.
    - bombcar 7mo ago
      If 1,700 is a huge percentage of runway uses (obviously it isn't but grant it, say at a single airport), then it's mandatory it be investigated because it's so huge. If 1,700 is a minuscule fraction of all runway uses (as it likely is) then investigating it should be a proportionally minuscule amount of the budget.
      - throw0101d 7mo ago
        There are five categories of incursion, with the top one being where a collision occurs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_incursion#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_incursion#Definition * https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/resources/runway_incursions https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/resources/runway_... All incursions (in the US) are tracked: * https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/statistics https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/statistics Given there are ~45,000 flights per days in the US (and so aircraft and vehicles would move hither and fro around an airport for each flight), 1700 feels like a small number.
dpark 7mo ago
Air traffic (and ground traffic) control are not simple problems. La Guardia has 350k aircraft operations (takeoffs and landings) every year. 1000/day. Peak traffic is almost certainly more than 1 plane every minute. Runways are always in use and the idea that some simple software will solve all the safety problems is not grounded in reality.
- CamperBob2 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - JohnMakin 7mo ago
    One jet landing every minute, coordinating the airspace for miles around the airport, along with coordinating non-landing traffic (helicopters, small craft), while making sure these (already heavily automated) flight systems dont get confused and kill several hundred people sounds easy to you, along with keeping everything on time and schedule? Go write it then.
    - estearum 7mo ago
      And I think most critically: being able to adapt all of this on the fly when invariably something goes off-plan.
      - CamperBob2 7mo ago
        Aviation is over 100 years old. Everything that can possibly happen in ATC has either already happened or can reasonably be anticipated. It's stupid, wasteful, and ultimately dangerous to make a human do a machine's job.
        thomascountz 7mo ago
        You say it “…sounds like a simple problem,” and sure, if you think this is a computer problem, it sounds simple. But if all you’re getting back is indignant sputtering, that’s your cue to explain why it’s simple—explaining something simple shouldn't be hard. What do you actually know? It takes all of two minutes of Wikipedia reading for me to understand why this isn’t simple; why it's actually extremely not simple! If you ignore the incumbency, the regulations, the training requirements, the retrofitting, the verification, the international coordination, and the existing unfathomably reliable systems built out of past tragedies, then sure, it’s "simple". But then, if you're ignoring those things, you’re not really solving the problem, are you?
zenoprax 7mo ago
> That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point. Voice communication is insane? I suspect you are ignorant of what it is like to actually fly a large aircraft into a busy airport. Fault-tolerant and highly available hardware must facilitate low-latency, single-threaded communication with high semantic density in order to achieve multi-dimensional consensus in a safety-critical, heterogeneous, adversarial environment. There is some interesting research that captures this sentiment and shows how complex a solution might need to be (replace "faulty agent" with "human error"): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005109822003910 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00051...
- ianburrell 7mo ago
  Voice communication has the advantage is that it can be used without taking off hands and attention off controls. Digital solution would require using device.
  - lxgr 7mo ago
    Voice communication can still be used for anything out of the ordinary despite automating the common case. Almost all voice transmissions are routine instructions/clearances from ground to air, with the pilots reading them back to reduce the chance of errors. In fact, this already exists and is in wide use in (at least) the US, EU, and in transoceanic airspace. Of course, now you have two systems that can fail, and reducing reliance on the older one can easily cause automation complacency (which is a well-researched source of errors) and require more frequent refresher courses if the skill is not practiced on a continuos basis. I suspect that that these are the reasons it's not commonly used for approach and tower operations: There's a lot more spontaneous and/or nonstandard stuff happening in those flight phases, and as you say you don't want a pilot's eyes on a tiny screen/keyboard instead of on their instruments or out the window.
  - zenoprax 7mo ago
    I was originally going to reply with "Try moving a couch with eye blinks and hand signals" and then decided against it. Pilots have enough to do with their hands and feet as it is and looking for and mashing a "I accept the terms and conditions of the landing clearance" button is not really in line with the task at hand.
glitchc 7mo ago
You seem to be giving too much credit to the singleton design pattern. We know exactly how well that works on a modern, multi-tasking, preemptible operating system (hint: not well at all).
throw0101d 7mo ago
> That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point. There is digital comms with ATC without voice: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller–pilot_data_link_communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller–pilot_data_link_com... * https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/DataComm https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/DataComm But in the highly dynamic environment of final approach, landing, and taxiing, I doubt it would be practical. Unless we want to try autonomous 'driving' on taxiways and runways?
PunchyHamster 7mo ago
There are systems for it, just not really integrated into emergencies and ground vehicles. Mistakes also happen even if all info required to avoid is present
matthewkayin 7mo ago
While modernizing ATC in the US may be overdue, the real issue here is that ATC in the US has been understaffed, underpaid, and overworked for a while now. My father works ATC and his schedule has him working overtime, 6 shifts a week, including overnight shifts, meaning that there is literally not a day of the week where he doesn't spend at least some time in the tower. If that's the reality for even half of the controllers, it's no surprise that we've been seeing more and more traffic accidents lately.
- doctorpangloss 7mo ago
  Why do so many jobs have this failure mode? Thinking about this should illuminate for you that funding is not the whole story.
  - jmalicki 7mo ago
    Okay, so then what is? Most jobs have this failure mode because there's a tendency to strip funding until disaster happens, even when it was clearly foreseeable.
    - doctorpangloss 7mo ago
