Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink • Hacker News Board

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#121

Post by mcphage » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 4:51 AM UTC

throwme_123 wrote: post #118

PromKwing wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

> You should not know and should not take it in consideration

Then how do you suppose we ended up with fields where nearly everyone was a white male, if race was never taken into consideration?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#122

Post by 1letterunixname » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 4:55 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #91

oatmeal1 wrote: post #77

People are seriously concerned with aircraft near misses when we let cars kill 45,000 Americans a year. Absurdity.

Only if the people who are concerned could be channeling their concern into solving the problem. Here, I am guessing, not many people can actually solve the problem, so we can safely be very concerned about both things simultaneously! It would be different if it were the same exact group of people and the same budget who are in charge of plane safety, as those in charge of the car safety. We can then scold them for w…

Stop making sense!

It would be useful if the readily mechanizable aspects of ATC-piloting and driving were done by machine but with human-in-the-loop. The fixations with completely human, manual processes and the leap to full automation are both too risky. There is plenty of middle-ground to derisk and remove points where human-error is mostly likely to occur. TCAS has been an excellent aid. Perhaps an automotive "TCAS" would also be useful.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#123

Post by sparcpile » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 4:56 AM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #103

sparcpile wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming DEI is a dog-whistle for 'people should know their place' The Free Beacon, Fox News, and the other last four you listed are in the business of telling old white people to be afraid of everything. It's the same as denying someone a job because they are not culture fit for a company. It's because the people doing the hiring only want to hire people from their background, college, etc. The safety issues and staf…

> Blaming DEI is a dog-whistle for 'people should know their place' This is a very common trope: claim to have dog-level hearing for detecting what people really mean. Very often, including likely this time, it's totally inaccurate, and just means no discussion can be done as one of the parties relentlessly ad hominems the other. > since Reagan fired the PATCO ATC workers Can you cite this?

https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2023/11/overtime-staffing-...

It took 10 years after Reagan fired the controllers to get the workforce back to pre-1981 levels. This caused a ripple effect because the people that were hired were around the same age. The result was the FAA had to deal with large sections of the ATSC workforce retiring at 56(the legal maximum for an air traffic controller) in bunches. The FAA has struggled since this to maintain adequate staffing levels due to high stress nature of the job.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#124

Post by Gud » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 4:56 AM UTC

someplaceguy wrote: post #43

ghayes wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per that chart, flying is about 3x as deadly per journey as a car. Many people take a car to and from the airport, which means it nearly nets out already.

What do you mean, it nets out? Shouldn't the car trips from/to the airport mean that an airplane journey is even more dangerous, as you can't really fly without those additional car trips?

Yes you can. I usually take the train to the airport.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#125

Post by shermantanktop » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 5:08 AM UTC

atleastoptimal wrote: post #99

shermantanktop wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your expectations don’t seem to match any other field of human endeavor I can think of. Nuclear plant safety doesn’t; rocket launches, no; pharmaceutical trials, nope. Perhaps we’ll be better and smarter in the future, but…I doubt it.

When was the last time Nuclear plants in the US significantly endangered human lives. 1979? With regards to rocket launches, pharma, etc. those are all somewhat novel domains: experiments where risk is a natural part of being the first time trying a set of variables. The variables in air traffic have been the same for decades, thus the thresholds for accepted risk should be much lower.

Call me a techno-pessimist, but we humans have a way of building imperfect machines regardless of theoretical perfectibility. Boeing 737 max?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#126

Post by oatmeal1 » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 5:08 AM UTC

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #78

oatmeal1 wrote: post #77

People are seriously concerned with aircraft near misses when we let cars kill 45,000 Americans a year. Absurdity.

It’s possible to be concerned about two things?

Absolutely, but one is a trifling concern compared to the other. Yet the trifling concern gets the media attention.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#127

Post by adhesive_wombat » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 5:09 AM UTC

hypercube33 wrote: post #59

HPsquared wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the safest per mile, but not per journey. A nice comparison to other transport methods, including taking the bus, and the Space Shuttle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Transport_comp...

