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Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

nytimes.com

111–120 of 362 posts

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. What a weird thing to try to make it about race. So to clarify, if you're not white and male, then obviously you're just not serious about a job because you're a "diversity" hire and not a serious person. Got it.

If you're (much) less competent but the only reason why you get the job is "diversity", then yes we have a problem. There can be diverse good candidates of course, there's no racism here.

Right, so if you're not the hiring manager, how do you know someone is a "diversity hire" though? Isn't it racist to just assume someone was hired as a "diversity hire"? Most importantly, people tend to hire people like themselves, if the hiring manager is white it's most likely they'll hire someone who is white regardless if they're more qualified, but I doubt anyone ever questions those hires.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains are running more safely, efficiently, elegantly, and reliably than both cars and airplanes, and they have consistently done so with a much longer track record.

Not Amtrak. Worst excuse for a railroad ever.

No experience myself, but from past comments on HN, I understand the company Amtrak provides pretty good service within the areas it can control. It's just that the US rail network prioritizes freight every time (even though legally it's not supposed to).

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#114
It’s possible this is statistically expected. In the same way the stock market randomly fluctuates, it would be implausible that the ATC incident rate should only ever go down.

The question is whether this is outside the variance we should expect. Is it?

I see a lot of people coming up with reasons and explanations, implying that the incident rate can be controlled. To an extent it can. But it can’t be decreased forever, especially as the fleet increases. Is there a graph of the incident rate with respect to fleet size over the last few decades?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#115

[flagged]

Yikes. What a weird thing to try to make it about race. So to clarify, if you're not white and male, then obviously you're just not serious about a job because you're a "diversity" hire and not a serious person. Got it.

Sounds like you’re the one making it about race. Are you saying there is not a single non white male among the veteran group?

The point is, people in this position should be hired based on merit regardless of their race, sex, or anything else.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#116
post #93

Do pilots have any tools detect conflicting runway use? Like, I would imagine light patterns would mark a runway as take-off, landing, or neither (plane crossing, etc). A pilot told to land on a runway not lit for landing would know something's wrong, and planes would know not to line up on a runway lit for landing, etc.

> I would imagine light patterns would mark a runway as take-off, landing, or neither (plane crossing, etc) It's often both, and the direction depends on the wind. It's better for planes to take off into the wind, so as the weather changes runway usage also changes accordingly during the day. Or were you thinking the lights would change minute by minute based on the next designated usage. That might work! "Now it's a…

That's what I mean. Change the lights minute by minute.

There have been incidents where one plane is cleared to cross while another is landing on final approach. There's no fault on the pilots I think. With the right signaling on the runways all pilots involved could double check the clearances and one of them can speak up if things are weird.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#117

It’s possible this is statistically expected. In the same way the stock market randomly fluctuates, it would be implausible that the ATC incident rate should only ever go down. The question is whether this is outside the variance we should expect. Is it? I see a lot of people coming up with reasons and explanations, implying that the incident rate can be controlled. To an extent it can. But it can’t be decreased fore…

True, and a 68% increase in something that rarely happens isn’t as scary when you look at the actual total number of incidents.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're (much) less competent but the only reason why you get the job is "diversity", then yes we have a problem. There can be diverse good candidates of course, there's no racism here.

Right, so if you're not the hiring manager, how do you know someone is a "diversity hire" though? Isn't it racist to just assume someone was hired as a "diversity hire"? Most importantly, people tend to hire people like themselves, if the hiring manager is white it's most likely they'll hire someone who is white regardless if they're more qualified, but I doubt anyone ever questions those hires.

That's the point.

You should not know and should not take it in consideration but in the USA this is part of the application. I understand the whole point is to make sure diverse candidate are not discriminated against (and of course that would be a ridiculous thing to do), but it seems to have been perverted into caricaturical discrimination _for_, even favoring a diverse incompetent candidate over a non-diverse competent one.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#120
post #109
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

colleges still care about ACT? I thought SAT was the golden standard. I remember taking the ACT many years ago and it was definitely much easier. Also not many colleges accepted it at the time. SAT was preferred.

The preference is regional. [1] When I took the ACT, many years ago, it was the test the university I was applying to listed first in their requirements. And that's still true. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SAT-ACT-Preference-Map....

When I was in high school (graduated 2012), my school recommended we take both, since not only do certain schools prefer one to another, but if you happened to score relatively well on one versus the other, you could choose to only send that one instead.
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