AirNav and Telkom University Deepen AI Research for Air Navigation Safety
AirNav Indonesia, the state air navigation service provider, and Telkom University have signed a new agreement to share laboratories and run joint research on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity for air traffic services, Antara reported. The deal was signed on Thursday evening, October 8, in Central Jakarta at Forum SATRIA 2026, a meeting of government, industry and university researchers held under the theme “Connecting Leaders, Research, and Industry for Trustworthy AI”.
Zainal Arifin Harahap, AirNav’s director of engineering, said AI in air navigation is meant to speed up work without replacing people in decisions that bear directly on safety. “In aviation, safety is the top priority,” he said, adding that over time safety must go hand in hand with efficiency and sustainability. The agreement follows a 2024 memorandum of understanding and covers lab optimisation, joint research, applying results and exchanging expertise. “We do not want technology to be developed only because the technology exists,” Zainal said.
The partnership already has a working prototype. The NOTAM AI Generator, started in 2024 and given an initial launch in 2025, helps draft Notices to Airmen, the bulletins that tell pilots and crews about hazards or changes affecting flight operations. With AI, a draft NOTAM can be produced in about a minute before a validator checks and approves it. The two sides are also building an AI app to roster air traffic controllers, a task bound by strict rules: controllers may not work more than two hours without a break, and the gap between one person’s shifts must be at least 15 hours.
What it means in practice
The project is a clear example of machines drafting and people signing off, in line with calls by Indonesian officials for hard human-control limits on agentic AI and with Komdigi’s safety-by-design, sector-by-sector approach. Angga Rusdinar, Telkom University’s vice rector for research, innovation and partnerships, said joint results are not applied to operations straight away but go through testing, evaluation and validation against agreed criteria.
Fauzan Adziman, director general of research and development at the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology, praised AirNav for taking the risk of working with a campus and said research should start from a clearly defined problem. “If we do not know what we are going to solve, do not do the research,” he said. The model mirrors other university-industry efforts such as Komdigi’s AI Talent Factory with UGM, Brawijaya and ITS.
What to watch: when the NOTAM generator moves from prototype to routine use, whether the rostering app is rolled out across AirNav’s control centres, and how the cybersecurity work protects these tools once they touch live operations.