Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink • Hacker News Board

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#181

Post by ikekkdcjkfke » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 7:47 AM UTC

xkqd wrote: post #163

onetimeusename wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed road traffic safety since 2020 closely (and have submitted and posted about it here) and traffic fatalities is slowly coming down since 2020. My hypothesis about it was that the empty roads in 2020 caused drivers to degenerate in terms of road manners. For example, deaths per mile actually increased in 2020 despite people driving fewer miles which suggests people drove less safely. On the other hand this a…

My pet theory has been that extended lockdowns caused regressions in people’s ability to drive safety, whether it was the actual skills to operate a vehicle, or people’s risk assessment skills. Operating a vehicle is a skill like any other, and if you’re not performing reps you’ll regress like any other activity. Empty roads might even permit crappier driving.

And mine is that the lockdowns felt like an overreach and there was some kind of infantile rebellion

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#182

Post by lostlogin » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 7:49 AM UTC

zmgsabst wrote: post #150

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "novel vaccine" mean?

That we haven’t used mRNA gene therapies to treat a virus before.

Maybe not that widely, but the technique seems to have had prior usage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#183

Post by orbit7 » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 7:51 AM UTC

10u152 wrote: post #153

dangus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding this thread, I really want to caution on the desire to automatically assign worse car crash rates to covid-19 infections, or any other specific cause. Car crashes and ATC mistakes are two different sets of data. Just because they are going up or down at the same time and you can overlay some other event on top of it means absolutely nothing on its own. There are a lot more reasons that car crash rates can b…

Distractions might be going up in cars, but I’d guess that’s offset by automatic crash avoidance systems that’s also going up in cars.

I had a new car for a month (mine got damaged whilst parked). Simply adjusting the aircon fan required screen navigation followed by a fidly touch screen control.

The crash avoidance systen was a distracting alert that took my attention away from the road for none risks but instead increased there likelyhood to become a risk.

Glad to get my own car back with physical switches and dials without all this crap, having to operate a tablet behind the wheel is a dumb idea and no different to operating a smart phone behind the wheel.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#184

Post by vlovich123 » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 8:05 AM UTC

gred wrote: post #56

dghlsakjg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the part about 10 hour days and 6 day workweeks? I wouldn't do that for $132k. Add in the fact that the FAA is about 50 years behind the times in understanding mental health, so you might lose your entire career if you are diagnosed with depression (even if it is a result of stress at work). Plus, you have to be younger than 31 to start an ATC career, and are required to retire no later than 56. So for g…

$132k is great pay. You get to retire at 56 with a nice federal retirement package, plus an extra supplement to top things up until you are eligible for social security (which you're not initially, since you get to retire so damn early). Is it a hard job? Certainly. But I'm sure a significant number of retail jobs are nearly as stressful. And the union has your back, making sure you get a decent number of decently-si…

> a significant number of retail jobs are nearly as stressful

A significant number of retail jobs involve the risk of a mass casualty event if you make a mistake and the opportunity for such mistakes happens many times through a day, each day for years on end?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#185

Post by PhobosSkunk » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 8:10 AM UTC

alexey-salmin wrote: post #173

I guess lessons weren't learned after the lake Constance collision

It's not really the same problem but a good example of the end result (spoiler alert: dead peoples). Lake Constance was mostly due to faulty procedures, technical intervention and bad habits (letting a colleague work alone during night shift coffee breaks) and those lessons have been well learned as Skyguide is now one of the safest ANSP, refusing to increase capacity because of all those safety measures.

FAA is another really scary story. 6 days of 10h shifts with 8 to 9h of rest is just insane. As a euro ATCO I know for a fact that we would never accept that, we have way more days off, a minimum of 11h rest time and are never called to work more nor work more than the contracted hour. As a matter of fact it is the opposite, we usually work less hours a day than what is planned. Maybe it is a different work culture between US and EU but we won't sacrifice ourselves for the company. If we are understaffed we will let it happen, reduce capacity or even close some airspace and let the company lose money and credibility.

