[radishingr]

ATC is hundreds of functions and dozens of responsibilities like checking that the runway is safe to land. "Clear to land" is not just a turn of phrase, it is a check and verify that an aircraft with hundreds of people is relying on.

Air traffic is not a deterministic system, it is squishy and significantly more complicated because it involves humans, complex mechanical systems, and weather floating on top of a sea of limited resources.

[nandomrumber]

Automating just the error prone radio calls would be a massive start.

Those could be sent as short text messages that appear on a screen in the cockpit, for the pilots to acknowledge receipt of with a limit set of responses, and would give ATC a lot more time to focus on their other duties.

[cullenking]

So like texting and driving, but in the air? Flying is hard, I don’t think an automated text based system would be safer than what we have now.

[nradov]

This is already being done at many major airports through the FAA Data Comm program.

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/data-communications-data-comm-0

[cjrp]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller%E2%80%93pilot_data_...

[rainsford]

Automating various functions seems like a good idea. But it's not going to remove the humans from the loop in the event of a future government shutdown, which is what the original suggestion seemed to be.

[inglor_cz]

So leave the stuff that it suitable for humans to humans and automate everything else.

The general experience from the last 50 years is that reducing the human capacity for error by automation was mostly helpful in air traffic safety.

At the very least, safety mechanisms such as TCAS should be introduced where possible [1], to act as a protection of last resort when humans fail.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...