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America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

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Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#181

Post by wahern »

lenerdenator wrote: post #92
legitster wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, if not police, then teacher's unions: there's not a lot of available studies, but most point to a non-existent or negative relationship between CBAs and student performance. Or in the private sectors, non-unionized manufacturers like Toyota and Honda always outperform legacy manufacturers in the US on quality. I'm not saying there's not a strong argument for unionization, but an improvement in quality is not on…

> Okay, if not police, then teacher's unions: there's not a lot of available studies, but most point to a non-existent or negative relationship between CBAs and student performance. I'm going to guess that there are far stronger correlations with household wealth when it comes to student performance than there are whether the students are taught by teachers who are employed under a CBA. > Or in the private sectors, n…

> There's also a cultural difference between Japanese and American businesses, but that's far more nebulous.

The abstract cultural differences might be difficult to articulate, but many of the effects are concrete: Toyota still maintains lifetime employment for Japanese factory employees. And Toyota factory workers in Japan are represented by a union, AFAIU, though like Germany the relationship between unions and management is less adversarial in Japan.

Interestingly, the change in union employment in Japan seems to have tracked the US, from a high of over 50% mid-century to 16% today versus ~35% and ~10%, respectively, in the U.S.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#182

Post by gosub100 »

tayo42 wrote: post #101
robert_foss wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reagan taking away collective bargaining rights for ATCs seems to be what have led to the shortage and the helicopter accident last week.

Did reagan do anything good in hindsight? Everytime I hear about him he seems like the worst president until trump came along

He became very popular to hate on in the past midterms because his position that "government IS the problem" is more popular than ever given the last administration. It was a vain effort to preempt what they knew was coming.

Seriously, why else would the name of a president who hasn't served in 40 years suddenly be brought up all the time?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#183

Post by fiftyfifty »

legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

I've toured a couple of ATC towers recently and my impression was they were surprisingly low tech. A tech upgrade seems like the most viable solution at this point. There are processes for writing and testing software and hardware for environments such as this, but the government needs to be willing to make the investment.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#184

Post by jasondigitized »

legitster wrote: post #77

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The trainin…

I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the challenges presented.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#185

Post by paraboli »

trunnell wrote: post #20

To those who know more about ATC: is there any hope of automation?

It's been reported that the elevation of the helicopter was reported as hundreds of feet off. It's unlikely it was just an issue at the specific tower the crash occurred at. If they can't even get accurate elevation data there's no way they'll be able to automate.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#186

Post by mullingitover »

slt2021 wrote: post #158
lenerdenator wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, if not police, then teacher's unions: there's not a lot of available studies, but most point to a non-existent or negative relationship between CBAs and student performance. I'm going to guess that there are far stronger correlations with household wealth when it comes to student performance than there are whether the students are taught by teachers who are employed under a CBA. > Or in the private sectors, n…

not true, it is better for the brand long-term to build good cars. but unionized workforce makes it economically unfeasible. GM makes crappy because, if they tried to make high quality cars, they would be priced like Cadillacs

We have an apples to apples comparison with Mexican-made vehicles, though, since both GM and Toyota build there.

What's the excuse for the shoddy non-union Mexican GM vehicles?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#187

Post by Jtsummers »

germinalphrase wrote: post #179
lesuorac wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a colossal error to accept. The government isn't authorized to do a buy-out by congress so you're just quitting and won't receive the payment.

It never was a buy out, and everyone should stop referring to it as such.

Yep. It was a pinky swear to maybe pay for 8 months that might be able to be spent on leave, but none of it was guaranteed.

The employee's agency determines if they spend it on leave, not OPM. Congress will determine if there's even money after March 14th available to pay for 8 months of anything, let alone 8 months of admin leave.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#188

Post by bilbo0s »

legitster wrote: post #91
RandomBacon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about the lawsuit, but I do know that someone leaked the "answers" to members of a group representing people of a specific race. (Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.)

I literally linked to a study website for test, I don't think you had to be a member of a secret racial kabal to get answers. Furthermore, the bias was literally baked into the test - certain minority candidates got to skip the test altogether. Although it's still not evidence that qualified white people were prevented from filling in vacancies.

Wow.

There's people who actually believe this stuff?

Hopefully these people are not allowed to infect the NTSB with their idiocy. We have to keep focused on safety. Which means we don't ignore the root cause of helo pilots losing, (or maybe never even having), situational awareness.

How can we make the space safe even if helo pilots lose situational awareness?

All this DEI nonsense has to take a back seat to answering those primary safety related questions. This is not a game, or political rally, or whatever. We have to fix this.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#189

Post by stevage »

bobthepanda wrote: post #145
ryandrake wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would argue an ATC employee is worth every penny, but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. These people are already very well compensated, and at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools. It wouldn't happen overnight, but surely if ATC had a similar compensation reputat…

part of the problem is the structural problems caused by high turnover are themselves causing high turnover. people can't take vacation, people need to work 6 days 12 hours a week. there is also the issue of location. where applicants are and where controllers are needed is often two distinct circles and once you throw relocation into remote areas into the mix it becomes really unattractive.

And not allowing people to take anxiety meds is nuts. Some of those meds seem perfect for this job, putting you in a very mellow, but focused state.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#190

Post by jjtheblunt »

schmookeeg wrote: post #72
ryandrake wrote: post #37

If you live in the Bay Area on the Peninsula, you'll be excited to know that the San Carlos airport and the FAA are in a pissing match over their air traffic controllers' pay, threatening to un-staff the control tower and leave that very busy airspace without tower control. The tower was set to go dark on Feb 1st[1] but it looks like there is now a temporary extension[2] keeping it staffed. Why these guys need to pla…

I still don't understand why KSQL is a contract tower and not a full FAA-managed tower.

Did the call sign go to KSQL because of Oracle being right there?
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