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Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

nytimes.com

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Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#201

Post by ejiblabahaba »

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.

The US literally stopped issuing new reactor permits in 1979 (down from on-average about 12 per year), and didn't begin issuing new ones until 2012. Out of 177 reactors issued construction permits up through 1979, at most 112 were ever online at once, in 1991, up from 69 in 1979 when the Three Mile Island failure happened - implying over half of already permitted construction was abandoned or never even started. The facilities under construction were subject to an exponentially increasing gauntlet of new safety assessments, failsafe systems, and in many cases reconstruction of things already built and approved just years prior; eventually, the expense of such facilities radically outstripped the expected ROI of nuclear facilities altogether. Most facilities overran on costs, and took decades longer than expected to see their first real returns, if they even stayed open long enough to see real returns.

If US nuclear plants haven't significantly endangered human lives since 1979, it's because the thresholds for accepted risk became so low as to render new enterprise impossible.

Regulating air traffic control (and thus air traffic) into impossibility isn't a realistic option. Unlike nuclear energy, which has functionally equivalent alternatives, there is no functional equivalent to the speed, reach, and cost of air travel. We likely already hit the practical floor on incidents in ATC a long time ago, thanks to (as you have observed) the variables involved being very stable for decades.

Hence the cause for alarm: what if, all of a sudden, those reliable variables are changing?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#202

Post by Geisterde »

Usually I like to just read comments, get a feel for where society is. I love the comments in this, it can be summarized as "throw AI at it" and "more tax dollars will fix it".

Lets all forget that we have put the airline industry on government life support through regulation and bailouts, thats turned the biggest companies into tumors that survive off their (literal) monopoly rights. We can all pretend we didnt dehumanize the staff on/off-board with vaccine mandates that simultaneously violated their human rights and failed to stop infection or transmission (as they were promised).

Yep, fat, lazy, unprincipled american voters to the rescue, throw in some rhetoric about how we are going to tax the rich (then tax poor/middle class people who dont have their own LLC), replace the workers woth AI, and incoherently froth about your political opponents.

Or, you know, we could start privatizing it. Calm down, its OK, I was a nuclear reactor operator in the navy, I can assure you it will only ever get worse.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#203

Post by defrost »

defrost wrote: post #156
throwawayq3423 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "novel vaccine" mean?

A vaccine that had a significant impact on a notable percentage of the population 24 months before widespread uptake. The Thiotimoline of vaccines. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Average_A... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiotimoline

Spelling this out slowly for the reflexive downvoters, ACT test scores began their decline well before any widespread use of mRNA COVID vaccines which would make them extremely novel in their endochronicity if they had an effect before they were used.

Otherwise, as pointed out by lostlogin, mRNA vaccines have been used in humans since 2013 and studied in animals since 1989 which makes them less novel than widely claimed.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#204

Post by Roark66 »

rplnt wrote: post #188
screye wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sadly, we're going in the other direction. For example yesterday the capital city of Poland (Warsaw) decided, despite a lot of protests, to restrict "old cars" from entering a number of central districts. "Old cars" will mean diesels older that 18 years initially, 13 years later and petrol cars older than 20 years. The protesters proposed the rules are amended to block cars based on their emissions instead (which would allow most of the small old cars people still have, but it would block many modern SUVs). Of course the ruling faction (still enjoying majority support in Warsaw) decided otherwise. So much for the policy to be driven by "health concerns" and not car dealership lobby.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#205

Post by akira2501 »

oatmeal1 wrote: post #77

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

50% of accidents are single vehicle accidents that involve drugs or alcohol. It's more if you add in youth an inexperience. So, _most_ vehicle deaths are self-inflicted.

16% are pedestrians. They usually get hit from behind, and even if they don't, almost always at night.

16% are motorcycles. I ride. I love riding, but the reason for that statistic is obvious. There's zero safety margin when you're on one.

Finally, the average death count from a vehicle accident is like 1.2. The average death count from two planes having an accident is like 600. The reason this all matters is because there are several orders magnitude _more_ car journeys than there are airplane journeys in any given year.

You can't compare them 1:1 and the relative differences matter more than the relative similarities.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#206

Post by dawnerd »

onetimeusename wrote: post #154
PaulKeeble wrote: post #29

Car accidents are up as well, less so this year than last. Both Air traffic and Car accidents have been up since 2020. Its not unique to Air traffic control. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyamohn/2023/09/28/road-crash... Its also happening worldwide, more air traffic near misses in the EU alongside road accidents as well. I suspect its world wide.

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…

I’ve noticed a pretty drastic decline in driving behavior around here. We’re seeing a LOT more just absolutely insane drivers doing things you’d only see in the worst of compilations a few years ago. Something happened during Covid that made people just not care anymore. Also doesn’t help that cops are not pulling people over as much as they should. Watched someone just yesterday fly through a red right in from of a cop that did nothing about it.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#207

Post by Roark66 »

raffraffraff wrote: post #199
screye wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/...

People are driving spaceship-sized SUVs while using their phones, hitting pedestrians who are walking around looking at their phones, jumping out of the path of an oncoming 12yo doing 40kmh on a battery powered scooter while looking at porn on their phones and using Whatsapp to schedule a meet up with their Fastgas supplier. Their parents think that a scooter is a toy, the phone is so that they can call home, and the…

How does a technical gas supplier factor into the life of today's teenagers? I'm genuinely curious. Is our hypothetical 12yo person learning tig welding on a side?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#208

Post by dawnerd »

lostlogin wrote: post #180
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…

> 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. People’s tolerance levels and general concern for other humans plummeted in the post covid times. The warning signs about acceptable behaviour in supermarkets, medical practices and restaurants proliferated. I don’t know how you measure that effect though.

Right just look at the number of people having to be restrained on airplanes and just outright acting out.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#209

Post by AdrianB1 »

defrost wrote: post #58
AdrianB1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you don't agree with a claim, instead of asking for evidence you flag and terminate the discussion? This is what happened here.

The very person you are asking did ask for evidence right here in a peer comment 34 minutes before your comment, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38587616 There's still a lack of any hard evidence beyond a speculative Fox News | Tucker Carlson | Sean Hannity dog whistle article. The primary article of this submission indicates more that overall systemic changes from the top are the root cause rather than bei…

1. Lack of response is not lack of proof.

2. People don't leave on HN, demanding an answer and waiting 34 minute before nuking from orbit is illogic.

3. There was a source and some information to support the claim. Also part of the claim is self-explanatory (lowering the standards for new hires to meet some hiring targets).

4. There is ample evidence in so many other places about the effects of lowering standards to meet diverse hiring targets. I cannot publish the results in my own company with close to 100,000 employees because they are not public, but they exist and they are embarrassing at least.

I am not the one that made the claim and I am not interested to support or explain it, but I am disappointed by the reaction: cancel any discussion that does not fit your views. Burn Giordano Bruno at stake, he did not present proof enough and fast enough.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#210

Post by mschuster91 »

Roark66 wrote: post #207
raffraffraff wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are driving spaceship-sized SUVs while using their phones, hitting pedestrians who are walking around looking at their phones, jumping out of the path of an oncoming 12yo doing 40kmh on a battery powered scooter while looking at porn on their phones and using Whatsapp to schedule a meet up with their Fastgas supplier. Their parents think that a scooter is a toy, the phone is so that they can call home, and the…

How does a technical gas supplier factor into the life of today's teenagers? I'm genuinely curious. Is our hypothetical 12yo person learning tig welding on a side?

Same as sniffing glue... nitrogen aka N2O aka laughing gas.
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