Sounds like a helpful idea with considerable implementation complexity, including the potential for new disastrous failure modes.

Not really because each point is only adjacent to a small neighborhood of other points, so if you want to test every possibility then your search space only grows by a constant factor proportional to the maximum degree of the graph.

As for implementation complexity, you would hope they would use formal verification for something like this.

But its how the waypoint codes work in practice - they are contextual. If Air Traffic Control tell a plane to head for waypoint RESIA, they mean the one nearby, not the one 4000 km away.

Have to admit, I read the article in full detail only after commenting and I see your point.

Especially since the implenting company is called out explicitly for failing to achieve this, and the risks of changing the well-established identifiers are also illustrated.

Perfect might be the enemy of the good then, or the standardization thing at least is a separate topic.