[flagged]
American aviation is near collapse?
31–40 of 118 posts
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, a tired, overextended air traffic controller at LaGuardia just caused two pilots to die last night while landing. How many deaths would communicate "We have likely reached system failure"? I presume for some, it's going to have to be a few airframes worth of passengers unfortunately. There is a shortage of air traffic controllers. Those working are being pushed to failure. The system as a whole is degrading. Th…
Note also that they deliberately choke off the hiring funnel before they even get applicants, and deliberately dispose of experienced controllers. Air traffic controller applicants must be under 31 years old for initial hire. The mandatory retirement age is 56. Although there are limited exceptions to both rules.
Air traffic controllers require a significant investment by the federal government, I take no issue with age limits for both investment (lower bound) and safety reasons (upper bound) (if the data says it is reasonable, I'll always defer to the data).
I take exceptional issue with the fact that their pay is not considered essential. There should be no way for this critical infrastructure to be not considered essential. ATC pay should flow regardless of actions of any branch of the federal government, and there should be robust systems in place to ensure these workers are not pushed beyond reasonable work limits. Fix the system or break the system forcing a fix. If it continues to work "good enough" without a fix, no changes will be made.
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Collapse" isn't within the statistical distribution though Uh? Maybe you could explain what you mean by this a bit more.
1. It's not a rigorously defined term. 2. "System collapse" would be unexplored territory, so how would statistical analysis be able to infer when it occurs?
1. Not really. If the crash rates we're seeing under the Trump administration are higher than any similar length period in the last ~10 years, we should start to worry.
2. See above.
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#34Just a standard warning to readers: when you use an archive.ph (or other archive.today) link, you risk your computer's resources being used to participate in a DDOS against another web site, as reported/discussed recently on HN[1]. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46624740
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#35Problems related to air traffic controllers and TSA staff aren't a sign of "american aviation" being near collapse - they are a sign of american goverment being near collapse. This is critical national infrastructure - stop playing stupid political games with it.
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#36[flagged]
You are being disingenuous. The article is about the aviation industry as a whole. The article talks about various accidents that have occured in the past few years. What it means for airports, etc.
Then there's a section about the airports and TSA. TSA is currently working without pay due to a shutdown over funding. The issue of contention in this funding bill is ICE. The administration is responding by sending ICE to airports to fulfill TSA functions or not, it's, as always, unclear with this administration.
The article has 10 paragraphs. 3 mention ICE.
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#37This is largely true for almost all US public services. Decades of focusing on the needs of the 1% is producing a situation where almost everything is under funded or poorly implemented. Critical infrastructure isn't a priority.
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#38I'm not saying the article's thesis is wrong, much of it rings true to me, but we have very comprehensive data and statistics concerning air travel so I'm deeply unimpressed by this article instead hanging its argument on a hodgepodge list of incidents instead of digging into the data to get some proper numbers.
Well, a tired, overextended air traffic controller at LaGuardia just caused two pilots to die last night while landing. How many deaths would communicate "We have likely reached system failure"? I presume for some, it's going to have to be a few airframes worth of passengers unfortunately. There is a shortage of air traffic controllers. Those working are being pushed to failure. The system as a whole is degrading. Th…
> How many deaths would communicate "We have likely reached system failure"?
"Failure" is really a matter of opinion rather than some objective tipping point. The air system is unlikely to ever actually "fail", and at worst will just become some arbitrary level of degraded that some people will loudly label "failed".
There are plenty of examples around the world of countries with variously degraded air systems, that are far worse than the US status quo but still are not "failed".
There's Egypt, which has labeled crashes caused by bad design as "someone used a bomb and blew it up" for political reasons: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/07/fire-not-bomb-...
Yemen, in the midst of a perennial civil war, still runs commercial flights: https://www.pprune.org/terms-endearment/653181-yemenia-expat...
Russia, with airplane parts sacntioned for years, still runs commercial flights.
Even if the US undergoes a USSR-style sudden collapse, the aviation system is not going to "fail" in the sense of completely breaking and stopping.
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note also that they deliberately choke off the hiring funnel before they even get applicants, and deliberately dispose of experienced controllers. Air traffic controller applicants must be under 31 years old for initial hire. The mandatory retirement age is 56. Although there are limited exceptions to both rules.
Air traffic controllers require a significant investment by the federal government, I take no issue with age limits for both investment (lower bound) and safety reasons (upper bound) (if the data says it is reasonable, I'll always defer to the data). I take exceptional issue with the fact that their pay is not considered essential. There should be no way for this critical infrastructure to be not considered essential…
This assumes that controllers over 56 years old are statistically "unsafe," presumably due to perceived cognitive speed and ability. So unsafe that the concern overrides experience, familiarity with systems, and other key benefits of tenure. I'd love to see that data.
Re: American aviation is near collapse?
#40[flagged]
Uh, they know their audience? I read about the crash on the NY Times. Then I saw that there were comments so I thought to myself what can people have to say about a plane crash where it looks like ATC told the truck to stop? Times readers did not disappoint: Congress and government shutdown, lack of TSA staffing, Trump’s fault, ICE, DOGE…