      this whole thing about funding and disaster is a big red herring. it tells me why we're talking about it, but it has nothing to do with how to solve the real, meaningful socioeconomic problem and why it keeps coming up in so many jobs. this is SO simple to understand but people resist it stubbornly. they WANT outrage. economic stuff isn't outrageous. > tendency to strip funding until disaster happens well there's a tendency to pass unfunded mandates too. They are two sides of the same coin. Here's another way I've heard it described, to show you that this is a "bipartisan" issue: > the Daily Show problem. I love the Daily Show, and I think Jon Stewart is hysterical. But literally the answer to every single problem is “Congress should pass a new law.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/10/marc-andreessen-in-conversation.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/10/marc-andreessen-in-c... i don't think Marc Andreessen knows everything about everything the way that he thinks that he does. but he's not wrong. you are in the really lame "Congress should pass a new law" department - i guess to increase funding? - but you know, then it becomes, i don't see why it would be "enough" funding, we don't know, they could strike anyway... personally, i believe the problem with guilded professions like "ATC guy" come about from complex but nonetheless finite incentives. so in a narrow sense, as long as some ATC controllers want to "work more, earn more," this problem will persist, it doesn't even have to be all ATC controllers, or even many, but the proportion of "work more, earn more" to "work less, earn less" personalities predicts the scale of the issues facing buyers of the guilded profession's services. other economists have talked about this and i'm sure someone will write great Causality Revolution paper about it for ATC. broadly I think the problem has much more to do with the lack of economic opportunity in America, that there's minimum wage and everything else, and people are very risk averse like their peers in Europe or Asia but have less of a safety net so they are much more desperate. everyone is looking to guilds to solve their problem instead of demanding that their leaders support and deliver real growth, which makes me sound like Peter Thiel, and that should tell you everything you need to know about why this problem is so hard to solve. it's all politics, not a misunderstanding of the math about maintenance or disasters or whatever the fuck.
angst_ridden 7mo ago
Ha. My first job in '89 was working for an FFRDC reviewing IBM's Jovial code that was going to "revolutionize ATC" by modernizing everything. I'm gonna guess that code never went into production. The problem seems easy until you start looking under the hood.
_moof 7mo ago
You can't just throw software at this. It's a complex system that involves way more than just an airplane and someone in a tower. Systems engineering, human factors, and safety management systems are the relevant disciplines if you'd like to start reading up. In addition there are decades of research on the dynamics between human operators and automation, and the answer is never as simple as "just add more automation." Increased reliance on automation can paradoxically decrease safety. CPDLC is already being deployed domestically. It's currently available to all operators in en route segments. All runway incursions at towered airports are reported, classified according to risk, and investigated.
- mlyle 7mo ago
  On the flipside, look at the success of TCAS. It doesn't have a perfect operational history. It hasn't completely eliminated midairs, either. But it took a relatively rare event and further reduced the frequency by about a factor of 5. I wouldn't be so quick to rule out that there's some kind of relatively easy technological double check that could greatly reduce incidents. The fact that we've not gotten there despite years of effort to reduce runway incursions doesn't mean that it's not possible.
  - _moof 7mo ago
    TCAS is fantastic - absolutely stellar example of effective automation. But calling a replacement of major ATC functions with software a "simple fix" is a perfect illustration of why this is a bad idea. Nothing about human-rated safety-critical software is simple, and coming at it with the attitude that it is? In my view, as an experienced pilot, flight instructor, spacecraft operator, and software engineer, that thinking is utterly disqualifying. Besides, there already are a lot of "simple" fixes in place for this problem, e.g. RWSL, which didn't prevent this accident.
    - mlyle 7mo ago
      I don't know. At some point, you need to do all the systems engineering. But "why not just ......" is a perfectly reasonable place to start looking at a problem and sometimes the answers really are that simple. > Besides, there already are a lot of "simple" fixes in place for this problem, e.g. RWSL It'll be interesting to hear why RWSL didn't help, as it is supposedly deployed at LGA.
nikanj 7mo ago
I would not trust my life to a government software project (See Phoenix Payroll for a typical case)
ranger207 7mo ago
Automating ATC is similar to automating flying in general. Even if it's possible to automate 99% of 99% of flights, including even takeoff and landing, commercial flights still have two pilots because if things start to go wrong there's just so many edge cases that you can't easily write automation to handle all of them. Same thing for ATC, except even worse. They still have control towers because controller eyeballs still work even if nothing else does, if ground radar fails, or if a vehicle doesn't have an ADS-B transponder, or if a crash eliminates the radios, etc. There's just so many edge cases that making automation be able to handle everything is extremely difficult
- jjk166 7mo ago
  But still, even if you need humans when things go wrong, automating away all the work for when things go right is a massive load off those people. There will always be failures, the goal is fewer failures, and especially eliminating known failure modes.
mikepurvis 7mo ago
"each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed" I feel the same way about close calls on the road, especially ones involving a vehicle and a vulnerable road user like a pedestrian or cyclist. Way too many lives being saved by a person jumping out of the way at the last minute who shouldn't have had to do so, and then cops and bureaucrats shrugging with "well what do you want us to do, the numbers don't show enough fatalities here for it to be worth fixing" and later when someone actually does die it becomes "this is a horrible tragedy that no one could have seen coming, let's focus on thoughts and prayers rather than accountability that could lead to structural change."
- ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
  If it was all on video I'm all for it, though the argument "I wasn't driving" makes it more trouble than it's worth.
  - mikepurvis 7mo ago
    As a former bike commuter who used to send helmet cam vids to my local police, I definitely got back that response a bunch of times, "we have the plate but not the face of the driver, so it's not actionable for us, even to issue a warning". Which has always seemed a little nuts, like in case of hit and run it would definitely be possible to take action based on a plate alone, both for police and insurance purposes. Unless the registered owner can point to the not-them person who was driving their car at that time, then it was them. Or it was stolen, but either way there will be a clear paper trail.
    - ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
      >Which has always seemed a little nuts, like in case of hit and run it would definitely be possible to take action based on a plate alone, both for police and insurance purposes. Unless the registered owner can point to the not-them person who was driving their car at that time, then it was them. Or it was stolen, but either way there will be a clear paper trail. All that creates a mountain of work and man hours that any police department in America would likely put on low priority. Basically our legal system is too forgiving and the possibility that someone stole their car (even if it was a friend) and returned it 20 minutes later exists, and therefore it's on the police to prove it wasn't. And the law is pretty hard to change since it would change it to 'guilty until proven innocent'.
jmyeet 7mo ago
