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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

#311

Post by joenot443 »

jerlam wrote: post #258
tw04 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My simple understanding is that the width of the bottleneck is controlled by existing doctors who are (unfortunately) monetarily motivated to limit the supply of new doctors.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#312

Post by nradov »

taeric wrote: post #297
nradov wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no restriction on medical school admissions. It's really just residencies.

My understanding is that this is a distinction that doesn't make a difference? Without a residency, can you become a doctor?

That's mostly correct, but there are a few students who enroll in medical school with no intention of becoming practicing physicians. They want to go into some other career like research or technology or hospital administration.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#313

Post by natnat »

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…

I don't honestly think that technology is meaningfully downstream of money. A startup or hobbyist can build something that costs Google several million dollars in a weekend. Most of these systems are complex, but not as complex as e.g. an operating system.

But upgrading technology requires government administrative capacity. That's generally cheaper than outsourcing technology development to third parties, but does require a commitment to try to understand the thing you're managing.

Politicians don't hire competent administrators because they believe that building a solution yourself and buying a solution from a contractor are basically equivalent, which anyone on this website can tell you is not true. This is an easier problem to solve than most think, but it's not trivial. And it's really hard when you have clowns like Elon Musk purposefully destroying institutional knowledge for no good reason.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#314

Post by capitainenemo »

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…

Problem is US is stalled on modernising and far behind the rest of the world and has been for decades.

https://www.montrealgazette.com/business/article267028.html

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107917

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#315

Post by bloopernova »

gamedever wrote: post #247
bloopernova wrote: post #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!

> this is going to sound like I think this can be fixed with a technical solution. I don't) Why? It's seems ripe for technical solution. Technical solutions have solved tons of things in the past. What's special about air traffic controlling?

Oh I just don't like the tendency of tech folks to reach for technological solutions before they consider social/organizational ones.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#316

Post by Yeul »

RandomBacon wrote: post #80
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…

> 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. There would be more people interested in aviation choosing to be ATC than a pilot if our pay matched that of major airline pilots. There are people going through the training and then quiting when they realize that can't get an opening in their hometown because that s…

Ofcourse it would. Capitalism is all about dealing with shortages in exchange for money.

So clearly someone just doesn't want to pay up.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#317

Post by aurizon »

jerlam wrote: post #258
tw04 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The supply of doctors is limited by the AMA and state MA, to avoid excess doctors = price competition

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#318

Post by steele »

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 education and training could be subsidized-- this was done for nursing.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#319

Post by userbinator »

DangitBobby wrote: post #304
Graziano_M wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

It truly boggles my mind that Trump may have a legitimate basis for alleging that DEI policies have contributed to issues with ATC staffing. > First, to liberals: > I dislike Trump as much as anyone. Maybe I’m not supposed to play my hand like that while reporting a news article, but it’s true. I’ve wanted him out of politics since he entered the scene a decade ago, I voted against him three elections in a row, and I…

Either he's a broken clock that's right twice a day, or a Stallman equivalent who was just dismissed as crazy until the truth was too big to ignore.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#320

Post by tines »

nradov wrote: post #286
jerlam wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are multiple reasons for the doctor shortage but it's at least partly intentional. The primary bottleneck on producing new physicians is the number of residency program slots: every year some students graduate with an MD but are unable to practice medicine because they can't get matched to a residency slot (some do get matched the following year). Most residency programs are funded through Medicare and Congress…

This is fucked.
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