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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

#151

Post by robocat »

RandomBacon wrote: post #84
duxup wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

ATC here (opinions are my own, not of the FAA, etc) I agree those uncommon skills help make someone be a good controller. Unfortunately I don't think the FAA is testing for that, of course the hiring process tests have changed since I was hired on. (I hope someone from the FAA is reading this and tells CAMI. I was disappointed when there was no free text response on the survey they gave out a few weeks ago.)

> those uncommon skills help make someone be a good controller

Societies hiring norms are broken.

Everyone spends years at school before (a) being filtered by experts for aptitude, or (b) filtering themselves for fit. It is so sad to see teachers, lawyers, engineers, everyone waste years to discover they don't like a job or the job doesn't like them. The cost to society is percentage points of GDP.

Even worse is that nobody encourages us to quickly test different disciplines and discover unobvious fits. Internship or volunteer is the closest and requires me to do a lot of high-risk heavy lifting. Maybe I'd love being a teacher and maybe I'd be great at it. Who knows?

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

#152

Post by c-cube »

Levitz wrote: post #127
verzali wrote: post #97

The big question every one seems to be ignoring is whether air travel in the US should now be considered dangerous. If ATC is understaffed or filled with unqualified people, then how is any flight safe? Why would anyone get on a plane unless they really have to and have no other option?

Because air travel is ridiculously safe. The incident with the helicopter and the plane is making the rounds precisely because of how insanely improbable it is, and even then from what we know, chances are the error was in the helicopter, not the tower.

Another (small) plane crashed in Philadelphia today. That's two in a couple days.

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

#153

Post by BJones12 »

hwillis wrote: post #135
Levitz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because air travel is ridiculously safe. The incident with the helicopter and the plane is making the rounds precisely because of how insanely improbable it is, and even then from what we know, chances are the error was in the helicopter, not the tower.

A plane and helicopter over DC came within 500' of each other over DC barely 24 hours before the crash. They avoided collision because they were over 1000' and the TCAS was still active: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huVFZ__q2rI During the day the only thing that was keeping those collisions from happening under 1000' was pilots seeing each other. At night the only thing keeping it from happening was luck. The erro…

> A plane and helicopter over DC came within 500' ... They avoided collision because they were over 1000' and the TCAS was still active

That's not an example of why air travel is dangerous, that's an example of why air travel is safe.

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

#154

Post by buckle8017 »

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.

It's the same thing as Jim Crow era voting tests.[0]

Here take the test yourself and tell me it's not rigged.

https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/

[0]https://allthatsinteresting.com/voting-literacy-test

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

#155

Post by SoftTalker »

giantg2 wrote: post #86
RandomBacon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATC here (opinions are my own, not of the FAA, etc) Pay is a huge part of it, so it really is that simple. Qualified people are choosing not to even apply anymore because the pay is no longer competitive with other high-paying jobs that don't destroy you mentally and physically, or have a complicated hiring process like ATC does.

Median pay is higher than my pay, and it looks like equal to median dev pay. But why would I want the stress and lower flexibility? I hate my current job and still wouldn't be interested in ATC for the higher pay.

The sense of doing something useful? Maybe it gets lost, but I think that going home knowing that you were part of safely getting people and aircraft where then need to go would be fulfilling. Also very stressful though, knowing what the consequences of a mistake can be.

Developers can always fix their mistakes. Very, very few would even even possibly result in the loss of life. I'd think pay for controllers should be much higher, but like anything it is subject to economics. If people are willing to do it for $X, then that is what it will pay.

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

#156

Post by linuxftw »

esalman wrote: post #96
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.

This is a bad idea. If implemented airlines will shut down services to small and less profitable airports and routes. It will only negatively affect passengers.

Airlines already shut down service to small and less profitable airports, nothing is preventing them from doing just that.

Of course, other Airlines are free to step in and schedule flights there. The average cost per seat might go up, but so will the number of ATCs.

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

#157

Post by Levitz »

c-cube wrote: post #152
Levitz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because air travel is ridiculously safe. The incident with the helicopter and the plane is making the rounds precisely because of how insanely improbable it is, and even then from what we know, chances are the error was in the helicopter, not the tower.

Another (small) plane crashed in Philadelphia today. That's two in a couple days.

Yes, non-commercial planes crash far, FAR more often than commercial flights, at the tune of about 200-300 fatalities a year, you can play with the data a bit here:

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

The fact that the incident you talk about was reported at all was exceptional.

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

#158

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 »

brookst wrote: post #115
rayiner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The evidence is shortages and safety incidents and that hiring scandal. Now we're able to use instinct and "innuendo" (as you call it) to find more rot

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

#159

Post by watwut »

zamadatix wrote: post #109
throw0101a wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raise pay until you have enough staff. Federal workers have just been told to leave: * https://www.opm.gov/fork

I'm not sure how relevant that is to air traffic control. They don't work from home, they are heavily performance and standards based to even get a chance at joining, and there is no clear reason to assume to automatically exclude the air traffic control portion of the FAA from what's described in #3. The US federal government is one of the largest employers in the world (or the largest, depending exactly how you dec…

FAA is leaderless, likely because he dared to give fine to Elin Musk. So yeah, it will affect things.

Also, looking how twitter ia shell of itself and looking at Musk knowing even less about goverment ... it will fail spectacularly.

And after that fail, they will blame women and non-whites hard.

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

#160

Post by bambax »

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…

Not sure what those qualities have in common?

I like to think of myself as a good troubleshooter and would probably have made a good police inspector or FAA analyst. I usually have good intuitions and find root causes pretty fast.

But -- I don't think I would survive two minutes as an air controller even if my life depended on it. This is the job I probably feel the least able to do and the one that impresses me the most. Not just the pressure, but the ability to hold so much information in one's head at the same time, and hold a conversation with many different people talking to you from moving objects which you need to understand the exact location of, switching context constantly -- that's crazy.

Kind of like being an instant translator in multiple languages at the same time and if you make but one mistake, hundreds of people die.

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