There is a certain class of person who will take something simple like, say, brake lights on a car, and extrapolate it out to industrial control systems of something incredibly complex with demanding safety requirements and "observe" "it can't be that hard can it?" I remember a debate a year or two ago about a plane ignoring instructions (IIRC it had changed frequencies) and had taxiied onto a runway when a plane was landing. Luckily the landing plane saw this and do a go around so nobody was harmed. In the aftermath, there were similar complaints to yours. "Why can't they just have lights to block planes when a departing or landing plane was using the runway?" without thinking through how any of that works. For a start: - How do you allocate that a runway is "in use"? - If ATC does it, what if they fail to turn the system on? - What if turning it on or off fails? - What if it gets stuck on or off? How do you fix it? Are there procedures for ATC to override it anyway? - There are multiple entry points to a runway. What if they're in different states? - What company si going to sell such a system and accept liability? - What training requirements will be needed for ATC and the pilots? - What do you do if a pilot goes ahead and ignores it? I think people can't think beyond cars. Cars have had unimaginable effort put into them so they can only operate within a certain window. Even then they require maintenance. But as soon as you scale up to industrial safety and control systems, a power plant, the engine on a ship, etc you will end up with a bunch of controls where the people using them need to be skilled operators and it is essentially impossible to eliminate mistakes with automation and IT systems. You will need overrides. You will need redundancies. You will need to end up doing things nobody has ever considered before and have to rely upon training, education and experience to go beyond the envelope. That's just how it works.
deleted 7mo ago
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simonjgreen 7mo ago
What you are describing is sometimes considered to be part of the mythical Cat IIIC standard. The gap between Cat IIIB and Cat IIIC is being able to fully automate the entire taxiing and other ground manoeuvring. It is widely considered to be impossible to achieve safely with current tech. It does feel like the future though.
ErroneousBosh 7mo ago
> That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point How would you do it, then?
dzhiurgis 7mo ago
The Rocket-man-bad-person tried to do this last year and essentially lost his company over this.
ghaff 7mo ago
This isn’t really ATC though connected. I was just watching a presentation from Royal Schiphol today about a lot of the automation of the airport they’re putting in place as part of admittedly long-term 2050 plans. Lots of computer infrastructure rework.
mmaunder 7mo ago
I'm a ground instructor and instrument rated pilot and I fly a 206 in and out of busy charlie and delta airports. I'm also a ham radio guy (WT1J) and an SDR dev. I'm 100% with you on this, but the amount of inertia you're dealing with here approaches infinity. And there are some weirdly strong arguments for not changing things. We use AM simplex radio. That means everyone hears everyone else and that helps everyone build a situational awareness picture. Secondly we use AM because if someone transmits over someone else it makes a squealing noise so you know it happened. Also AM propagates pretty well. Most people on HN could design a pretty good digital replacement in a few minutes - and no doubt some have been suggested in these comments. But its instructive to understand a bit about aviation history. The liability risk carried by aircraft and avionics manufacturers at one point go so bad that we stopped making general aviation planes in the USA. Then that liability was limited to a very small extent by GARA, and we had what we call the 'restart' of manufacturing. So the idea of introducing a new mandatory replacement (not addition like ADS-B) for AM comms has a lot of resistance from quite a few areas: Manufacturers don't want to have to make the capex to reinvent and recertify new equipment. The US has a lot of old planes due to the lack of innovation because of the liability issue - and so those old planes all need a retrofit and pilots don't want to spend that money. Avionics for certified aircraft is already horrifically expensive. Legislators don't want to take on the risk of an incident attached to a bill they sponsored. And then there's the practical matter of now having two systems - the legacy AM comms, and the modern one that some have and some don't and the split in situational awareness between those populations. So while full-duplex is seductive, and digital is seductive, and satellite seems like the obvious endgame - the reality of transitioning is very difficult. Vehicles are listening to the same audio the pilots are, so they have the same mental picture of what's going on. Last week I talked to a maintenance vehicle at KBLI directly from the air because he was on a runway I needed to land on, at an untowered field. He cleared it, I landed, and he went about his business. So the system works pretty well most of the time. I think the root of the issue here is actually something else. Firstly there is a lot of dissatisfaction among NATCA members (ATC union) towards their union, and the view seems to be that the union could be doing a lot better job of lobbying for their workers. You can visit /r/atc or /r/atc2 on reddit to learn more. Secondly, the USA has fallen into a nasty trap where our government has positive incentives to choreograph shutdowns to get our congress members and senate members the face time that they crave. So there is a negative incentive to resolve a shutdown. Rather let it get hot, let it play out, and maybe you'll be the one to appear to save the day to your constituents. The trouble with this is that the department that creates one of the highest risks for civilians in a very visible way, is the FAA and the controllers in particular. So they have become a political football. And they're in an extremely stressful job without pay. And that's a very big problem. You're seeing this play out in a growing adversarial relationship between the NTSB (e.g. DCA) and FAA, with NTSB tearing FAA a new one recently for DCA - and rightly so. I think that's led to more demotivation at FAA which hasn't helped. So the situation is spiraling out of control. We have controllers who are overworked, who regularly don't get paid, and a union not doing the greatest job at advocating for them. Along with the recent cuts in government funding across the board. It's frustrating for pilots. The best we've been able to do is bring our local TRACON folks stacks of free pizza, both in Colorado and Seattle. But that's obviously a token gesture. I don't see a way out of it. To be perfectly honest. And it's very frustrating because the amount of good work that FAA does, is quite startling. You'd be amazed how much data they produce including real-time feeds that are freely available to devs like us. Once you get into the IFR world and start looking not just at approach plates, but the review and updating process of each, the other maps that are produced, the real-time sitrep data that they're producing - it's really quite something what they've accomplished. And the world looks to FAA for its lead in aviation. We were the first to pioneer powered fixed wing flight, after all. I can only hope there's a way out of this.
48terry 7mo ago
With the current atmosphere around technology, I feel like "digitize air traffic control" is an idea that will be both executed terribly by the money grubbing lunatics in control the government and tech corporations, AND received poorly by the public.
m3kw9 7mo ago
sounds easy, but there will always be special cases that a machine hasn't handled and cause even more accidents
the_real_cher 7mo ago
I thought the exact same thing! The technology existed to at least help automate this decades ago.
TechSquidTV 7mo ago
I guess they can't afford it, but my ego is telling me I could do this.
josefrichter 7mo ago
I wrote my university thesis 25 years ago on automating some parts of art traffic management. The fact that it's "humans over radio" coordinating everything sounded ridiculous already back then. but it's still "don't fix what ain't broken" situation - the system works surprisingly well, if you think of it, and nobody has balls (nor political power) to truly reform it.

