From the tower, the runway looks calm. On the screens, forty aircraft are converging on a single approach path, each a moving dot with a call sign and a few seconds of margin.

A new generation of routing software can already handle most of that choreography. Controllers say the remaining part is the hardest one to automate.

What software misses

Controllers describe hearing stress in a pilot’s voice, or noticing that a routine request came a few seconds too late. Those cues rarely show up in data.

“The system sees positions. We see intentions.”

A shared cockpit

Regulators favour a hybrid model in which software proposes and humans decide. Unions want that written into law before the next wave of upgrades.