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I’m not saying we couldn’t move more into automation. What I’m saying is that doing so will not solve all of our air/ground control problems. We still have huma

by dpark 7mo ago

I’m not saying we couldn’t move more into automation. What I’m saying is that doing so will not solve all of our air/ground control problems. We still have human pilots and humans driving vehicles on the ground. Switching from humans directing landings to machines might improve some things but will not solve for all (and probably not most) risks. Literally the crash here was caused by a fire truck entering the runway.

clint 7mo ago
The ATC told them to enter the runway because they were confused or distracted due t overwork. No one here or anywhere is saying automation would solve or be able to handle everything that human operators handle, that's an argument you invented that no one is making. People are saying automation could handle a significant portion of the routine things allowing humans to handle the more complex/finicky issues. Even if automation could handle 10% of the most common situations it would be a huge boon. In reality its probably closer to 50%.
- dpark 7mo ago
  > The ATC told them to enter the runway because they were confused or distracted due t overwork. Very possibly. It will be interesting what comes from the investigation. > No one here or anywhere is saying automation would solve or be able to handle everything that human operators handle, that's an argument you invented that no one is making. I’m asking if it would have solved even the current situation. The truck presumably saw the red light, and was asking to cross. Would traffic control have said no if more had been automated and if so, what automation would fix this? Unless we are supposing the truck would be autonomously driven and refuse to proceed when planes are landing, in which case, maybe, though that’s not really ATC automation anymore.
  - Palomides 7mo ago
    an automated system that could check if a plane is about to land on a runway and show some kind of alert or red light is hardly a stretch of the imagination
    - dpark 7mo ago
      That’s such a great idea that it already exists and is deployed at La Guardia. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
      - Nition 7mo ago
        Thank you for providing your aviation knowledge to this discussion. What a classic example of tech people thinking that because they're smart, every other industry must be dumb and they can just jump in and fix it.
        dpark 7mo ago
        I also do not like this persistent tone of “everyone else is stupid; software would easily fix it” that pops up so often. Not all problems are easy to fix with some code. To be clear, though, I don’t even have significant aviation knowledge. But this isn’t hard to learn about. That’s part of what irks me so much about this tone. It’s not just “I’m so smart” it’s “I’m so confident that you’re dumb that I don’t need to know anything about the domain you’re working in to know better than you”. Someone could ask ChatGPT why airports don’t have stoplights to stop traffic from crossing the runway and it would reveal the existence of this system.
        jerbearito 7mo ago
        > "I don’t need to know anything about the domain you’re working in to know better than you" This frustates me to no end. Is it just an example of the Dunning–Kruger effect?
        dpark 7mo ago
        Something like that. It feels a bit different because it’s less about overestimating one’s knowledge/ability and more about underestimating the complexity of domains outside one’s expertise. But yeah. Very similar.
        7mo ago
- cogman10 7mo ago
  There's unfortunately an alertness problem WRT automated systems. If the reason you have the human there is to handle the unusual cases, you run the real risk that they just aren't paying attention at critical moments when they need to pay attention. It's pretty similar to the problem with L3 autonomous driving. Probably the sweet spot is automation which makes clear the current set of instructions on the airport which also red flags when a dangerous scenario is created. I believe that already exists, but it's software that was last written in 1995 or so. Regardless, before any sort of new automation could be deployed, we need slack for the ATC to be able to adopt a new system. That's the biggest pressing problem. We could create the perfect software for ATC, but if the current air traffic controllers are all working overtime and doing a job designed for 3 people rather than one, they simply won't have the time to explore and understand that new system. It'll get in the way rather than solve a problem. More money is part of the solution here, but we also need a revamped ATC training program which can help to fill the current hole.
- ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
  In an ideal world this would be like rail traffic, where the runway would be 'locked' (red signal) due to the landing plane, and the fire engine would have to explicitly request an override to cross the locked runway, and importantly, this process has to be _rare_. If it's something that's done 5000 times a day, it'll be normalized. Everyone involved should be aware of the dangers of traversing a 'locked' runway.
  - burntwater 7mo ago
    My understanding that this scenario is exactly what happened here.

