This is another catch up edition, and the theme is the airspace itself: air traffic control, the regulators deciding what AI is allowed to fly, and the companies quietly being handed the keys.

Read

April 22, 2026

LLMs for Ground Delay Programs, AI Pilot Training

Hi, here's my take on todays news - which represents the second slice of the last week of AI in Aviation happenings around the world:

Read

April 21, 2026

Secret FAA Program, Humanoids Cross a Threshold

Two stories this week are genuinely historic, and I want to flag both up front before anything else. Physical Intelligence released Pi 0.7, which is the starting gun for physical AI in robotics. And the FAA is quietly building SMART, an AI system to de-conf…

Read

April 18, 2026

AI Copilots, Agentic everything platforms

The main story today is Beacon AI has signed a $49.5M contract with the USAF’s Special Operations Command. They are one of a handful of companies that have successfully secured a highly contested spot in the cockpit. Over the past couple of years, there hav…

Read

April 11, 2026

Autonomous cargo ops gets approval in the US

The FAA letting autonomous aircraft fly commercial routes before full certification is a big deal — and it's not just a regulatory experiment. Reliable Robotics is about to operate real cargo flights on real routes on Cessna Caravans with no pilot on board.…

Read

April 8, 2026

Prompt and Destroy & Delta CEO on AI in ATC

Hi, it's Sam Chandra here, Founder and CEO of Deepsky. Delta's CEO said ATC was the biggest opportunity for AI in aviation, something I've been saying for years. And he's 100% right. If we can optimise air traffic control we have huge cost, time and emissio…

Read

April 3, 2026

How to Become Indispensable in Aviation in 2026

The massive AI-aviation knowledge gap - and why it’s your opportunity

Read

April 2, 2026

Europe Draws the Line on AI in Aviation

EASA’s NPA 2025-07 is worth paying attention to. This is no longer guidance - it’s draft regulation, and that’s a meaningful shift. They’ve expanded coverage to all aviation domains and interestingly address using AI to build or test AI-based systems. The d…

Read

March 29, 2026

'AI at birth' cargo company signals a new era for Aviation

Hi - it’s Sam Chandra, CEO/Founder of Deepsky and author of this newsletter. Here’s my take on todays AI in Aviation news:

Read

March 27, 2026

Your Flight App Just Got Pilot-Grade Intelligence

The Flighty use of NOTAMs and weather is definitely something I’ve tried as a side project, but never had enough time to see it through. IAG asking for disruption management is no surprise - it pretty much is (and has been for a while) the grand prize of pr…

Read

March 25, 2026

AI Learns to Debrief Pilots + 4 other AI/aviation headlines

Navi AI just raised $6M to scale AI-powered flight training — I’ve met both cofounders and they’re building something pretty special. The Saab-Cohere partnership caught my eye too; we’ve seen airlines partner with big AI companies before, but a manufacturer…

Read

March 23, 2026

AI Passes the ATC Exam — And It's About to Go Live

This week, an AI agent passed three of four human controller competencies in UK airspace, while autonomous combat software went from lab to live flight in a single day. Meanwhile, agentic AI is reading aircraft maintenance records faster than any human team…

Read

March 22, 2026

The Autonomous Black Hawk Has Landed

Merlin - a company that retrofits existing transport aircraft with autonomous AI pilots just went public at an $800M valuation, the U.S. Army took delivery of its first autonomous helicopter, and Bordeaux Airport figured out how to track passenger flows wit…

Read

March 20, 2026

AI Clears the Skies: American Airlines and Google Cut Contrails 62%

From AI-guided contrail avoidance over the Atlantic to autonomous drone swarms learning pursuit logic in Japan, this week's updates show AI moving from concept to cockpit — with the industry now grappling with how to govern it all.

Read

March 19, 2026

AI Finds 15,000 Hidden Near-Misses — FAA Rewrites the Rules

An AI-powered sweep of radar data has exposed thousands of unreported helicopter close calls at major airports, prompting the FAA to scrap visual separation rules overnight. Meanwhile, the MRO sector braces for a maintenance supercycle as digital twins and…

Read

March 18, 2026

Agentic AI Hits the Ramp as Aviation Ops Go All-In

Suddenly, everyone is talking about AI, and the startups (like us) that have been knocking on the door of large enterprises for years are having those doors opened wide.

Read

February 26, 2026

Airports to Airframes: AI Deployment Broadens Across Aviation

*Date (UTC): 2026-02-25*

Read

February 25, 2026

From Combat ID to Gate Ops: Aviation AI Deployment Speeds Up

AI-in-aviation execution accelerated today across defense, airport operations, maintenance intelligence, and customer service, with multiple programs signaling production deployment rather than pilot-phase experimentation.

Read

February 23, 2026

deepsky industry update — last 7 days of AI in Aviation

Over the past week, AI in aviation has moved from interesting pilots to practical rollout: airports are tightening day-of-ops coordination with smarter data layers, airlines are pairing AI-native commercial tools with execution.

Read on Substack

February 17, 2026

AI Aviation This Cycle: Anthropic's Air India Move Leads, While Ops Adoption Deepens

Anthropic's India expansion reportedly includes partnerships with Air India and Cognizant, marking a significant commercialization step where a frontier AI provider is being positioned directly inside large-scale airline workflows.

Read on Substack

February 15, 2026

AI Takes the Controls: From Taxi Fuel to Autonomous Combat Flight

AI in aviation is moving from pilot projects into day-to-day execution, with tangible deployment across fuel, maintenance, and autonomy. The commercial side is also evolving quickly, but with rising regulatory pressure around AI pricing.

Read on Substack

September 18, 2025

AI in Aviation — past two weeks

EASA's AI days and ethics of AI in Aviation, Starlux AI ground ops, AI pilot assessment with iPhone recordings, American mulling AI to price tickets, AI in aircraft design, and Australian AI awards.

Read on Substack

September 4, 2025

AI in Aviation last three days

Joby flies 'superpilot' in a Cessna Caravan, Embry Riddle applies voice understanding tech to ATC chat, Gen AI for aviation risk assessments, AI eye tracking in ATC simulators, Qatar Airways does AI.

Read on Substack

September 1, 2025

Work in Aviation? The second thing you should know

Understand what you are trying to achieve. Use AI to do things that you can check and can actually multiply your efforts — aviation requires reliability and efficiency.

Read on Substack

August 31, 2025

AI in Aviation, last 5 days, what did you miss

US majors using AI to reduce disruptions, DEFCON on AI voice cloning in rogue ATC communication, Qantas does AI, single pilot ops shelved, Shield AI flies unmanned helicopter autonomously.

Read on Substack

August 31, 2025

If you work in aviation, know this about AI

AI is more human-like than normal software — it presents new risks and opportunities. Treat AI-powered software more like a human when introducing it into aviation operations.

Read on Substack

August 30, 2025

The deepsky newsletter

Our AI in Aviation journey started 5 years ago. Yours starts today. I'm Samuel Chandra, an A320 Captain who published a podcast on the intersection of AI and Aviation back in 2020/21.

Read on Substack

Never miss an issue

New issues land on Substack first. Subscribe to get AI-in-aviation updates in your inbox.

Subscribe on Substack