Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 362 posts

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#311

Post by ryandrake »

sokoloff wrote: post #268
jillesvangurp wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of automation is causing ATC work to be stressful. People orchestrating complex procedures over a shared vhf radio channel is inherently hard and error prone. Which is why it involves people endlessly confirming and double checking known bits of information. Automation could simplify that a lot and remove a lot of the uncertainty. Making communications easier might save some lives. A lot of accidents are cau…

> Dealing with ATC is very stressful for pilots. This is not my experience at all, and I suspect is also not at all for air carrier pilots who deal with ATC on every flight. Sure, the guy in the 170 or J3 who mostly flies off his farm might be stressed by flying into the big city airport, but the vast majority of pilots who interact with ATC regularly don't find it particularly stressful.

In fact, given a choice (and as a VFR pilot I have the choice), 99 times out of 100, I will voluntarily call up and receive flight following from ATC. There's pretty much no down side.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#312

Post by cplusplusfellow »

projectileboy wrote: post #278

The US has developed a strong culture of believing that government is always the problem and government workers are always lazy and overpaid. And so cutting funding to these kinds of services becomes an easy sell. The problem is our society depends on these government employees. It’s no different than nursing, teaching, and many other professions - disparage it enough and eventually you’ll succeed in making no one in…

Maybe I missed something, but has anyone cut funding to a single program in the history of tracking government spending? Especially the FAA?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#313

Post by jfim »

macNchz wrote: post #249
jillesvangurp wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of automation is causing ATC work to be stressful. People orchestrating complex procedures over a shared vhf radio channel is inherently hard and error prone. Which is why it involves people endlessly confirming and double checking known bits of information. Automation could simplify that a lot and remove a lot of the uncertainty. Making communications easier might save some lives. A lot of accidents are cau…

> The lack of automation is causing ATC work to be stressful. … > And it would free up ATC staff and pilots to do more urgent things. There’s a problem that can happen with this, though, wherein the “easy” routine work is automated out and the number of humans involved is scaled down, but the work those people do then winds up being 100% the urgent/stressful stuff. I’ve heard that ER doctors have been experiencing th…

Another reason not to scale down the number of humans is that they're needed when automation breaks.

Planes could very well fly themselves 99%+ of the time, but you want to have pilots when there are in flight issues that aren't handled by automation.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#314

Post by trevyn »

unionemployee wrote: post #254
dawnerd wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes. I think about this all the time. It's so strange, and aside from internet comments it doesn't seem to come up in the mainstream. What happened to people? Why do they not care? It's very evident in driving, but shows up in other areas as well.

Everything is going to shit.

It’ll hit you soon too.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#315

Post by syndicatedjelly »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #86
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the things to use an AI chatbot for, this might be the worst one.

That's assuming AI still stay as it is forever. In 3-5 years every job that can be done on a computer will be able to be done better by an AI designed for that job. The only issue will be adoption, not the tech itself.

That's quite an assertion. Why do you think that's true?

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#316

Post by autoexec »

K0HAX wrote: post #295
autoexec wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry that people may just feel like we're doomed and it's causing some to lose it.

That's a self-fulfilling prophesy, and an unstable feedback loop

If it helps, I certainly not so worried that I'm going to flip out on minimum wage employees or ground an airplane in a full blown "Karen meltdown", but I do think that the pandemic has left a lot of people disillusioned, that Americans are seeing their standard of living decline, that climate change has left our future uncertain, that the stability of our democracy is in question (more than normal anyway), and that doom scrolling makes it easy to ignore anything but the worst things going on around us. It's difficult to imagine that those pressures aren't contributing to the problem anyway.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#317

Post by pcthrowaway »

sxyuan wrote: post #189

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 ca…

Instead of more automation, perhaps it would be good to occasionally introduce phantom traffic which is designed to require intervention on their part (e.g. fabricate two flights and put them on a collision path).

The air traffic controllers would be expected to flag them, or intervene, or do whatever they would realistically do in that scenario.

From that, you can determine who's asleep at the wheel so to speak, and send them home. If necessary, planes may need to be grounded until properly alert staff can be available

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#318

Post by tharkun__ »

davemp wrote: post #257
macNchz wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The lack of automation is causing ATC work to be stressful. … > And it would free up ATC staff and pilots to do more urgent things. There’s a problem that can happen with this, though, wherein the “easy” routine work is automated out and the number of humans involved is scaled down, but the work those people do then winds up being 100% the urgent/stressful stuff. I’ve heard that ER doctors have been experiencing th…

> I’ve heard that ER doctors have been experiencing this in recent years–not quite with automation so much as just offloading, as less serious cases are picked up by nurse practitioners/urgent care centers, staffing has been adjusted and the actual physicians wind up with a steady stream of stressful high-acuity cases back to back to back. Yet at the same time, ERs (near me at least) are still inundated with so many…

Maybe you are in an oasis of reason where this doesn't happen. But most ERs I have heard of that are overcrowded is because people go to the emergency room when there is no actual emergency.

Re: Air traffic controllers pushed to the brink

#320

Post by paulddraper »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #317
sxyuan wrote: post #189

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 ca…

Instead of more automation, perhaps it would be good to occasionally introduce phantom traffic which is designed to require intervention on their part (e.g. fabricate two flights and put them on a collision path). The air traffic controllers would be expected to flag them, or intervene, or do whatever they would realistically do in that scenario. From that, you can determine who's asleep at the wheel so to speak, and…

Not sure how that would work.

"Citation one-three-niner-delta-uniform, Denver Tower, adjust altitude to seven three hundred, bearing one zero five."

"Citation one-three-niner-delta-uniform, Denver Tower, please respond."

Also FYI it's not like anyone can actually be asleep because pilot is required to establish two-way ATC contact to enter the airspace.

Post reply on HN