Air Traffic Control System - Can We Close the Control Loop?

The Air Traffic Control (ATC) system is analyzed from the control engineering viewpoint. Despite human operator in the loop ATC represents a conventional, multidimensional control system. The system observability and controllability can be analyzed. A control performance index representing safety, accuracy, and fuel consumption is introduced. We present the concept of using an expert system as an automatic controller including the outline of the ATC knowledge domain representation. The implementation of such expert controller is discussed.