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Newark’s overworked controllers might argue differently. Of course in this forum the general suggestion will be to replace tired controllers with sleepless mach

Newark’s overworked controllers might argue differently. Of course in this forum the general suggestion will be to replace tired controllers with sleepless machines, and the technologists here have strong incentives to advocate for such solutions.

CamperBob2 1y ago
(Shrug) ATC is no job for humans, and I'm tired of pretending it is. If we were building our aviation infrastructure from scratch starting today, you would get some really strange looks if you suggested employing humans to manage air traffic.
- jagger27 1y ago
  It’s like I summoned you! Just be honest about your incentives if you care to make these arguments. Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    My "incentive" is that I fly somewhere every once in a while, as do people that I care about, and I want the system to be as safe, reliable, efficient, resilient, and cost-effective as possible. Don't you?
  - sofixa 1y ago
    > Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails. Airplanes have gotten increasingly automated. Who is responsible when Airbus' excellent automations that have prevented countless upsets and accidents fail? Nobody, if it was an honest mistake, and lessons learned are applied to improve even further. The problem with modern ATC is that a lot of the safety systems are bolted and backported on top of existing extremely legacy tech. Ffs, the communications still happen over radio where transmissions are missed if more than one person talks at the same time. And people have died because of this, as well as controllers making a mistake or pilots and controllers misunderstanding each other. There's no reason to continue bolting more stuff on top. A very large part of ATC can be fully automated and made safer.
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      All true, except that a key reason they still use AM for voice communications is precisely because it's obvious if multiple users are trying to transmit at once. AM is obviously not the way a "CSMA/CD" system would be designed today, but it does get the job done, and has for a long time.
      - cperciva 1y ago
        AM is good for instructions because its broadcast nature allows everyone to hear everyone, but arguably coordinates-over-voice-over-AM is dangerously error-prone. My sense is that the ideal system might look something like "AM with a digital side band" where ATC can press buttons to transmit data (e.g. authorized altitudes and vectors) to a plane but metadata is still carried over AM. A lot of fatalities have been avoided thanks to a pilot overhearing ATC giving takeoff or landing clearance to another plane, but quite a few incidents could also have been avoided if plane cockpits had a big red light "authorized to enter runway" which could only be turned on by ATC. In an industry which is designed around so many redundant systems, it's rather astonishing that an error in a single communication channel can lead to disaster.
- agubelu 1y ago
  En-route ATC is already mostly automated, with humans supervising the system and talking to the pilots. Arrival/departure/ground ATC has to deal with much more complex traffic, emergency situations and edge cases in general. Technologically, we're nowhere near fully automating this.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    When's the last time someone in a control tower was actually surprised by anything genuinely new? (Anything that didn't involve ancient equipment breaking down in a new and unusual way, that is.) ATC is a solved problem. Nothing is going to happen that hasn't happened before, or otherwise can't be anticipated. There's nothing about ATC that inherently demands human involvement in real time.
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - quietbritishjim 1y ago
        It's very easy to make a flippant comment that disagrees with another, with no supporting evidence, but demands multiple examples from any future replies. A reply doing that could take a huge time investment to do properly (just look at agubelu's incredible reply to you). Sometimes the only feasible solution to that imbalance is a down vote.
    - agubelu 1y ago
      Happy you asked! Here are a few interesting cases that the respective ATCs probably hadn't seen before or will ever see again: - Plane loses radio communication on final approach and ignores go-around orders, lands on occupied runway as ATC gets others out of the way [1] - Guy steals a plane and takes off without permission [2] - Someone left some cones on a runway at JFK [3] - Door blows off aircraft [4] - Some dude runs across the runways [5] - Pregnant woman giving birth on flight [6] - Student pilot freaks out, ATC calms her down and gets her instructor on frequency [7] - Earthquake [8] - Pilot hits a deer [9] - Bomb threat on board, pilots decide to evacuate on the tarmac after no help arrives in ~1h [10] Some situations have probably happened before, somewhere. Some others are completely new. I would highly recommend that you watch these videos (they're all relatively short) and genuinely ask yourself whether our current state-of-the-art AI models would be able to successfully handle these situations in the short timeframe required to do so. Let alone the fact that by AI we mean text models, so I'm not sure how they would integrate with terrain information, real-time radar data, arrival/departure routes, etc. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what control towers do. They're not there to simply observe planes do their thing and intervene if they get too close. They actively handle the traffic, and this task requires human pattern recognition and cross-domain reasoning skills in a matter of seconds, and the technology to replace this is simply not there yet. If you still disagree, I'd love to learn which technologies you'd apply to this problem and how they would compose with each other in order to achieve the same outcomes as in the cases I linked. Of course, this is not to say that ATC shouldn't be made safer and more automated wherever possible. Particularly in the US, where equipment is severely outdated and some dubious regulations allow their ATCs to handle runways and give clearances in a way that would not be allowed in Europe and have already resulted in more than a few close calls. These are all valid concerns, but IMO they can't be extrapolated to "all ATC services can and should be automated". I fly often, and I for one feel safer (at least, with our current technology) knowing that there are humans in the cockpit and in the control tower who can react and take control when unexpected stuff happens. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXNWwKx9c1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXNWwKx9c1o [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LLmF9tZoEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LLmF9tZoEE [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmywjMQDbos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmywjMQDbos [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ma0JzO43Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ma0JzO43Ig [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZviKoEKAaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZviKoEKAaw [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZ3VOPlarw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZ3VOPlarw [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgc2Wh4cOgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgc2Wh4cOgo [8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o80cNJ_XhX0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o80cNJ_XhX0 [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x04kRUIgXpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x04kRUIgXpQ [10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAW2JbqxLRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAW2JbqxLRM
cperciva 1y ago
My understanding is that ATC controllers would be far less overworked if they had modern (and properly functioning!) equipment.

