Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping industries like medicine, fraud detection and more but if you want that the technology enhances your in-flight experience, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian has a message for you: Not happening. In a conversation with Fortune, Bastian said he does not expect AI to change what flying feels like for passengers but the one area where AI can dramatically improve aviation is air traffic control.
‘The real problem is in the sky, not the seat’
He says that the air traffic control is aging, it is understaffed and technologically outdated system that coordinates the movement of thousands of aircraft across the country every day.“I think that would do more in terms of helping our customers have quicker travel, more efficient travel than, candidly, most any other deployment of the technology that I can think about,” Bastian said. He said a well-executed AI deployment in air traffic control can be “an amazing” development for aviation.Beyond routing and coordination, Bastian also pointed to AI’s potential to read atmospheric conditions more accurately, predict turbulence earlier and better understand complex airflow patterns which can have improvements that could make flights not just faster, but smoother and safer.“If deployed properly, it should make it maybe more efficient, more reliable,” he pointed out.
Modernizing air traffic control much needed: Bastian
Bastian has been vocal for years about the state of the infrastructure. He told Fortune that it now takes longer to fly from Delta’s Atlanta hub to New York than it did in the 1950s, when the airline first launched the route. Decades of investment in faster aircraft, more efficient engines and smarter scheduling have been undermined by an air traffic control system that has not kept pace.“All that technology investment that we put in AI is not going to change that,” Bastian said plainly, “unless it’s focused on how do you unlock the sky.”“The screens look like something out of the 1960s and ’70s,” he has said previously.