[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.

[nandomrumber]

Try responding to the strongest possible interpretation of what someone says.

Anyway, this wasn’t my idea, it came from one of the handful of active / recently retired commercial pilots on YouTube.

[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

[nandomrumber]

Thanks for linking that, I wasn’t aware it was that far in to development / production.

[cjrp]

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

[nandomrumber]

Thanks, appreciate a good rabbit hole.

[cjrp]

Just to add to it, you can see a feed of some messages sent between pilots and their operations team: https://acarsdrama.com

[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.