Air Traffic Controllers To Disappear By 2020?

from the believe-it-when-I-see-it dept

Roland Piquepaille writes "This might be the case if a new computer system developed by British Aerospace proves to be successful. The Electronic Telegraph covers the story, in "Computer system 'can land aircraft without air traffic controllers'." "British Aerospace scientists have developed a revolutionary airborne computer system that they claim can land aircraft safely without human air traffic controllers. It will enable a pilot to determine an aircraft's landing path simply by pressing a button in the cockpit." The technology was tested in March while leading airlines should adopt it by 2008. And in 2020, all air traffic controllers should be replaced by this computer system. Scary thought, isn't? This reminds me another frightening story published last year by Salon.com, which stated that Microsoft wanted us to take planes without pilots by 2030. My blog contains more details, including an illustration showing how the system works." I've been hearing similar predictions for years. I'll believe it when I see it.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Munich, 25 Aug 2003 @ 9:24am

    Air Traffic Controllers Disappeared For a While in

    Ofcourse, technology had nothing to do with it, and a good chunk of readers probably were too young or not born so have no idea what I am talking about.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Lawrence L. Piper, 25 Aug 2003 @ 2:48pm

    Re: Air Traffic Controllers Disappeared For a Whil

    I'm assuming you may be referring to the PATCO ATC strike that began Aug. 3, 1981, (your comment was somehow truncated). Most people don't know that 12,000 USA controllers were fired by Ronald Reagan and barred for life from returning to their profession. Also, it was successfully hidden that the FAA illegally used military controllers to break the strike and fortunately got away with it without losing any aircraft. This might be used as an earlier example of the media 'caving in' to a Republican administration, indicating that what has happened recently is not altogether unique.

    As to ATC being done away with? It could not be considered unless some other redundancy besides controllers could be developed to handle likely terrorist activity. How are we doing with the development of AI?

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.