> Or is a large scale disaster the only way to make people understand the urgency?

Yes. And a controller is going to get scapegoated (likely ruining their life) when a few hundred people die in the process, versus the failing system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/02/business/air-traffic-cont... | https://archive.today/bFcAh

(Obviously, I would rather be wrong about this)

> But The Times found that the combination of six-day workweeks and round-the-clock schedules has caused controllers to develop physical and mental health problems. Many avoid seeking professional help because doing so might jeopardize the medical clearances they need to work.

This is happening frequently to pilots and cabin crew as well, all over the world. Regulators have allowed a lot of flex in rostering in recent years, maybe a bit too much.

> Obviously, I would rather be wrong about this

No, you're right, this is a common procedure across industries

Two planes collided in LAX in 1991 due to what was clearly a controller error, killing 35. Investigators decided that anyone could have made such a mistake given circumstances. The controller wasn't punished, and instead a bunch of changes were made to prevent similar situations in the future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_runway_disaster

Obviously it would be ideal if such changes are made before planes collide, but the US air accident investigation system generally does its job, as far as I've heard.

It's really crazy that ATC isn't 99% computerized. It's exactly the kind of problem which is trivial for a computer program with all the necessary information, but incredibly stressful for a human.

I'd argue against the triviality, but even if we accept that premise, the exact challenge is "with all the necessary information".

Human ATC operators integrate a huge variety of information including voice comms to build a situational awareness of not just the current position and velocities of planes, but also their stated intentions.

Yes, with sufficient coordination you could push all of that over into the cockpit and have the pilots input their intentions directly. We all know that voice transcription is a bit hit and miss (though the phraselogy used would probably be quite helpful), and certainly typing is... not optimal for emergencies.

This aligns with basically all questions about automation in aviation (including in the cockpit). Automated systems can generally out perform human operators in probably the 99.99+% of typical cases. However a human with full situational awareness is still critical in the remaining situations. The challenge is that:

* For a human to have proper awareness, they must be meaningfully engaged. They must actually be having some real agency and effect on the system.

* Neither full human nor full automation provides the degree of safety and performance that we currently desire. Somehow we must integrate the two systems together.

It's not exactly trivial, certainly when it comes to the edge cases. Emergencies, unusual situations, etc.

If it's so trivial, why do you think we haven't done it yet?

The same reason why ACH transfers still happen by transferring large files to a FTP server once a day or why San Francisco's train routing system still uses 5.25-inch floppy disks or why social security payments are calculated by a system running COBOL. It has always worked this way, and there's no political will or public pressure to change it.

Are you a pilot? Or an ATC perhaps? No?

This worldview, commonly espoused by Silicon Valley types, that every problem is just one iphone app away from being solved, is nauseating.

There are so many corner cases you cannot even imagine! Special requests. Weather. Emergencies.

It’s is 99% computerized. It’s the last 1% that requires significant human interpretation and reaction to real world events.

Even further, many of these problems do not lie solely with ATC. They also involve humans, piloting the airplanes.

I don't get why this incident occurred, it should be quite preventable with the currently installed (quite simple) technology, namely status lights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_status_lights

They're apparently installed according to this PDF: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/rwsl/media/JFK.pd...

In this case, planes coming from 04R (per the article) were crossing 04L. All the normal crossings of 04L I see in this PDF are equipped with the lights.

So what went wrong?

I'm a big fan of overhauling the system for a lot of reasons, but safety isn't one of them. 'Close call' without 'accident' still means there wasn't an accident. Rebuilding the system because you think it is dangerous will likely lead to a less safe system since the one in place is incredibly safe with many years of statistics to prove it.

However, overhauling the current system because it is incapable of handling the future where autonomous vehicles flood the skies, now that is something I can get behind.

> 'Close call' without 'accident' still means there wasn't an accident.

It's a giant red flag in any serious OSHA system in resource mining, energy extraction, military logistics, etc.

In order to reduce fatal accidents close attention is paid to the full incident pyramid, minor accidents and near misses.

Fiftty years of practice about the globe strongly makes the case that a reduction in near misses and non fatal incidents has a real flow on to reducing fatal accidents.

> the one in place is incredibly safe with many years of statistics to prove it.

Achieved via exactly the kind of OSHA attention to small details and near misses system just outlined.

The safety officers at New York and elsewhere will be failing at their job if they are not putting some the hours in to looking at this incident and how to mitigate future occurrences .. especially when visibility is lower than on this day.

I agree with all your points. My discussion points were about the original comment about the need to 'overhaul' the system. Right now I bet there is an investigation going on into this incident and it will likely lead to appropriate changes. I also suspect that many different entities have just upped their trackers of incidents to collect exactly the trend data that can prevent future issues, just like they should be doing. In other words the current system doesn't need a safety overhaul because it is doing everything reasonable and doing it well and has the stats to back up that it is doing reasonable things.

Arguing that the system is safe and doesn't need an overhaul is not the same thing as arguing that the system should start ignoring things.

Furious agreement here;

iterative change is a part of the system, self reflection and pivoting to address issues as they first appear to avoid future consequences is very much how these things should work.

We've had too many runway incursions throughout US aviation, and efforts to reduce them with minor iterations to process have not been successful. It may be time to think about more major changes.

> 'Close call' without 'accident' still means there wasn't an accident.

Close calls are a very important signal for how safe the system is.

Good safety systems are redundant and require many failures to result in a crash. Here, we got down to the last link in the chain: weather was clear and the departing pilots could see there was an obvious problem while there was time to stop.

> since the one in place is incredibly safe with many years of statistics to prove it.

We've gotten to this safe system by chipping away at problems we see-- both from actual accidents and close calls. The only way we reach and keep (and perhaps surpass) this level of safety is to keep (carefully) correcting problems.

(And yes, there is risk of changes making things worse. We need to do our best to avoid that and detect it quickly if it happens).

> However, overhauling the current system because it is incapable of handling the future where autonomous vehicles flood the skies, now that is something I can get behind.

Until cars can drive themselves without crashing into stopped fire trucks[1], I don’t want anything autonomous flying anywhere near where I live.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tesla-driver-killed-plo...

People do that a lot too. Over 40k people died on the roads in 2022. Maybe we could save some of them if we went autonomous. The better decision point is about overall safety, not one-off incidents. In aviation, like driving, the #1 source of accidents is human error.

sounds like the movie Swordfish