bronco21016 7mo ago

> The runway should be essentially 'locked' when in use, if they don't want screens in every ground vehicle that may cross a runway, at least display it at runway entrances. It does, the Runway Status Lights System uses radar to identify when the runway is in use and shows a solid bright red bar at every entrance to the runway. I'm curious what the NTSB has to say about it for this incident. From the charts LGA does have RWSLs. I didn't check NOTAM to see if they were out of service though.

bombcar 7mo ago
Emergency vehicles almost always can override/ignore warning devices (think firetrucks running red lights) which can cause "fun" for some value of "death/dismemberment/vehicle loss". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Xf7aU5Udo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Xf7aU5Udo
- red_admiral 7mo ago
  Airport emergency services are presumably trained in this, but since a plane cannot stop easily (or not at all on takeoff after V1), I seem to remember the general rule is that even emergency vehicles with lights and sirens on give way to planes, and don't enter runways without permission from the tower. In the audio released by the BBC, the fire truck DID get permission from the tower to cross something, I can't tell if it was the runway in question. However, to cross the red runway lights if lit, you normally need that spelled out too something like "truck one, cross four delta, cross red lights". This did not happen on the BBC audio, which could mean one of many things.
  - f1shy 7mo ago
    They got clearance, which was overruled by a STOOOP! The guy was alone operating 2 frequencies, had an emergency of another aircraft going on… is not so easy as many commenters from the armchair are insinuating
    - bombcar 7mo ago
      From where I'm sitting, it's not really "the fault" of ATC (even though it is) simply because I'm not trusting enough of ATC even when they're on "my side". When cleared across a runway I'm still going to be looking in all directions, and proceed as fast as I can. I also look both ways at railway crossings even if the guards are up and silent.
      - __turbobrew__ 7mo ago
        I wonder if visibility was good enough that looking both ways before crossing the runway would have prevented this.
        bombcar 7mo ago
        That'll be one of the things the NTSB investigates. I also wonder if you're down to a "one controller" scenario if it would be better for there to be once frequency, not a ground/air split.
        alistairSH 7mo ago
        Or perhaps a "one controller" scenario is just terrible policy.
        f1shy 7mo ago
        No. it wasn't. Delta crosses 04 in diagonal, so basically they should have taken the head out of the window and look behind. They had the clearance, so they just tried to cross. The problem is for some reason they did not hear the "Truck 1 stop" call.
- toast0 7mo ago
  All vehicles can override/ignore warning devices. Doesn't make it right. Emergency vehicles should not override/ignore train or plane crossings. Trains and Planes don't care about flashing lights. Crossing an active runway requires clearance for safety. In this case, from the available information, the drivers of the fire truck thought they were cleared, and proceeded to cross while a plane was cleared to land. I'm not familiar with ATC ground radio to know if they were actually cleared or not, but it seems clear that that the drivers thought they were cleared. Investigation reports will give us more details.
- bronco21016 7mo ago
  From the FAA’s site [1] on RWSL: > If an Air Traffic Control clearance is in conflict with the Runway Entrance Lights, do not cross over the red lights. Contact Air Traffic Control and advise that you are stopped due to red lights. (ex.: "Orlando Ground, Ops 2 is holding short of runway 36 Left at Echo due to red lights"). Airports are highly controlled environments unlike typical motor vehicle roadways and generally the same rules apply for aircraft, vehicles, and equipment on airport surface movement areas. From all sources I can find, if the RWSLs were working they should have been red and nobody should have entered the runway without further clarification from ATC. [1] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
- kaliqt 7mo ago
  Anyone can override if needed, not just emergency personnel. However that is not permissible here. Airplanes are similar to trains, you have to stop and wait and there are no exceptions.
deathanatos 7mo ago
> From the charts LGA does have RWSLs. I didn't check NOTAM to see if they were out of service though. Just to add… The vehicle in question got clearance from ATC to cross the runway. ATC revoked it shortly afterwards (by radioing "Tower, Truck 1. Stop truck 1. Stop! Stop Truck 1, STOP!" (followed by the incident; the next transmission is go-arounds.)); presumably, ATC realized the impending danger. I am assuming that requesting permission from ATC to enter a runway in an emergency is a permitted action, so RWSL aren't going to prevent this type of incident. I don't think we know why Truck 1 did not heed the stop warning (e.g., if it came too later, got lost, etc.), but I am thinking that if they understood the indication from the RWSL, they overrode it by getting clearance, because they needed to cross the runway due to the (first) emergency. So, same. Will be curious to see what NTSB says. I suspect something about resource management: there seems to be too much happening, too quickly, for that one ATC controller. While perhaps the controller makes mistakes, the mistakes appear to my untrained ear as "reasonable", and I'd like the system to be such that reasonable mistakes don't cost lives.
- bronco21016 7mo ago
  I’d love a source indicating it’s permissible to override the RWSL for emergency vehicles. In all training materials I’ve seen for pilots, it’s clear that an ATC clearance does NOT permit overriding the RWSL indication precisely for this scenario where ATC inadvertently provided a bad clearance. The direction to pilots is to query the controller to give them a chance for a second look and trap the error of the incorrect clearance. I linked the FAA page in another post where it provides direction to ground vehicles as well. Tomorrow I will have more time to research but this might be one of those things buried in a difficult to find Advisory Circular or something.
  - deathanatos 7mo ago
    (Obligatory IANA-ATC.) https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl From what I've found it seems like the indication of the RWSL should match the clearance from ATC. This to me suggests a ground vehicle is permitted to request: > • DO NOT proceed when the Runway Entrance Lights have extinguished without an Air Traffic Control clearance. Runway Status Lights verifies an Air Traffic Control clearance, it DOES NOT substitute for an Air Traffic Control clearance. > • If an Air Traffic Control clearance is in conflict with the Runway Entrance Lights, do not cross over the red lights. Contact Air Traffic Control and advise that you are stopped due to red lights. The page never directly states it¹, but the implication is that a ground vehicle can request clearance, and the clearance from the ATC can be granted, & RWSL should match. If they do not match, red RWSL prevails, and green RWSL are not a substitute for clearance. Truck 1 did request clearance. So then the question for this incident would be "what was the status of the RWSL when Truck 1 entered the runway?"² If they were red, according to the linked page, Truck 1 should not have entered the RW regardless of the clearance, and the mismatch between ATC verbally granting clearance & the RWSL system seems problematic. But, I don't know what the actual status of the RWSL was, so. … hopefully, the NTSB report in a few months will contain an explanation. ¹I am treating this page as a non-authoritative explainer, not as legal regulations. ²The one video I've seen of the incident is not clear enough for me to make out the RWSL.
fnordfnordfnord 7mo ago
Video has been released showing that the REL's were operational at LaGuardia during the crash. It isn't definitive that the REL's that are facing the fire truck's view are working but they will have video and we will know soon. Tweet showing the video of the collision: https://x.com/MCCCANM/status/2036131991792550351?s=20 https://x.com/MCCCANM/status/2036131991792550351?s=20 Here is a diagram showing their locations. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/media/LGA.pdf https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/media/LGA.pd...

