The Federal Aviation Administration says flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility.
Thing is, it’s been technically possible to automate 95% of the ATC job for decades now. Obviously, you want a human to step in for that last 5% when things get tough.
But that’s a problem all on its own. If the human steps in for that 5% of times when things get tough, they have to have the training to deal with a tough situation. They hone those skills through practice with the other 95% of the time. What you actually want is to have the human take over 25% of it, and cover a broad range of different situations in that 25%.
Choosing when to give over control some of the time is the hard part. Much harder than just waiting until it’s too complicated.
It has not happened yet, and definitely did not happen in February as you stated
The reported deadline for switching the contract was in March. The fact we haven’t received any news about it likely means the efforts to replace Verizon with SpaceX failed
It’s specifically in regards to communication between towers/approach/center and their associated data sources. It doesn’t actually affect the day-to-day operations of ATC. “Modernize” is just a political buzzword being thrown out by politicians here. When ATC talks about the need to modernize, they’re referring to the technologies used. Two separate things being conflated by politicians looking for a cheap win
I’d be willing to bet on trump speculating in the next few days that we should get AI to do their jobs.
While I’m sure you’re being facetious, if that ever happened that would be the last time I step into a plane.
Thing is, it’s been technically possible to automate 95% of the ATC job for decades now. Obviously, you want a human to step in for that last 5% when things get tough.
But that’s a problem all on its own. If the human steps in for that 5% of times when things get tough, they have to have the training to deal with a tough situation. They hone those skills through practice with the other 95% of the time. What you actually want is to have the human take over 25% of it, and cover a broad range of different situations in that 25%.
Choosing when to give over control some of the time is the hard part. Much harder than just waiting until it’s too complicated.
This already happened. Back in February, Musk/SpaceX got the contact to “modernize” ATC.
Pretty sure you’re referring to the Verizon contract to upgrade ATC communications backbone potentially being handed over to SpaceX
It has not happened yet, and definitely did not happen in February as you stated
The reported deadline for switching the contract was in March. The fact we haven’t received any news about it likely means the efforts to replace Verizon with SpaceX failed
It’s specifically in regards to communication between towers/approach/center and their associated data sources. It doesn’t actually affect the day-to-day operations of ATC. “Modernize” is just a political buzzword being thrown out by politicians here. When ATC talks about the need to modernize, they’re referring to the technologies used. Two separate things being conflated by politicians looking for a cheap win