The current rash of airline incidents reminds me of the assembly instruction: Torque fastener until you hear expensive sounds and then back off a quarter turn.
We've accelerated past our capabilities and need to slow down. ATC has incentive to slot takeoffs and landings as close as possible, but that is in tension with the goal of safety.
> Air traffic control from first principles looks significantly more automated.
We have a system 'designed' by history, not by intention. The ATC environment is implemented in the physical world, everyone has to work around physical limitations
Automation works best in controlled environments with limited scope. The more workaround you have to add, the noisier things get, and that's why we use humans to filter the noise by picking important things to say. Humans can physically experience changes in the environment, and our filters are built from our experiences in the physical world.
> We've accelerated past our capabilities and need to slow down.
This is a super interesting meditation. As much work as there is to be done now, the demand for air traffic is growing and power laws are concentrating it into tight airspace bubbles. It would behoove us to figure out how to make airspace more dense without compromising safety. There's lots of good economic incentive for this.
> how to make airspace more dense without compromising safety.
My suggestion would be to make things as repeatable and consistent as possible. This would mean forcing some airports to change their practices to be consistent with everyone else, and forcing physical layout changes and construction. Unfortunately an app can't do that =( ... and the benefits are on the other side of a paradigm shift, so it's hard to make it happen naturally.
>> more dense
Large, high passenger capacity airliners have gone out of style but that would have been the best way to get passenger density up.
We've accelerated past our capabilities and need to slow down. ATC has incentive to slot takeoffs and landings as close as possible, but that is in tension with the goal of safety.
> Air traffic control from first principles looks significantly more automated.
We have a system 'designed' by history, not by intention. The ATC environment is implemented in the physical world, everyone has to work around physical limitations
Automation works best in controlled environments with limited scope. The more workaround you have to add, the noisier things get, and that's why we use humans to filter the noise by picking important things to say. Humans can physically experience changes in the environment, and our filters are built from our experiences in the physical world.
Anyway, sorry that isn't a question.