There are dozens of routes that Alaska Airways Flight 1405 can take from Oklahoma City to Seattle, and dispatcher Brad Ward zeroed in on what he thought was the best one, taking into account weather, wind speeds, and other air traffic.
But his new colleague at the Alaska Airlines operations center had other thoughts.
A storm cell near Oklahoma City was likely to turn into a thunderstorm around the time Flight 1405 took off, and the airspace north of Amarillo would be closed for military exercises. Better to reroute, the young colleague said, suggesting an alternative that Ward admitted was safer and more efficient. The entire conversation lasted just seconds and passed without a word being spoken: a red box lit up on Ward’s computer screen when the colleague, an artificial intelligence program he has affectionately nicknamed Algo, had an idea.
“This is the smartest person in the room,” says Ward, a solidly built man with the corner desk who has been a flight dispatcher for 21 years, responsible for planning flight routes and submitting them to air traffic control for approval. He gestures to the program running silently on his computer. “It’s smarter than me.”
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