thomas_witt 7mo ago

How would you exactly "digitize"? While that sounds like a nice idea in theory it's the same as "digitizing" road traffic. In the end the air traffic system is a highly complex but also a highly reliable system, especially when you compare accident rates. I am sure the working conditions of ATC staff might be improved - but being both a pilot and a programmer, I know that there is no easy digitalization magic wand for aviation.

ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
>In the end the air traffic system is a highly complex but also a highly reliable system, especially when you compare accident rates. 1700 incursions a year, and other articles mentioning multiple near misses a week at a single airport [1]. It is safe in practice, likely largely due to the pilots here also being heavily trained and looking for mistakes, but it seems a lot like rolling the dice for a bad day. >I am sure the working conditions of ATC staff might be improved - but being both a pilot and a programmer, I know that there is no easy digitalization magic wand for aviation. I didn't say it'd be free. Just hard to believe radio voice communication is the best way to go. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airline-safety-close-calls.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airl...
- thomas_witt 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - guzfip 7mo ago
    Lmao the one hope I have for this country is that I know for sure that the American people will rise up to put a violent end to techbros once they try to “ ban non self driving cars”
    - thomas_witt 7mo ago
      And I suppose people flying an 40 year old Cessna 172 will share the same feeling if someone wants to "digitize" it.

smallerize 7mo ago

The BBB allocated $12B for ATC modernization. https://www.faa.gov/new-atcs https://www.faa.gov/new-atcs Money isn't the only reason it's so old. The coordination problems are huge. https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/us_air_traffic_control_system_upgrade/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/24/us_air_traffic_contro...

throw0101c 7mo ago

> There's 1700+ runway incursions a year in the US alone, each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed. Like when an accident occurs. How many runways crossings are there in a year? How much is "1700+" a percentage of that total?

bombcar 7mo ago
The point is that it doesn't matter what percentage of the total they are, it's that 1 is too high without adequate explanation (the Gimli Glider caused vehicles to be guilty of a runway incursion by turning an abandoned runway into an active one, for example). And the cost of investigating 1,700 should be within the budget.
- criddell 7mo ago
  Of course it matters. All of these entities have limited budgets and personnel and almost unlimited ways they could apply those resources. They have to choose what to chase and they do that by deciding how big of a problem it is.
  - bombcar 7mo ago
    If 1,700 is a huge percentage of runway uses (obviously it isn't but grant it, say at a single airport), then it's mandatory it be investigated because it's so huge. If 1,700 is a minuscule fraction of all runway uses (as it likely is) then investigating it should be a proportionally minuscule amount of the budget.
    - throw0101d 7mo ago
      There are five categories of incursion, with the top one being where a collision occurs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_incursion#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_incursion#Definition * https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/resources/runway_incursions https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/resources/runway_... All incursions (in the US) are tracked: * https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/statistics https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/statistics Given there are ~45,000 flights per days in the US (and so aircraft and vehicles would move hither and fro around an airport for each flight), 1700 feels like a small number.

dpark 7mo ago

Air traffic (and ground traffic) control are not simple problems. La Guardia has 350k aircraft operations (takeoffs and landings) every year. 1000/day. Peak traffic is almost certainly more than 1 plane every minute. Runways are always in use and the idea that some simple software will solve all the safety problems is not grounded in reality.

