Human Air Traffic Controllers Keep Flyers Safe. Should Ai Have A Role?

Why air traffic controllers are under more pressure than ever

Inside the growing stress in U.S. air traffic control towers.

• Outdated technology and staffing shortages at Newark Liberty International Airport have led to ongoing flight delays and cancellations.
• Experts warn that underfunding the FAA has prevented necessary technological upgrades and hiring of air traffic controllers.
• The Transportation Secretary proposed a program to modernize the system and incentivize hiring, but Congressional funding is still needed.

Old technology is behind the recent ongoing delays and cancellations at Newark Liberty International Airport, but newer technology will be an important part of the solution.

To recap, on April 28, air traffic controllers handling inbound traffic at Newark experienced a brief radar and radio outage. Similar failures have occurred at least three times since then, and in response, the Federal Aviation Administration and airlines have reduced the number of flights operating in and out of the airport.

It's the kind of failure experts have been warning was inevitable for years.

“All these issues of staffing, all these issues of using copper wires instead of fiber optics, these have been there for a long time,” Sheldon Jacobson, professor of computer science at the University of Illinois’ Grainger College of Engineering, told USA TODAY.

Jacobson said the technology in air traffic control towers is largely outdated, but like an old car, it worked well until it started breaking down.

“People are now paying attention," he said. “They put more airplanes in the sky than the system can absorb, and what’s happened is we've reached a tipping point. We have so much volume, and we have pretty much the same air traffic control technology for decades."

The FAA's air traffic control issues didn't develop overnight, although the current headaches at Newark did catch many travelers by surprise.

Industry watchers have long warned that Congress was under-funding the FAA, preventing the agency from upgrading its technology and limiting its ability to hire and train new air traffic controllers.

According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the FAA is short about 3,000 air traffic controllers nationwide, and continues to rely on outdated technology like floppy disks to perform some crucial functions.

Still, Jacobson said, that doesn't mean air travel isn't safe.

“The FAA, the airlines, and all of the supporting people have worked diligently to make air travel safer, and it’s never been safer," he said. And that's part of the reason there are more delays and cancellations as air traffic control equipment falters.

"The only way to ensure the safety is to bring the volume down so we're not at that tipping point," Jacobson said.

Successive administrations from both parties in Washington have promised fixes to the FAA's air traffic control program, but the solutions have been piecemeal so far.

Duffy recently announced a sweeping program to upgrade the agency's technology infrastructure, as well as hiring incentives to entice more would-be air traffic controllers.

However, a funding commitment from Congress was missing from his announcement. That hurdle has prevented previous administrations from implementing such overhauls.

Even if lawmakers fund the Trump administration's proposals, implementing the upgrades will likely take a long time.

“This isn’t going to happen in three years. This is going to take several years,” Jacobson said. “It’s expensive and time-consuming.”

He also warned that it will add expense, complexity, and time because the upgrades will need to be rolled out without taking the current air traffic control system offline.

“You’re trying to update a system while it’s still working," he said.

Eventually, the FAA will roll out new technology for air traffic control, and while Jacobson said air traffic controllers won't ever be fully replaced by computers, he did acknowledge that new tech has a role to play in optimizing the nation's airspace.

“If we leave that off the table, we’re forcing ourselves to use more manpower," he said.

Jacobson said that, since the FAA and airlines prioritize safety above all else, it doesn't make sense to remove humans from the air traffic control equation entirely. Pilots' unions have also long advocated the safety importance of having two highly trained aviators in the cockpit of every commercial flight, despite growing calls from some outside groups to explore flight control automation. However, using artificial intelligence and other technology to ease the controllers' burden could actually make the system safer.

“There are a lot of very perfunctory tasks that, working with ATC, an AI system could direct airplanes to," Jacobson said, like issuing initial clearance for pilots to push back from their gates, or guiding them to the start of the taxiway.

"You don’t compromise safety, that is the most important objective, but you're giving them a little more breathing room or legroom to get their job done."

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.