Hey, what's news listeners. It's Sunday, July 26th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street

Journal, and this is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the

biggest stories in the news. And this week, we've talked here before about AI and automation

taking on driving, but what about flying with the aviation industry

facing an array of challenges from backlog of planes to safety concerns and shortages of pilots,

mechanics, and air traffic controllers? Maybe AI can come in handy. But if you thought turning

over the wheel to AI was tricky, the margins for error in the skies are even tighter.

Let's get right to it.

I am a self-professed Ave geek, the nickname for plane enthusiasts, but I am no expert in aviation, which is why I've brought in my journal colleague aviation reporter, Ben Katz, to supply that bit of expertise to the matter.

Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Thank you for having me.

You and I both spend the past week at Farnborough International Air Show outside of London, where the sound of jets screaming overhead frequently interrupted our interviews.

I, for one, pretty much broke my recording equipment at one point and definitely blew up my ears trying to record an F-35

lightning, which you're now hearing. But I'm glad I went to the show because I could hear

firsthand about the role that folks in the industry think AI can play and the problems that it might be able to fix because, Ben, there are a lot of problems. I think frequent listeners of the show will be familiar with some of these. But if you could just sketch kind of a scene for us of what has broken down across a number of fronts in the aviation world. As you say, Luke, the industry is really battling with a number of things. At the moment, we're dealing with record high, you know, fuel prices, which is weighing on airlines, a lot of disruption, a lot of geopolitics. But even at an industrial level, if we go back 30, 40 years, competition was something that was more rife back then than it is now. We used to have three, four different air framers all kind of competing,

giving airlines a lot more choice than they have now. At the moment, we have a duopoly, right? We have

Airbus and Boeing that for the most part dominate the sale of big commercial aircraft to airlines.

Part of that problem is just simply the technological hurdle and the associated cost of how much

money it takes to develop a new aircraft. And that's really kept out new entrants. Bombardier is a good example. The now A-220, that was an independent aircraft that, you know, fell into hard times and was snatched up by Airbus. That was an attempt to kind of break the duopoly. But the promise of AI, maybe, you know, lowers the burdened that threshold a little bit. We'll see, though we should say even if for Boeing and Airbus, they can't make enough planes, which is another issue. Absolutely. I mean, manufacturing delays is something that has been plaguing the industry since even before the pandemic. Coming out of the pandemic, suppliers have really been struggling to keep up to meet the aggressive ramp-up schedules,

a lot of frustration out there from airlines that they can't get their planes. And then, of course,

there's just the fact that the planes that are being built, a lot of questions around quality

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