CamperBob2 7mo ago
[flagged]
- JohnMakin 7mo ago
  One jet landing every minute, coordinating the airspace for miles around the airport, along with coordinating non-landing traffic (helicopters, small craft), while making sure these (already heavily automated) flight systems dont get confused and kill several hundred people sounds easy to you, along with keeping everything on time and schedule? Go write it then.
  - estearum 7mo ago
    And I think most critically: being able to adapt all of this on the fly when invariably something goes off-plan.
    - CamperBob2 7mo ago
      Aviation is over 100 years old. Everything that can possibly happen in ATC has either already happened or can reasonably be anticipated. It's stupid, wasteful, and ultimately dangerous to make a human do a machine's job.
      - thomascountz 7mo ago
        You say it “…sounds like a simple problem,” and sure, if you think this is a computer problem, it sounds simple. But if all you’re getting back is indignant sputtering, that’s your cue to explain why it’s simple—explaining something simple shouldn't be hard. What do you actually know? It takes all of two minutes of Wikipedia reading for me to understand why this isn’t simple; why it's actually extremely not simple! If you ignore the incumbency, the regulations, the training requirements, the retrofitting, the verification, the international coordination, and the existing unfathomably reliable systems built out of past tragedies, then sure, it’s "simple". But then, if you're ignoring those things, you’re not really solving the problem, are you?

zenoprax 7mo ago

> That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point. Voice communication is insane? I suspect you are ignorant of what it is like to actually fly a large aircraft into a busy airport. Fault-tolerant and highly available hardware must facilitate low-latency, single-threaded communication with high semantic density in order to achieve multi-dimensional consensus in a safety-critical, heterogeneous, adversarial environment. There is some interesting research that captures this sentiment and shows how complex a solution might need to be (replace "faulty agent" with "human error"): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005109822003910 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00051...

ianburrell 7mo ago
Voice communication has the advantage is that it can be used without taking off hands and attention off controls. Digital solution would require using device.
- lxgr 7mo ago
  Voice communication can still be used for anything out of the ordinary despite automating the common case. Almost all voice transmissions are routine instructions/clearances from ground to air, with the pilots reading them back to reduce the chance of errors. In fact, this already exists and is in wide use in (at least) the US, EU, and in transoceanic airspace. Of course, now you have two systems that can fail, and reducing reliance on the older one can easily cause automation complacency (which is a well-researched source of errors) and require more frequent refresher courses if the skill is not practiced on a continuos basis. I suspect that that these are the reasons it's not commonly used for approach and tower operations: There's a lot more spontaneous and/or nonstandard stuff happening in those flight phases, and as you say you don't want a pilot's eyes on a tiny screen/keyboard instead of on their instruments or out the window.
- zenoprax 7mo ago
  I was originally going to reply with "Try moving a couch with eye blinks and hand signals" and then decided against it. Pilots have enough to do with their hands and feet as it is and looking for and mashing a "I accept the terms and conditions of the landing clearance" button is not really in line with the task at hand.

glitchc 7mo ago

You seem to be giving too much credit to the singleton design pattern. We know exactly how well that works on a modern, multi-tasking, preemptible operating system (hint: not well at all).

throw0101d 7mo ago

> That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point. There is digital comms with ATC without voice: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller–pilot_data_link_communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller–pilot_data_link_com... * https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/DataComm https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/DataComm But in the highly dynamic environment of final approach, landing, and taxiing, I doubt it would be practical. Unless we want to try autonomous 'driving' on taxiways and runways?

PunchyHamster 7mo ago

There are systems for it, just not really integrated into emergencies and ground vehicles. Mistakes also happen even if all info required to avoid is present

matthewkayin 7mo ago

While modernizing ATC in the US may be overdue, the real issue here is that ATC in the US has been understaffed, underpaid, and overworked for a while now. My father works ATC and his schedule has him working overtime, 6 shifts a week, including overnight shifts, meaning that there is literally not a day of the week where he doesn't spend at least some time in the tower. If that's the reality for even half of the controllers, it's no surprise that we've been seeing more and more traffic accidents lately.

doctorpangloss 7mo ago
Why do so many jobs have this failure mode? Thinking about this should illuminate for you that funding is not the whole story.
- jmalicki 7mo ago
  Okay, so then what is? Most jobs have this failure mode because there's a tendency to strip funding until disaster happens, even when it was clearly foreseeable.
  - doctorpangloss 7mo ago
    this whole thing about funding and disaster is a big red herring. it tells me why we're talking about it, but it has nothing to do with how to solve the real, meaningful socioeconomic problem and why it keeps coming up in so many jobs. this is SO simple to understand but people resist it stubbornly. they WANT outrage. economic stuff isn't outrageous. > tendency to strip funding until disaster happens well there's a tendency to pass unfunded mandates too. They are two sides of the same coin. Here's another way I've heard it described, to show you that this is a "bipartisan" issue: > the Daily Show problem. I love the Daily Show, and I think Jon Stewart is hysterical. But literally the answer to every single problem is “Congress should pass a new law.” https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/10/marc-andreessen-in-conversation.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/10/marc-andreessen-in-c... i don't think Marc Andreessen knows everything about everything the way that he thinks that he does. but he's not wrong. you are in the really lame "Congress should pass a new law" department - i guess to increase funding? - but you know, then it becomes, i don't see why it would be "enough" funding, we don't know, they could strike anyway... personally, i believe the problem with guilded professions like "ATC guy" come about from complex but nonetheless finite incentives. so in a narrow sense, as long as some ATC controllers want to "work more, earn more," this problem will persist, it doesn't even have to be all ATC controllers, or even many, but the proportion of "work more, earn more" to "work less, earn less" personalities predicts the scale of the issues facing buyers of the guilded profession's services. other economists have talked about this and i'm sure someone will write great Causality Revolution paper about it for ATC. broadly I think the problem has much more to do with the lack of economic opportunity in America, that there's minimum wage and everything else, and people are very risk averse like their peers in Europe or Asia but have less of a safety net so they are much more desperate. everyone is looking to guilds to solve their problem instead of demanding that their leaders support and deliver real growth, which makes me sound like Peter Thiel, and that should tell you everything you need to know about why this problem is so hard to solve. it's all politics, not a misunderstanding of the math about maintenance or disasters or whatever the fuck.

angst_ridden 7mo ago

Ha. My first job in '89 was working for an FFRDC reviewing IBM's Jovial code that was going to "revolutionize ATC" by modernizing everything. I'm gonna guess that code never went into production. The problem seems easy until you start looking under the hood.