CamperBob2 1y ago

(Shrug) ATC is no job for humans, and I'm tired of pretending it is. If we were building our aviation infrastructure from scratch starting today, you would get some really strange looks if you suggested employing humans to manage air traffic.

jagger27 1y ago
It’s like I summoned you! Just be honest about your incentives if you care to make these arguments. Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  My "incentive" is that I fly somewhere every once in a while, as do people that I care about, and I want the system to be as safe, reliable, efficient, resilient, and cost-effective as possible. Don't you?
- sofixa 1y ago
  > Then be prepared to answer the accountability question, for when the system inevitably fails. Airplanes have gotten increasingly automated. Who is responsible when Airbus' excellent automations that have prevented countless upsets and accidents fail? Nobody, if it was an honest mistake, and lessons learned are applied to improve even further. The problem with modern ATC is that a lot of the safety systems are bolted and backported on top of existing extremely legacy tech. Ffs, the communications still happen over radio where transmissions are missed if more than one person talks at the same time. And people have died because of this, as well as controllers making a mistake or pilots and controllers misunderstanding each other. There's no reason to continue bolting more stuff on top. A very large part of ATC can be fully automated and made safer.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    All true, except that a key reason they still use AM for voice communications is precisely because it's obvious if multiple users are trying to transmit at once. AM is obviously not the way a "CSMA/CD" system would be designed today, but it does get the job done, and has for a long time.
    - cperciva 1y ago
      AM is good for instructions because its broadcast nature allows everyone to hear everyone, but arguably coordinates-over-voice-over-AM is dangerously error-prone. My sense is that the ideal system might look something like "AM with a digital side band" where ATC can press buttons to transmit data (e.g. authorized altitudes and vectors) to a plane but metadata is still carried over AM. A lot of fatalities have been avoided thanks to a pilot overhearing ATC giving takeoff or landing clearance to another plane, but quite a few incidents could also have been avoided if plane cockpits had a big red light "authorized to enter runway" which could only be turned on by ATC. In an industry which is designed around so many redundant systems, it's rather astonishing that an error in a single communication channel can lead to disaster.
agubelu 1y ago
En-route ATC is already mostly automated, with humans supervising the system and talking to the pilots. Arrival/departure/ground ATC has to deal with much more complex traffic, emergency situations and edge cases in general. Technologically, we're nowhere near fully automating this.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  When's the last time someone in a control tower was actually surprised by anything genuinely new? (Anything that didn't involve ancient equipment breaking down in a new and unusual way, that is.) ATC is a solved problem. Nothing is going to happen that hasn't happened before, or otherwise can't be anticipated. There's nothing about ATC that inherently demands human involvement in real time.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - quietbritishjim 1y ago
      It's very easy to make a flippant comment that disagrees with another, with no supporting evidence, but demands multiple examples from any future replies. A reply doing that could take a huge time investment to do properly (just look at agubelu's incredible reply to you). Sometimes the only feasible solution to that imbalance is a down vote.
  - agubelu 1y ago
    Happy you asked! Here are a few interesting cases that the respective ATCs probably hadn't seen before or will ever see again: - Plane loses radio communication on final approach and ignores go-around orders, lands on occupied runway as ATC gets others out of the way [1] - Guy steals a plane and takes off without permission [2] - Someone left some cones on a runway at JFK [3] - Door blows off aircraft [4] - Some dude runs across the runways [5] - Pregnant woman giving birth on flight [6] - Student pilot freaks out, ATC calms her down and gets her instructor on frequency [7] - Earthquake [8] - Pilot hits a deer [9] - Bomb threat on board, pilots decide to evacuate on the tarmac after no help arrives in ~1h [10] Some situations have probably happened before, somewhere. Some others are completely new. I would highly recommend that you watch these videos (they're all relatively short) and genuinely ask yourself whether our current state-of-the-art AI models would be able to successfully handle these situations in the short timeframe required to do so. Let alone the fact that by AI we mean text models, so I'm not sure how they would integrate with terrain information, real-time radar data, arrival/departure routes, etc. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what control towers do. They're not there to simply observe planes do their thing and intervene if they get too close. They actively handle the traffic, and this task requires human pattern recognition and cross-domain reasoning skills in a matter of seconds, and the technology to replace this is simply not there yet. If you still disagree, I'd love to learn which technologies you'd apply to this problem and how they would compose with each other in order to achieve the same outcomes as in the cases I linked. Of course, this is not to say that ATC shouldn't be made safer and more automated wherever possible. Particularly in the US, where equipment is severely outdated and some dubious regulations allow their ATCs to handle runways and give clearances in a way that would not be allowed in Europe and have already resulted in more than a few close calls. These are all valid concerns, but IMO they can't be extrapolated to "all ATC services can and should be automated". I fly often, and I for one feel safer (at least, with our current technology) knowing that there are humans in the cockpit and in the control tower who can react and take control when unexpected stuff happens. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXNWwKx9c1o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXNWwKx9c1o [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LLmF9tZoEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LLmF9tZoEE [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmywjMQDbos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmywjMQDbos [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ma0JzO43Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ma0JzO43Ig [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZviKoEKAaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZviKoEKAaw [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZ3VOPlarw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pZ3VOPlarw [7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgc2Wh4cOgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgc2Wh4cOgo [8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o80cNJ_XhX0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o80cNJ_XhX0 [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x04kRUIgXpQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x04kRUIgXpQ [10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAW2JbqxLRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAW2JbqxLRM

cperciva 1y ago

My understanding is that ATC controllers would be far less overworked if they had modern (and properly functioning!) equipment.