Anyway, as we often say, everybody working in the aviation industry is tired because of the shifts. Just don't let the PAX know about it.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#186

Post by lotsofpulp » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 8:10 AM UTC

mikrotikker wrote: post #142

toast0 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps an automotive "TCAS" would also be useful. Forward Collision Warning systems and automatic emergency braking are becoming common in new cars. The problem and solution spaces are pretty different, so I don't think applying TCAS directly would be helpful --- I don't think there's a chance of cars having transponders anytime soon, and certainly deer, cyclists and pedestrians are unlikely to participate in an a…

Automatic emergency braking is fucking horrifying tho... It has false positives and can be dangerous.

Is it more dangerous than people not braking because they are watching something on their phone?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#187

Post by lotsofpulp » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 8:13 AM UTC

gred wrote: post #56

dghlsakjg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the part about 10 hour days and 6 day workweeks? I wouldn't do that for $132k. Add in the fact that the FAA is about 50 years behind the times in understanding mental health, so you might lose your entire career if you are diagnosed with depression (even if it is a result of stress at work). Plus, you have to be younger than 31 to start an ATC career, and are required to retire no later than 56. So for g…

$132k is great pay. You get to retire at 56 with a nice federal retirement package, plus an extra supplement to top things up until you are eligible for social security (which you're not initially, since you get to retire so damn early). Is it a hard job? Certainly. But I'm sure a significant number of retail jobs are nearly as stressful. And the union has your back, making sure you get a decent number of decently-si…

You neglected to respond to the important question:

> In any case, the proof is in the pudding. If people thought the pay was generous and worth it, would there be a shortage?

The rest of your comment is irrelevant. The “great”-ness of a price is evident by the number of sellers willing to accept it.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#188

Post by rplnt » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 8:14 AM UTC

screye wrote: post #168

verteu wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traffic fatalities declined for the fifth straight quarter. About 19,515 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2023, a decrease of about 3.3% compared to 20,190 fatalities in the first half of 2022. I don't see much correspondence with: > In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, there were 503 air traffic control lapses that the F.A.A. preliminarily categorized as “significant,” 65 percent more than in the…

Traffic fatalities decrease because cars are getting safer. But the number or accidents per capita might not be. Pedestrian deaths have certainly been on the rise. https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/publications/files/...

Pedestrian deaths also increase because cars are getting bigger - reduced visibility, much more energy, and worse impact zones.

Cities should really start to regulate what kind of cars under what conditions they let mix in with people.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#189

Post by sxyuan » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 8:22 AM UTC

There's an increase in incidents because ATCs are overworked and understaffed. The knee-jerk reaction is to try to automate the work away. A few problems with that kind of thinking:

- Automation already exists - e.g., the collision detection warning mentioned in the article. I don't know much about air traffic control but I imagine there's some element of defense in depth. ATCs dozing off or running on fumes won't cause collisions right away (these incidents are mostly close calls) but it sounds like it's only a matter of time before all the other defenses fail and a major accident happens.

- There's always going to be work that's hard to automate. Plenty of software teams have on-call rotations to cover production services. You'd think that if any field would have their operations be fully automated, it's software, but nope. We need to stop thinking that the physical world is easier to deal with - it's often much harder.

- Automation costs money to develop and deploy. Apparently one of the early outcomes of union action back in the 70s was faster automation rollout. [1] For an executive, why spend money on automation if you could just squeeze more out of your workers and compromise on safety instead?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Con...

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#190

Post by aredox » Sun, Dec 10, 2023, 8:25 AM UTC

arcanemachiner wrote: post #158

dangus wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding this thread, I really want to caution on the desire to automatically assign worse car crash rates to covid-19 infections, or any other specific cause. Car crashes and ATC mistakes are two different sets of data. Just because they are going up or down at the same time and you can overlay some other event on top of it means absolutely nothing on its own. There are a lot more reasons that car crash rates can b…

> Car crashes and ATC mistakes are two different sets of data. Just because they are going up or down at the same time and you can overlay some other event on top of it means absolutely nothing on its own. A good time to dust off this classic: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Except that COVID is known to be brain invasive and to affect cognition.

This looks more like refusing to ever entertain the idea that letting COVID rip was a bad idea and lockdowns and vaccinations and masks were justified because you don't like it, than actual scientific rigor.