AI beat airport forecasters in trial, University of Madeira researcher says
Madeira GuideDécio Alves told a Funchal audience how his team forecasts wind and low cloud at Madeira Airport, and showed a fruit fly brain learning to land a plane.
An artificial intelligence forecasting system was right in 99% of its forecasts during a trial alongside meteorologists at Portugal's 14 airports. The human forecasters were right in 97%. Décio Alves, a researcher at the University of Madeira, presented the results on 30 October at MadIT (Madeira Innovation Talks) 2026 in the Madeira Congress Centre.
The system worked next to the meteorologists for about two months. It corrected close to 70% of its errors in about three minutes. The meteorologists corrected 11% of theirs in about 11 minutes.
Alves's team has built models that forecast wind and low cloud at Madeira Airport from images taken by European meteorological satellites.
The team is also training the digitised brain of a fruit fly to land a plane in windy conditions in a Madeira Airport flight simulator. According to DN Madeira, anyone can install the simulator on a phone through a QR code.
MadIT is run by the Madeira region of the Ordem dos Engenheiros, the Portuguese engineers' association, according to DN Madeira.
Sources
Madeira Guide
Author