_moof 7mo ago

You can't just throw software at this. It's a complex system that involves way more than just an airplane and someone in a tower. Systems engineering, human factors, and safety management systems are the relevant disciplines if you'd like to start reading up. In addition there are decades of research on the dynamics between human operators and automation, and the answer is never as simple as "just add more automation." Increased reliance on automation can paradoxically decrease safety. CPDLC is already being deployed domestically. It's currently available to all operators in en route segments. All runway incursions at towered airports are reported, classified according to risk, and investigated.

mlyle 7mo ago
On the flipside, look at the success of TCAS. It doesn't have a perfect operational history. It hasn't completely eliminated midairs, either. But it took a relatively rare event and further reduced the frequency by about a factor of 5. I wouldn't be so quick to rule out that there's some kind of relatively easy technological double check that could greatly reduce incidents. The fact that we've not gotten there despite years of effort to reduce runway incursions doesn't mean that it's not possible.
- _moof 7mo ago
  TCAS is fantastic - absolutely stellar example of effective automation. But calling a replacement of major ATC functions with software a "simple fix" is a perfect illustration of why this is a bad idea. Nothing about human-rated safety-critical software is simple, and coming at it with the attitude that it is? In my view, as an experienced pilot, flight instructor, spacecraft operator, and software engineer, that thinking is utterly disqualifying. Besides, there already are a lot of "simple" fixes in place for this problem, e.g. RWSL, which didn't prevent this accident.
  - mlyle 7mo ago
    I don't know. At some point, you need to do all the systems engineering. But "why not just ......" is a perfectly reasonable place to start looking at a problem and sometimes the answers really are that simple. > Besides, there already are a lot of "simple" fixes in place for this problem, e.g. RWSL It'll be interesting to hear why RWSL didn't help, as it is supposedly deployed at LGA.

nikanj 7mo ago

I would not trust my life to a government software project (See Phoenix Payroll for a typical case)

ranger207 7mo ago

Automating ATC is similar to automating flying in general. Even if it's possible to automate 99% of 99% of flights, including even takeoff and landing, commercial flights still have two pilots because if things start to go wrong there's just so many edge cases that you can't easily write automation to handle all of them. Same thing for ATC, except even worse. They still have control towers because controller eyeballs still work even if nothing else does, if ground radar fails, or if a vehicle doesn't have an ADS-B transponder, or if a crash eliminates the radios, etc. There's just so many edge cases that making automation be able to handle everything is extremely difficult

jjk166 7mo ago
But still, even if you need humans when things go wrong, automating away all the work for when things go right is a massive load off those people. There will always be failures, the goal is fewer failures, and especially eliminating known failure modes.

mikepurvis 7mo ago

"each one should be investigated as if an accident occurred and fixes proposed" I feel the same way about close calls on the road, especially ones involving a vehicle and a vulnerable road user like a pedestrian or cyclist. Way too many lives being saved by a person jumping out of the way at the last minute who shouldn't have had to do so, and then cops and bureaucrats shrugging with "well what do you want us to do, the numbers don't show enough fatalities here for it to be worth fixing" and later when someone actually does die it becomes "this is a horrible tragedy that no one could have seen coming, let's focus on thoughts and prayers rather than accountability that could lead to structural change."

ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
If it was all on video I'm all for it, though the argument "I wasn't driving" makes it more trouble than it's worth.
- mikepurvis 7mo ago
  As a former bike commuter who used to send helmet cam vids to my local police, I definitely got back that response a bunch of times, "we have the plate but not the face of the driver, so it's not actionable for us, even to issue a warning". Which has always seemed a little nuts, like in case of hit and run it would definitely be possible to take action based on a plate alone, both for police and insurance purposes. Unless the registered owner can point to the not-them person who was driving their car at that time, then it was them. Or it was stolen, but either way there will be a clear paper trail.
  - ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
    >Which has always seemed a little nuts, like in case of hit and run it would definitely be possible to take action based on a plate alone, both for police and insurance purposes. Unless the registered owner can point to the not-them person who was driving their car at that time, then it was them. Or it was stolen, but either way there will be a clear paper trail. All that creates a mountain of work and man hours that any police department in America would likely put on low priority. Basically our legal system is too forgiving and the possibility that someone stole their car (even if it was a friend) and returned it 20 minutes later exists, and therefore it's on the police to prove it wasn't. And the law is pretty hard to change since it would change it to 'guilty until proven innocent'.

jmyeet 7mo ago

There is a certain class of person who will take something simple like, say, brake lights on a car, and extrapolate it out to industrial control systems of something incredibly complex with demanding safety requirements and "observe" "it can't be that hard can it?" I remember a debate a year or two ago about a plane ignoring instructions (IIRC it had changed frequencies) and had taxiied onto a runway when a plane was landing. Luckily the landing plane saw this and do a go around so nobody was harmed. In the aftermath, there were similar complaints to yours. "Why can't they just have lights to block planes when a departing or landing plane was using the runway?" without thinking through how any of that works. For a start: - How do you allocate that a runway is "in use"? - If ATC does it, what if they fail to turn the system on? - What if turning it on or off fails? - What if it gets stuck on or off? How do you fix it? Are there procedures for ATC to override it anyway? - There are multiple entry points to a runway. What if they're in different states? - What company si going to sell such a system and accept liability? - What training requirements will be needed for ATC and the pilots? - What do you do if a pilot goes ahead and ignores it? I think people can't think beyond cars. Cars have had unimaginable effort put into them so they can only operate within a certain window. Even then they require maintenance. But as soon as you scale up to industrial safety and control systems, a power plant, the engine on a ship, etc you will end up with a bunch of controls where the people using them need to be skilled operators and it is essentially impossible to eliminate mistakes with automation and IT systems. You will need overrides. You will need redundancies. You will need to end up doing things nobody has ever considered before and have to rely upon training, education and experience to go beyond the envelope. That's just how it works.

