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Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

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Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#111

Post by brookst »

pessimizer wrote: post #83
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They won't cut traffic for the same reason they are understaffed: money. Raise pay until you have enough staff. It's really not that simple. It's a 3-year training process. There's really nothing that's going to get you adequately staffed in the short term. Sure, that could solve the problem medium term.

You can't neglect something, then turn down fixes because they won't happen fast enough. Fast enough wasn't a concern during the period of neglect, so a sense of urgency is playacting. The optimal solution is to pay properly, and if temporary things have to be done (rewarding people for not retiring, paying a premium to develop/import some controllers quickly) then so be it. What a "3-year training process" and the f…

> Fast enough wasn't a concern during the period of neglect, so a sense of urgency is playacting.

I can’t agree with that at all. I would never treat a crisis as less urgent because other people in the past did not treat the contributory factors urgently enough.

Lack of urgency in the past is a sunk cost. It’s silly to evaluate urgency today on that basis.

Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#112

Post by belter »

blantonl wrote: post #30

If there is one thing I've learned in the past few days, acutely so, is that the vast majority of people do not understand the sheer complexity of what it takes to have an aviation industry.

This is all true. But I don't think in London, Paris or Amsterdam you have military helicopters doing training flights at night, across the landing and departures tracks of a busy civilian airport. Specially when they dont even share the same frequencies and have to rely on visual cues...

Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#113

Post by brookst »

quest88 wrote: post #101
buckle8017 wrote: post #79

It would probably have helped if they didn't turn away thousands of qualified white male candidates. Instead of simply biasing their hiring based on race. The FAA brilliantly denied anybody who scored too low on their "compatibility" matrix, presumably as a legal dodge. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/faa-embroiled-in-lawsuit-a...

Thanks for the article, it provides no evidence of anything you said.

Thanks for saying that. I kept looking through the article and wondering where the evidence was.

Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#114

Post by heraldgeezer »

duxup wrote: post #66
blantonl wrote: post #30

If there is one thing I've learned in the past few days, acutely so, is that the vast majority of people do not understand the sheer complexity of what it takes to have an aviation industry.

I think “sense of urgency”, “trouble shooting”, “understanding what is influencing other people’s actions” and even the ability to run a sort of “run a mental simulation and anticipate second order effects” are uncommon skills. I worked with a good technical support team that worked on some high end equipment, and regardless of education the ability to troubleshoot could be found regardless and … in spite of educatio…

So if I struggled through education, got my degree, I have a few jobs, but I don't have IT, I'm screwed?

No, I don't want to be management. No, I don't want to have a hard job. I want to be a NEET basically. If I work I just work and go home anyway and watch YouTube.

Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#115

Post by brookst »

rayiner wrote: post #55
taeric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. In the reparations lawsuit, there are only 1000ish individuals. Assuming all of them would have qualified, you are talking about around 2% of the current workforce. Not nothing. But the last admin grew the workforce by more numbers. And did not have this policy. So, by all means, chase reparations. But don't think you've stumbled on the reason, either.

What makes you think this wasn’t indicative of how the agency was run? The test was shut down because it was obvious and egregious: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... . But the people who designed it didn’t resign.

Innuendo is a weak argument. Show evidence for your claims; it is not sufficient to demand other people somehow prove your feelings are wrong.

Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#116

Post by belter »

esalman wrote: post #85
blantonl wrote: post #30

If there is one thing I've learned in the past few days, acutely so, is that the vast majority of people do not understand the sheer complexity of what it takes to have an aviation industry.

I mean there's an entire cult of people who think 5G causes Covid and RF changes your DNA.

Well you could think that and still win a Nobel... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier

Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#117

Post by Groxx »

linuxftw wrote: post #70

It seems like there are shortages in every field according to the media. Shortage in tech workers, shortage in doctors and nurses, shortage of air traffic controllers. Shortages all around. Here's how to instantly cure shortages of ATCs: Each airline is responsible for staffing N ATCs per scheduled flight at a given airport, calculated on a yearly basis.

So the solution is "infinite money" or "shut most of them down".

I agree that both will solve the staffing problem, but neither seem particularly practical.

Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#119

Post by mikeyouse »

kevin_b_er wrote: post #90
cozzyd wrote: post #12

Those personnel numbers don't really make sense to me. Like, sure I believe O'Hare has 57 trained ATC staff, but Kalamazoo has 47 while La Guardia has 29, all at comparable percentages of trained staffing. Something is off... It's good to see that both Chicago airports are at full staffing though (when counting staff in training ).

Kalamazoo is the result of consolidation. The graph incorrectly just lists them as "Kalamazoo Tower", but its also a TRACON facility. They're handling multiple airports remotely. In 2016, this was planned to be Grand Rapids, Lansing, Muskegon, Flint, and Saginaw, though I'm not sure all of them were consolidated.

I believe just Flint, Saginaw, Lansing and Kalamazoo were consolidated when I last looked in 2022. For people who are unaware, Kalamazoo has one of the most substantial aviation programs in the country in town at WMU so centralizing there with a large staff is a great opportunity to cross train.

Re: Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows

#120

Post by brookst »

tuatoru wrote: post #39
nradov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only seems that way to people who know nothing about aviation.

Now generalise this to education, and healthcare, and logistics.

I don’t disagree with your implication, but let’s be honest that the incidence of totally novel, urgent, life-or-death situations is a lot lower in education than air traffic control. At least outside the US.
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