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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3154

Air traffic controllers

Software can share the weather and the flight plans. Keeping aircraft apart is still a controller's job.

Briefing crews on weather and flight conditions is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Directing aircraft on the runway is mostly out of its reach, and organising emergency response it barely touches.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Air traffic controllers direct aircraft movements in airspace and on the ground, using radio, radar and lighting systems, and provide information relevant to the operation of aircraft. Tasks include - (a) directing and controlling aircraft approaching and leaving airport and their movement on the ground; (b) directing and controlling aircraft operating in designated airspace sectors; (c) examining and approving flight plans; (d) informing flight crew and operations staff about weather conditions, operational facilities, flight plans and air traffic; (e) applying knowledge of principles and practices of air traffic control in order to identify and solve problems arising in the course of their work; (f) initiating and organizing emergency, search and rescue services and procedures; (g) directing activities of all aircraft and service vehicles on or near airport runways; (h) maintaining radio and telephone contact with adjacent control towers, terminal control units and other control centres, and coordinating the movement of aircraft into adjoining areas. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Air traffic controller

  • flight operations officer
  • air traffic controller
  • aviation inspector

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

69 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Minimal Exposure

250 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 31 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 31 = 69.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 39.2 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Air traffic controllers 69

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Weather and flight information to crews.
  • Flight plan checks.
  • Conflict detection tools.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Separating aircraft safely.
  • Handling emergencies.
  • Decisions under pressure.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Remote digital control towers.
  • Managing drones in controlled airspace.
  • More automated conflict alerts.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

31 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 60 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

39 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 27 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

39 How
hands-on
27 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs .

finger skill 37.5 · hand skill 30.8 · cramped spaces 13.4 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 50, against an average of 31. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 50

    Informing flight crew and operations staff about weather conditions, operational facilities, flight plans and air traffic

    Medium
  2. 33

    Maintaining radio and telephone contact with adjacent control towers, terminal control units and other control centres, and coordinating the movement of aircraft into adjoining areas.

    Low
  3. 32

    Applying knowledge of principles and practices of air traffic control in order to identify and solve problems arising in the course of their work

    Low
  4. 30

    Examining and approving flight plans

    Low
  5. 30

    Directing and controlling aircraft approaching and leaving airport and their movement on the ground

    Low
  6. 28

    Directing and controlling aircraft operating in designated airspace sector

    Low
  7. 28

    Directing activities of all aircraft and service vehicles on or near airport runways

    Low
  8. 17

    Initiating and organizing emergency, search and rescue services and procedures

    Very Low

8 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
60
AI does it for you
31

Sidekick wins, by 29 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2311

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.04% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

41
59

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 3 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should air traffic controllers be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

Some of it. Briefing crews on weather and flight plans is rated Medium; coordinating, problem-solving, approving plans and controlling aircraft rate Low; emergencies and search and rescue rate Very Low. Automation supports controllers more and more, but responsibility for separation stays human.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 65. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →