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America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

cnn.com

31–40 of 660 posts

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#31
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't ban. Tax. Never ban. Tax low capacity flights more. That both reduces the number of flights and raises money which can be put toward paying ATCs more and increasing the headcount. You then have a lever available to dial up and down to further reduce flights / raise money. Banning is expensive and increases legislative and judicial burden. Taxing is a much more efficient way to stop people doing things. You have…

Careless and hamfisted taxing/banning of "private jets" can have the unintended effect of also killing light piston general aviation, flight instruction, and the whole pipeline of training the next generation of airline pilots. Flight training is almost always low capacity (one-on-one) so uncarefuly-crafted legislation could catch it in the blast radius. Piloting is already one of the more expensive careers to train…

Newsflash: "planes are rich people's toys" has been killing general aviation already for a generation if not two.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#32
(this is going to sound like I think this can be fixed with a technical solution. I don't)

I wonder what the software UX is like for ATC, and if there's room for improvement? Is the software/hardware ancient? I'd hope that it is absolutely rock solid but knowing big custom projects I'm not very hopeful!

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#33
post #4

Seems like a colossal error to have asked them all to quit. I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.

> if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B?

In theory you could do what Reagan did and tell the military to do ATC.

Whether or not this is a good idea is another matter.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#35
post #5

How many of those nerds who role play as air traffic controllers on flight simulations at home qualified to do it for real? How much extra training would they need?

The irony of someone on THIS site of all of them scoffing at other people for being nerds . . .

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#36

I fear this will lead to Trump pushing OpenAI to use AI for air traffic controllers, which is going to result in a lot of deaths. Could AI eventually do the job? Maybe, but it will be a bloody road to get there.

Wrong! He'll push to use Grok. /s

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#37
If you live in the Bay Area on the Peninsula, you'll be excited to know that the San Carlos airport and the FAA are in a pissing match over their air traffic controllers' pay, threatening to un-staff the control tower and leave that very busy airspace without tower control. The tower was set to go dark on Feb 1st[1] but it looks like there is now a temporary extension[2] keeping it staffed. Why these guys need to play a game of chicken when lives are at stake, I have no idea.

1: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-airport-losing-...

2: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-carlos-airport-reach...

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#38
post #4

Seems like a colossal error to have asked them all to quit. I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.

> if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? In theory you could do what Reagan did and tell the military to do ATC. Whether or not this is a good idea is another matter.

Reagan taking away collective bargaining rights for ATCs seems to be what have led to the shortage and the helicopter accident last week.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#39
post #4

Seems like a colossal error to have asked them all to quit. I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.

I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work. Like, if you are thinking about quitting because you don’t want to come in, here have an extra incentive to do that and take some time to find another job.

ATC already couldn’t work remotely. The only people who would take a deal like this would be people who were thinking about quitting or retiring anyway. I suspect ATC will not be substantially affected by people taking that deal.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#40
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, if they are over 30 and have less than 20/20 vision, they aren’t qualified.

Seems like a problem to me; nearsightedness is becoming more and more common.

Which is basically a problem with how we do school. Turns out that making teenagers stare at screens all the time mints a lot of near sighted 20 year olds who wouldn't have otherwise been.
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