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America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

cnn.com

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Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#251

Post by Reason077 »

legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

> "The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years"

Isn't this, ultimately, the real problem? Improved technology with radically more automation would both improve safety and reduce workload on controllers.

What's really needed is some sort of "next-generation ATC" moonshot project. But of course, in such a safety-critical and risk-averse domain, generational improvement is really hard to do. You certainly can't "move fast and break things", so how do you prevent such a project getting bogged down in development hell?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#252

Post by everybodyknows »

RandomBacon wrote: post #67
duxup wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like reasonable pay for what is a very important job. Wouldn't object to paying much much more.

I'm an Air Traffic Controller and I'm required by the FAA to say these opinions are my own and not necessarily of the FAA. Some fully-certified air traffic controllers cannot afford to live where they work, not to mention the trainees that have the added stress of training and making less money. At my first facility, to live within 45 minutes of work, my whole paycheck went to rent, thank goodness I had savings from…

> pay-capped by law

Thanks! What an elusive bit of critical damning evidence.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#253

Post by tim333 »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #118

We have planes moving hundreds of miles an hour being managed exclusively by audio channels. Does this not blow anyone else's minds? This seems like a clear case of 'because we've always done it that way'. There's no way if a system was being developed today they'd say to hell with screens, lets just give them instructions over audio and assume they'll follow them to a T if acknowledged.

There are some technical issues in moving beyond that. For example I was talking to a pilot in Africa and apparently for long haul between Europe and South Africa the local controller in the various countries en route were considered a bit useless go they had a particular frequency where they would occasionally say this if flight x over country y heading so and so direction and altitude and other planes on that frequency could here where they were - the radio range is ~200 miles. I'm not sure how you'd replace that other than with something like starlink which is quite recent.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#254

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

tw04 wrote: post #201
legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

Everything you have listed above could be solved with money. Only 10% of applicants are physically and mentally qualified? Sounds like you need more applicants? Want to attract more applicants? Offer more compensation. The training and onboarding is incredibly long? Sounds like a doctor? Do you know why people go through the pain of becoming a doctor? Because they make a lot of money when they get through the other s…

> Do you know why people go through the pain of becoming a doctor? Because they make a lot of money when they get through the other side.

I think the guaranteed respect and admiration that comes from the title is actually a more powerful draw. Don't get me wrong, the money is good, but on par with senior manager in any large tech firm. Doctor is a primal respect that technical roles do not carry.

You're not getting instant respect from mother in laws and pastors as an ATC.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#255

Post by wNjdbfm »

Is this a US ONLY problem? I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm genuinely wondering for example: European air travel doesn't seem any less safe than the US so whatever they are doing seems to work just as well. Do they have trouble hiring and keeping ATCs? Is their comp/work life/training/etc very different than ours? Would appreciate any insight from folks that know.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#256

Post by CamperBob2 »

giantrobot wrote: post #196
jasondigitized wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the…

> I am completely naive about the challenges presented. The problem isn't collision detection or predicting movement. They're not a bunch of particles on simple ballistic trajectories. They're powered objects traveling in a turbulent and difficult to predict medium. In emergency conditions they can turn from a powered vehicle to an unpowered one. They can need to land immediately when flight worthiness changes in fli…

Air traffic control is almost 100 years old now. Unusual things happen, yes... but unpredictable ones do not. Ever. No conceivable emergency in ATC cannot be handled by a machine following a procedure, if it could be handled by people following the same procedure.

Just another perplexing case of humans insisting on doing a robot's job for no good reason.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#257

Post by mindslight »

giantrobot wrote: post #196
jasondigitized wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the…

> I am completely naive about the challenges presented. The problem isn't collision detection or predicting movement. They're not a bunch of particles on simple ballistic trajectories. They're powered objects traveling in a turbulent and difficult to predict medium. In emergency conditions they can turn from a powered vehicle to an unpowered one. They can need to land immediately when flight worthiness changes in fli…

Known exceptional conditions can all be modeled and simulated preemptively. Like on each position update, for each plane, what does the overall situation look like if it needs to all of a sudden make an emergency landing.

(and just to be clear, no I'm not talking the "AI" genie but rather straightforward search algorithms that enforce the needed invariants)

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#258

Post by jerlam »

tw04 wrote: post #201
legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

Everything you have listed above could be solved with money. Only 10% of applicants are physically and mentally qualified? Sounds like you need more applicants? Want to attract more applicants? Offer more compensation. The training and onboarding is incredibly long? Sounds like a doctor? Do you know why people go through the pain of becoming a doctor? Because they make a lot of money when they get through the other s…

> Sounds like a doctor?

Not disagreeing, but the US also has a doctor shortage for at least a decade that it is seemingly unable to fix.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#259

Post by dadadad100 »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #156
bobthepanda wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are already a lot of screens and things to look at in a cockpit. and in emergency situations, screens can fail. audio has the advantage of being highly backwards compatible and extremely reliable, so long as the pilots are alive and conscious (and if they're not, the plane is most likely SOL anyways: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 )

>and in emergency situations, screens can fail. Audio makes perfect sense as a backup, but 99.99% of flights would benefit from having a screen showing object and current planned route. In this particular case, simply having that information available would have allowed an onboard computer to predict a collision.

Take a fly on an airliner in MS flight simulator sometime or watch any of the YouTubers that show this stuff. CitationMax is a good one. The screens tell the flight plan, altitudes, traffic, weather, terrain and more. The audio part is, as mentioned above, extremely efficient and shared. The audio is used for clearances from one step to another ( very loosely speaking) This improves everyone’s situational awareness. This may have been an issue at DCA where the commercial flight was on VHF and the chopper was on UHF.

If a plane loses comms there are well defined procedures and everyone knows exactly what that plane will do as they proceed to their destination.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#260

Post by applied_heat »

pbalau wrote: post #180
ryandrake wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would argue an ATC employee is worth every penny, but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. These people are already very well compensated, and at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools. It wouldn't happen overnight, but surely if ATC had a similar compensation reputat…

I think this is a naive way of looking at the problem. People that start working in banks, generally do that as a starting point. ATC is the end of the road for that career. Working in a bank is the start of a quite lucrative career, working as an ATC is the end. Indeed, we can offer more money to ATC, but there is not a lot, progression wise. Honestly, how would a junior ATC look like, compared with a senior?

Hopefully they don’t throw juniors on to the busiest runways in the country
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