[kayodelycaon]

That’s a nice strawman you’re creating there.

An aircraft has fewer and simpler variables to deal with than ground vehicle.

If a ground vehicle runs a red light, it’s potentially fatal error. There are more of these for a car than there are for an airplane.

You don’t have to write automation to avoid hitting trees in a plane. An airplane just needs terrain data and a few algorithms.

There are a few enough airplanes and airplane manufacturers that you could regulate a specific algorithm for traffic avoidance.

[Aurornis]

> There are more of these for a car than there are for an airplane.

Half of this comment section has strangely simplified ideas of how airplanes work and how a flight might get into trouble.

It's crazy that so many comments are convinced that completely automating airplane flight is some relatively trivial problem.

[nradov]

Those comments are coming from people whose aviation "knowledge" was learned by playing Ace Combat on Xbox and watching Snakes on a Plane. Totally disconnected from reality.

[nradov]

That's a nice strawman you're creating there. In some airspace classes and flight regimes an aircraft has more variables, especially when you account for possible failures. If an aircraft has a mechanical failure it can't just pull over and stop.

There are about 46000 aircraft registered in the USA, plus more that sometimes fly in from foreign countries. Many aircraft were manufactured decades ago by companies that no longer exist so major upgrades aren't economically practical.