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simonjgreen 7mo ago

What you are describing is sometimes considered to be part of the mythical Cat IIIC standard. The gap between Cat IIIB and Cat IIIC is being able to fully automate the entire taxiing and other ground manoeuvring. It is widely considered to be impossible to achieve safely with current tech. It does feel like the future though.

ErroneousBosh 7mo ago

> That ATC still takes place over radio just seems insane at this point How would you do it, then?

dzhiurgis 7mo ago

The Rocket-man-bad-person tried to do this last year and essentially lost his company over this.

ghaff 7mo ago

This isn’t really ATC though connected. I was just watching a presentation from Royal Schiphol today about a lot of the automation of the airport they’re putting in place as part of admittedly long-term 2050 plans. Lots of computer infrastructure rework.

mmaunder 7mo ago

I'm a ground instructor and instrument rated pilot and I fly a 206 in and out of busy charlie and delta airports. I'm also a ham radio guy (WT1J) and an SDR dev. I'm 100% with you on this, but the amount of inertia you're dealing with here approaches infinity. And there are some weirdly strong arguments for not changing things. We use AM simplex radio. That means everyone hears everyone else and that helps everyone build a situational awareness picture. Secondly we use AM because if someone transmits over someone else it makes a squealing noise so you know it happened. Also AM propagates pretty well. Most people on HN could design a pretty good digital replacement in a few minutes - and no doubt some have been suggested in these comments. But its instructive to understand a bit about aviation history. The liability risk carried by aircraft and avionics manufacturers at one point go so bad that we stopped making general aviation planes in the USA. Then that liability was limited to a very small extent by GARA, and we had what we call the 'restart' of manufacturing. So the idea of introducing a new mandatory replacement (not addition like ADS-B) for AM comms has a lot of resistance from quite a few areas: Manufacturers don't want to have to make the capex to reinvent and recertify new equipment. The US has a lot of old planes due to the lack of innovation because of the liability issue - and so those old planes all need a retrofit and pilots don't want to spend that money. Avionics for certified aircraft is already horrifically expensive. Legislators don't want to take on the risk of an incident attached to a bill they sponsored. And then there's the practical matter of now having two systems - the legacy AM comms, and the modern one that some have and some don't and the split in situational awareness between those populations. So while full-duplex is seductive, and digital is seductive, and satellite seems like the obvious endgame - the reality of transitioning is very difficult. Vehicles are listening to the same audio the pilots are, so they have the same mental picture of what's going on. Last week I talked to a maintenance vehicle at KBLI directly from the air because he was on a runway I needed to land on, at an untowered field. He cleared it, I landed, and he went about his business. So the system works pretty well most of the time. I think the root of the issue here is actually something else. Firstly there is a lot of dissatisfaction among NATCA members (ATC union) towards their union, and the view seems to be that the union could be doing a lot better job of lobbying for their workers. You can visit /r/atc or /r/atc2 on reddit to learn more. Secondly, the USA has fallen into a nasty trap where our government has positive incentives to choreograph shutdowns to get our congress members and senate members the face time that they crave. So there is a negative incentive to resolve a shutdown. Rather let it get hot, let it play out, and maybe you'll be the one to appear to save the day to your constituents. The trouble with this is that the department that creates one of the highest risks for civilians in a very visible way, is the FAA and the controllers in particular. So they have become a political football. And they're in an extremely stressful job without pay. And that's a very big problem. You're seeing this play out in a growing adversarial relationship between the NTSB (e.g. DCA) and FAA, with NTSB tearing FAA a new one recently for DCA - and rightly so. I think that's led to more demotivation at FAA which hasn't helped. So the situation is spiraling out of control. We have controllers who are overworked, who regularly don't get paid, and a union not doing the greatest job at advocating for them. Along with the recent cuts in government funding across the board. It's frustrating for pilots. The best we've been able to do is bring our local TRACON folks stacks of free pizza, both in Colorado and Seattle. But that's obviously a token gesture. I don't see a way out of it. To be perfectly honest. And it's very frustrating because the amount of good work that FAA does, is quite startling. You'd be amazed how much data they produce including real-time feeds that are freely available to devs like us. Once you get into the IFR world and start looking not just at approach plates, but the review and updating process of each, the other maps that are produced, the real-time sitrep data that they're producing - it's really quite something what they've accomplished. And the world looks to FAA for its lead in aviation. We were the first to pioneer powered fixed wing flight, after all. I can only hope there's a way out of this.

48terry 7mo ago

With the current atmosphere around technology, I feel like "digitize air traffic control" is an idea that will be both executed terribly by the money grubbing lunatics in control the government and tech corporations, AND received poorly by the public.

m3kw9 7mo ago

sounds easy, but there will always be special cases that a machine hasn't handled and cause even more accidents

the_real_cher 7mo ago

I thought the exact same thing! The technology existed to at least help automate this decades ago.

TechSquidTV 7mo ago

I guess they can't afford it, but my ego is telling me I could do this.

josefrichter 7mo ago

I wrote my university thesis 25 years ago on automating some parts of art traffic management. The fact that it's "humans over radio" coordinating everything sounded ridiculous already back then. but it's still "don't fix what ain't broken" situation - the system works surprisingly well, if you think of it, and nobody has balls (nor political power) to truly reform it.