Originally Posted by
Abrahn
Seems to me that clearances should be sent digitally from the air traffic computer to the aircraft's computer. The aircraft knows where it is, modern airliners know where they're planned to be soon, and it would know where it's cleared to be. If the two don't match then it can sound a claxon, alert the dog to bite the pilot or some such. Similarly the air traffic side will know when two objects have been cleared into the same space.
It's not trivial to do, but it's something than can be rolled out incrementally over decades and doesn't require any expensive hardware changes.
It would require entirely new hardware throughout the entire network as none of the current ACARS/FANS/ATN/CPDLC networks over VHF, HF or SATCOM are encrypted as A) it would be ruinously expensive to do so and B) the signals would be slowed by the encryption and have potentially negative consequences for Required Surveillance Performance and Required Communications Performance in the SATCOM environment in particular.
For that reason alone there’s going to be a need for someone on the flight deck to read datalink clearances before executing them for a long, long time.