In the “dupside uown” world of the current era of innovation, the powers that be at the Federal Aviation Association are recommending that the Trump administration fund updates to what the agency calls “antiquated aircraft control hardware” with a price tag hovering in the billions and safety at a premium.
As Americans already face the stark reality of drivers driving vehicles, drivers and vehicles and drivers driving, and AI driving vehicles, the FAA has authored sweeping proposals to have aircraft eventually receive and execute flight instructions entirely through software. With the number of traffic fatalities caused by similar technology, the future of the friendly skies has become rather ominous. In the wake of overengineering dominating the aviation industry, like a pendulous identity crises of circular logic, what could possibly go wrong with computers handling takeoff and landing patterns? Imagine behemoth jetliners colliding above the runways over cities and farms, as the cold calculated silicon brains of autonomy relay orders to pilots based on pure logic and probability indifferent to the empathic based human response.
The current system used for communication between flight controllers and aircraft is four decades old and allows only one channel of talkback per frequency, which is not conducive to addressing an emergency situation. Change is definitely needed but applied in a gradual upgrade of a hybrid software/hardware fusion that embodies redundancy and reliability. In response to the possible application of the latest generation of technological innovations to optimize the outdated, the FAA is pressing the President and staff to allocate munificent amounts of capital to oversee a major makeover if not a flyover. Unfortunately, within the context of the entire scope of the nation, the plans for the massive makeover in monitoring and patrolling the flow of low and high altitude jetways are ambitious but from a logistics perspective, recklessly naive.
An apt metaphor for the FAA directive for the complete tear down of air traffic control systems which may or may not involve a rusted wrecking ball is the adaption of smart vehicles into the commutes and traffic patterns of everyday life and the nation’s roadways. The results of the self-driving vehicle experiment which favors the software suite over the process of meticulous evolution encompassing hundreds of millions of years has thus far been a quasi-travesty, as the failure of the computer to recognize hazardous situations combined with the driver gorging on nachos and doing tax returns while incessantly swiping right on dating sites has led to hundreds of preventable accidents within an unethical DMZ zone level of live traffic testing. The state of Arizona banned the use of public roadways as proving grounds after a pedestrian was plowed over by a self-driving sedan and the driver afforded seven seconds to avoid the collision while the computer could not correctly process the situational datum. With a teetering precedent already set in the lack of performance, atypical optimists may be forced to identify as curmudgeonly pedantic pessimists in showing limited enthusiasm for the pending fate of passengers and aircraft relating to unproven technology that is rushed into activation based on the similar infrastructure and subsequent performance and the phenomenon of Tesla. This is a disaster not only waiting, but salivating in imagined conquest to happen.
As aforementioned safety is the crucial emphasis of the Trump administration in reference to public transportation, which in this case distinguishes the past from the present and defines a conflict and schism between flight engineers. However, the inability at this juncture of the game to isolate and comprehend the ebb and flow of economic dogma remains a glaring concern, in trading out branding and the mechanism for predictable success. In other words the allure of dollars and sparkling microchips are more exciting and enticing than compliant dinosaurs to the decision makers residing in the ineffectual laboratory of bureaucracy.