It really blows my mind that the space shuttle was really so sound and safe even though I want to argue that it could have been far better. I mean this compared to SpaceX stuff blowing up a bunch before it gets the kinks worked out - I don't remember seeing or hearing about any prototype shuttles blowing up but it was before my time.

They did blow up 2 Shuttles out of 5, both crewed, so maybe they didn't get the all the kinks worked out in the first place.

Plenty of rockets did blow up on the launchpad or at various stages.

For example, the Titan I failed 17 launches, the Titan 2 failed 10 (and one exploded in the silo, while attached to a nuclear warhead), and the Atlas E/F failed 9. Even more recently, into the 90s and 00s, the Atlas I lost 3 and every Ariane variant has lost at least one.

I'm hardly a Musk fan, but although SpaceX seems particularly gung-ho about testing things they know aren't finished in order to iterate the design faster, the results after that are pretty good so far: Falcon 9 is 281 "real" flights for 2 failures, plus that one that went bang on the launchpad.

It's not 100% success rate like the Saturns, but out of 21 launches between the 1B and V, there were several near misses there. And probably quite a few A-4/V2s were harmed in the making of them and their predecessors too!

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#128

Post by kevinmchugh » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 5:21 AM UTC

vore wrote: post #87

oatmeal1 wrote: post #77

People are seriously concerned with aircraft near misses when we let cars kill 45,000 Americans a year. Absurdity.

Would you like people to not be concerned with aircraft accidents?

Certainly the concern is why air travel is so safe.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#129

Post by anonymone » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 5:22 AM UTC

sparcpile wrote: post #84

anonymousiam wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but I did review the material before I posted it. Did you?

Blaming DEI is a dog-whistle for 'people should know their place' The Free Beacon, Fox News, and the other last four you listed are in the business of telling old white people to be afraid of everything. It's the same as denying someone a job because they are not culture fit for a company. It's because the people doing the hiring only want to hire people from their background, college, etc. The safety issues and staf…

DEI where D = Diversity, E = Equity (NOT Equality) and I = Inclusion.

Diversity is achieved for sake of achieving the diversity. When they do not find qualified people who are described to be diverse, they lower the standards in every industry. Same is the case for FAA.

FAA lowering their standards to increase diversity

https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/06/27/the-disastrous-initia...

From the article: The FAA discarded its longtime use of the difficult cognitive assessment test and implemented instead a new, unmonitored take-home personality test—a biographical questionnaire. Among the questions asked are: “The number of high school sports I participated in was … ” “How would you describe your ideal job?” “What has been the major cause of your failures?” “More classmates would remember me as humble or dominant?”

Here is another example of lowering standards: Oregon governor signs bill ending reading and math proficiency requirements for graduation

https://news.yahoo.com/oregon-governor-signs-bill-ending-154...

From the article: Backers argued the existing proficiency levels for math and reading presented an unfair challenge for students who do not test well, and Boyle said the new standards for graduation would aid Oregon's "Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color."

Again, it comes to, lower the standards for everyone to achieve diversity. Proponents of diversity blow the horn that it raises our standards, which is a lie. That would be true if there were true diversity, based on merit but DEI is all about Equity same outcome irrespective of skills, efforts or qualifications.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#130

Post by dangus » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 5:22 AM UTC

astrostl wrote: post #46

soupfordummies wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see how that's related though

ACT test scores have plummeted too. Combined with what we know about the physical brain changes that can be observed after a single mild infection, it all paints a potentially concerning relationship with COVID.

This might be the worst real example of a jump to conclusions based on a casual correlation I have seen in my entire life.

I don't even know how to properly deconstruct how irresponsible this style of thinking is, it's just so flabbergasting.

In science you can't just draw lines on the wall between random shit like you're Charlie Day in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

ACT scores are very obviously not a product of your raw brain power as an isolated variable, they include a number of other factors like how much sleep you got last night, your family life, the quality of your curriculum and teachers, your socioeconomic status of yourself and your peers, and, of course, whether you spent a year in a global pandemic emergency while your school district scrambled to switch to a fully online curriculum with zero notice.

There is a very well-documented labor shortage for air traffic controllers. Fewer people are covering the same shifts - that is fact. If we are going to ignore the scientific method and start pointing fingers, this is so much more obviously the type of thing to start scapegoating.