by dpark 7mo ago

clint 7mo ago

The ATC told them to enter the runway because they were confused or distracted due t overwork. No one here or anywhere is saying automation would solve or be able to handle everything that human operators handle, that's an argument you invented that no one is making. People are saying automation could handle a significant portion of the routine things allowing humans to handle the more complex/finicky issues. Even if automation could handle 10% of the most common situations it would be a huge boon. In reality its probably closer to 50%.

dpark 7mo ago
> The ATC told them to enter the runway because they were confused or distracted due t overwork. Very possibly. It will be interesting what comes from the investigation. > No one here or anywhere is saying automation would solve or be able to handle everything that human operators handle, that's an argument you invented that no one is making. I’m asking if it would have solved even the current situation. The truck presumably saw the red light, and was asking to cross. Would traffic control have said no if more had been automated and if so, what automation would fix this? Unless we are supposing the truck would be autonomously driven and refuse to proceed when planes are landing, in which case, maybe, though that’s not really ATC automation anymore.
- Palomides 7mo ago
  an automated system that could check if a plane is about to land on a runway and show some kind of alert or red light is hardly a stretch of the imagination
  - dpark 7mo ago
    That’s such a great idea that it already exists and is deployed at La Guardia. https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl
    - Nition 7mo ago
      Thank you for providing your aviation knowledge to this discussion. What a classic example of tech people thinking that because they're smart, every other industry must be dumb and they can just jump in and fix it.
      - dpark 7mo ago
        I also do not like this persistent tone of “everyone else is stupid; software would easily fix it” that pops up so often. Not all problems are easy to fix with some code. To be clear, though, I don’t even have significant aviation knowledge. But this isn’t hard to learn about. That’s part of what irks me so much about this tone. It’s not just “I’m so smart” it’s “I’m so confident that you’re dumb that I don’t need to know anything about the domain you’re working in to know better than you”. Someone could ask ChatGPT why airports don’t have stoplights to stop traffic from crossing the runway and it would reveal the existence of this system.
        jerbearito 7mo ago
        > "I don’t need to know anything about the domain you’re working in to know better than you" This frustates me to no end. Is it just an example of the Dunning–Kruger effect?
        dpark 7mo ago
        Something like that. It feels a bit different because it’s less about overestimating one’s knowledge/ability and more about underestimating the complexity of domains outside one’s expertise. But yeah. Very similar.
        7mo ago
cogman10 7mo ago
There's unfortunately an alertness problem WRT automated systems. If the reason you have the human there is to handle the unusual cases, you run the real risk that they just aren't paying attention at critical moments when they need to pay attention. It's pretty similar to the problem with L3 autonomous driving. Probably the sweet spot is automation which makes clear the current set of instructions on the airport which also red flags when a dangerous scenario is created. I believe that already exists, but it's software that was last written in 1995 or so. Regardless, before any sort of new automation could be deployed, we need slack for the ATC to be able to adopt a new system. That's the biggest pressing problem. We could create the perfect software for ATC, but if the current air traffic controllers are all working overtime and doing a job designed for 3 people rather than one, they simply won't have the time to explore and understand that new system. It'll get in the way rather than solve a problem. More money is part of the solution here, but we also need a revamped ATC training program which can help to fill the current hole.
ApolloFortyNine 7mo ago
In an ideal world this would be like rail traffic, where the runway would be 'locked' (red signal) due to the landing plane, and the fire engine would have to explicitly request an override to cross the locked runway, and importantly, this process has to be _rare_. If it's something that's done 5000 times a day, it'll be normalized. Everyone involved should be aware of the dangers of traversing a 'locked' runway.
- burntwater 7mo ago
  My understanding that this scenario is exactly what happened here.