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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

#171

Post by sangnoir »

BJones12 wrote: post #153
hwillis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Aviation safety industry considers near-misses as an indicator of danger, and worth reviewing. A near-miss followed by a crash is maximally damning of the system.

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

#172

Post by Levitz »

tremon wrote: post #164
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.

Please stop with the unnecessary platitudes. The GP is specifically asking about future safety in light of what's being discussed in the article. Continually harping on the past safety record as if it is an accurate forecast is a disservice to the parent's question. Granted, the question was hyperbolic, but you can address that hyperbole directly rather than just giving a canned generic response.

What is being discussed in the article has been happening for a decade. It's not something sudden or new, and as such, "harping" on the past safety record is an accurate forecast.

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

#173

Post by RandomBacon »

leoqa wrote: post #149
RandomBacon wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It seems like the biggest blocker for hiring is location selection.

That is way up there too, good catch.

After going through the hiring process (application, test, drug screen, medical screening), they give you an academy start date and whether you'll be Terminal or En Route.

People who pass the Terminal training at the FAA Academy are given a list of low-level (lower pay) towers to choose from that are seemingly-random. It could be that there's a spot at a tower in your home town, but that spot is reserved for the class that graduates one week after your class, which means you can't go there, you have to take from the list you're given or quit (and some people do quit at this point).

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

#174

Post by viraptor »

giantg2 wrote: post #73
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…

'“run a mental simulation and anticipate second order effects” are uncommon skill.' There are literally people who are innately unable to do this (run mental simulations). I wonder what the percentage is though.

Did you use the right word there? Nobody's born with that ability.

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

#175

Post by blogabegonija »

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, Covid is likely made In USA. https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/foi-litigation-on-origins...

And RF really changes your DNA https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E....

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

#176

Post by devit »

n144q wrote: post #80
devit wrote: post #11

Seems like it can be at least mostly automated.

Listen to some ATC communications (lots of websites and YouTube videos out there), and try to get a sense of how complicated it is. You really think you are the first person smart enough to come up with this idea? If this worked, it would have been automated many many years ago. We probably would not even need pilots.

It's probably not done due to political reasons.

Most of the complication is probably accidental, due to history or human traditions.

From first principles, the problem is obviously straightforward to formulate (assign nonoverlapping regions of spacetime to aircraft containing their position and destination, that they can maneuver in and such that the travel time is approximately optimal).

Applying simplifying constraints to the form of the regions (e.g. a discrete set of departure slots and fixed takeoff/landing envelopes, a route that follows the optimal trajectory in latitude/longitude plus a discrete lateral offset, discrete set of altitudes that change only at route crossings), it should be possible to reduce to a discrete optimization problem solvable in linear time.

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

#177

Post by sangnoir »

SoftTalker wrote: post #161
nradov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is being modernized through the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). This will take decades and a huge amount of funding. https://www.faa.gov/nextgen They accept public comments so all of the armchair aviation experts on HN should probably send them an email and explain how they can solve all the problems by connecting ChatGPT to a controller console.

So AI has come a long way since NextGen was conceptualized. Training an AI on the historical flight activity for an airport seems .... doable? Would it be better than human controllers? We know it would not be subject to fatigue or emotional stress, and the domain is so limited that hopefully hallucinations would not be a problem. How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI?

> How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI?

Not very. For safety-critical systems, you probably want something deterministic, and doesn't break when faced with novel situations.

Solvers are probably a better solution than ML approaches, but they can't capture every possible constraint, such as airplane that can only make left-handed turns because of equipment failure.

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

#178

Post by cogman10 »

giantg2 wrote: post #63
cogman10 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is something that is solved by tech. It sounds like they simply don't have enough staff, whether that a budget problem or hiring problem IDK. The article mentions they have a 50% reduction in new hires which either says it's hard to be competent, the job is too demanding, or both. They had 1 tower with 1 operator and no redundancy at a fairly busy airport, which is definitely concerning.

Your comment assumes the current system can be scaled indefinitely. But you also acknowledge that we can't currently fill the staffing. I also explicitly called out that the modernization might not be tech changes but procedure changes (realistically it would likely be procedure changes made possible through tech). Doing something to distribute information differently could result in redundancy such that if the comme…

> Your comment assumes the current system can be scaled indefinitely.

Why couldn't it be? We need fewer ATC than we need pilots, by a long shot. The actual requested new hires for ATC is in the range of 2k (with 1k expected to stay on staff).

With roughly a 120k salary, and assuming all 2k stay on-board that's what, an additional $200mil needed to fully fund?

Meanwhile, the airline industry had a $30b net profit, so it doesn't look like this is even something that'd bankrupt the industry if we taxed them to cover the costs of ATC. It's a 1% tax that's needed.

Even with a super duper fancy modernized system, we'd still want towers staffed sufficiently. Having just 1 person there is a problem even if everything is super modernized. When an issue comes up that the system can't or isn't handling well that's 1 person to make all the calls. Hopefully 2 things aren't happening and hopefully they don't need or want a second opinion.

As for hiring competent people, the DC metro has 6.3 million people. I find it really hard to believe there's not 3 more in the area that could handle being an ATC operator.

And it's not like we don't already have 99% of the existing buildings, infrastructure, and computers already setup. It's literally just the personnel that's lacking.

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

#179

Post by SoftTalker »

sangnoir wrote: post #177
SoftTalker wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So AI has come a long way since NextGen was conceptualized. Training an AI on the historical flight activity for an airport seems .... doable? Would it be better than human controllers? We know it would not be subject to fatigue or emotional stress, and the domain is so limited that hopefully hallucinations would not be a problem. How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI?

> How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI? Not very. For safety-critical systems, you probably want something deterministic, and doesn't break when faced with novel situations. Solvers are probably a better solution than ML approaches, but they can't capture every possible constraint, such as airplane that can only make left-handed turns because of equipment failure.

> For safety-critical systems, you probably want something deterministic, and doesn't break when faced with novel situations.

Humans are not deterministic and can break for many reasons. It's not plausible that an AI could handle "route this aircraft for landing without any right turns" ?

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

#180

Post by RandomBacon »

nradov wrote: post #130
bryant wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly the pay should be comparable to commercial pilots in the current market. Or more. Funding sadly is probably better handled as a tax on the people rather than the industry simply because ATCs protect more than just commercial crew and passengers, and more than just their home country.

Which pilots? Rookie controllers already get paid more per hour than most general aviation flight instructors, or first officers in regional airlines. Pay for captains at major airlines is quite good, but few pilots ever reach that level.

United Airlines alone has around 15,000 pilots, about the same number of FAA ATC.

So those pilots. Even their new pilots (First Officers) make more per hour than ATC.

(ATC here, opinions are my own and not that of the FAA.)

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