Can AI and automated planes help prevent plane crashes?

More than 100 people have been killed in air crashes this year already, including in a midair collision between a commercial airliner and a helicopter near Washington, DC, and a plane crashing into a bus on a Sao Paulo street.The fatal incidents in the first two months of the new year came after last year was declared one of the deadliest in aviation history with at least 318 deaths in 11 civilian airplane crashes, including two incidents in the last week of December.While fatal air crashes are rare, they attract extraordinary attention, often reinstilling the fear of flying. The fear is often exacerbated not just by the crashes but also incidents like emergency landings, a door blowing off a plane and aircraft skidding off runways.Industry experts and investigations concur that human error is to blame for a majority of crashes.While artificial intelligence is being heavily used in the aviation industry – from route optimisation and fuel efficiency to predictive maintenance and sustainability – can it also be used to make flying safer and prevent disasters and loss of life?Embracing tech Safety is a top priority in the aviation industry, where the wellbeing of passengers and crew and the efficient functioning of air travel are paramount, according to a research paper titled Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Safety: Systematic Review and Biometric Analysis. “As the industry evolves, embracing technological advancements like AI becomes crucial,” it said.In 2023, there was one accident for every 1.26 million flights, according to the International Air Transport Association. That figure was the lowest rate in more than a decade. But that was followed by more than 400 casualties in the next 14 months.Up to 80% of all aviation accidents are attributed to human error with pilot error thought to account for 53% of aircraft accidents. Still, air travel is not the most dangerous form of travel, according to Panish-Shea-Ravipudi LLP, a law firm in Los Angeles, California.“Air travel is only as safe as the operator, the equipment and the training procedures that underlie the flight itself. Without stringent aviation safety training and controls, air travel is unsafe for private and commercial passengers,” it said.Speed of change“Human error, misjudgement, fatigue, poor decision-making is the major factor behind air accidents,” Farzam said. “AI could eliminate these risks, leading to safer flights. But the main issue will be trust. We understand that innovation inevitably needs a hybrid step before we go full on. Autonomous air taxis and sky buses will come, but not in the next 15 years. Human beings need to get ready for it.”In January 2023, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said: “I think the future of autonomy is real for civil [aviation].”“It’s going to take time. Everyone’s got to build confidence. We need a certification process that we all have faith and believe in,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.“Today, many aircraft functions are already automated, with high precision and integrity autopilots and flight control systems guiding planes through the skies along carefully planned routes, often without much human intervention. "Onboard automation coupled with the right space and ground-based positioning and communication infrastructures are also capable of routinely landing widebody airliners safely in challenging, zero-visibility conditions,” authors David Hyde and Jia Xu wrote.More testingBut Malik, a qualified pilot himself, argued that putting AI into a plane right now “is going to give us more problems than solutions because you have to communicate with the ground, with other airplanes and there’s a lot going on”.“It’s not that it’s not here already, but it just needs a lot more testing, bit more development. We also need to look at how we can bring AI into the ATC realm. Because if AI is flying the plane, your ATC operator can’t just pick up the radio and say, ‘Hey AI, can you drop down 500 feet?’. That’s not going to work.“If you try to implement that kind of a solution, we are just going towards something which is way more complex than it has to be. So the solution is that we start working towards something that will become completely AI driven on both ground and air sides.”“The new era has begun, and hopefully AI will also help us all to accelerate sustainability in aviation, not just sandbox projects, but actual impactful sustainable solutions for aviation," Farzam said.

Can AI and automated planes help prevent plane crashes?

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-02

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Can AI and automated planes help prevent plane crashes?

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-02

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