This should be easy enough to solve. Cut the hours back to something sane, and as much as possible time the airport closures in ways that affect the ruling class. You get bonus points if their jets are also delayed during normal taxiing and clearance requests -- explain that it's for their safety, since they're more important than everyone else and can't slot in to the same sorts of back-to-back landings that the common folk use.
America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
11–20 of 660 posts
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#12My dad was an air traffic controller until the mid 10's and this has been a problem easily since like 2005.
They struggled to recruit people who could do the job at all, and when people got into the building to be trained (after an initial training) most of them would quit because they couldn't do it.
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#13This should be easy enough to solve. Cut the hours back to something sane, and as much as possible time the airport closures in ways that affect the ruling class. You get bonus points if their jets are also delayed during normal taxiing and clearance requests -- explain that it's for their safety, since they're more important than everyone else and can't slot in to the same sorts of back-to-back landings that the com…
The ruling class makes the rules, though. That's their whole deal. That's why nothing works right.
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#14I 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.
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#15How 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?
From what I understand, if they are over 30 and have less than 20/20 vision, they aren’t qualified.
Do you have a date when that policy was instituted? I've known a lot of air traffic controllers, and most of them wore glasses.
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#16Fellas, I got a question.
Is it really safe to fly these days if this is now a national discussion?
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#17Then start paying them
Exactly. The article enumerates all the ways to improve hiring, except for compensation.
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understand, if they are over 30 and have less than 20/20 vision, they aren’t qualified.
Do you have a date when that policy was instituted? I've known a lot of air traffic controllers, and most of them wore glasses.
First result in google for "air traffic controller training"
https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
Edit: I didn't take a stance on this topic, if you think I did, you are incorrect. I was simply linking the website that outlines the requirements instead of postulating as to what they were.
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or cut down on flights. You could easily ban private flights until there is enough capacity.
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 for.
Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers
#20To those who know more about ATC: is there any hope of automation?