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America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

cnn.com

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Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#201

Post by tw04 »

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…

Everything you have listed above could be solved with money.

Only 10% of applicants are physically and mentally qualified? Sounds like you need more applicants? Want to attract more applicants? Offer more compensation.

The training and onboarding is incredibly long? Sounds like a doctor? Do you know why people go through the pain of becoming a doctor? Because they make a lot of money when they get through the other side.

Technology hasn't changed is a political problem due to lack of... money. There isn't an issue with new technology, there's an issue with the government refusing to invest in upgrading the technology. Canada doesn't have this issue and they're far smaller than the US.

Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it.

I do absolutely, 100% think that this is a problem that can easily be solved with money.

I also think our politicians will flounder around making excuses about how the problem is unsolvable because it doesn't directly help their chances of re-election.

The first time a plane goes down carrying a dozen congress critters and their families, you can bet there will magically be money in the banana stand.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#202

Post by adolph »

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…

> some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: > - The FAA has strict hiring requirements.

So what happened? Why did the FAA upend a stable hiring process, undercut the CTI schools it had established to train its workforce, and throw the plans of thousands of eager would-be air traffic controllers into disarray?

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#203

Post by bluGill »

jjk166 wrote: post #70
psunavy03 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistically, yes.

Based on what data? In 2024 there were 0 domestic airline collisions in 16 million flights, in 2025 there was 1 in 1.3 million.

Which is statistically the same number.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#204

Post by mullingitover »

slt2021 wrote: post #194
mullingitover wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Mexico is an assembly operation to arbitrage cheap low skill labor and preferential NAFTA-like agreements. Vehicle designs, powertrains, critical components are all made by the HQ or its suppliers.

Citation needed, because just a cursory check is showing me plenty of powertrain manufacturing happening in Mexico. Meanwhile if by critical components you mean chips, I don't think there's a big semiconductor manufacturing union that's kneecapping GM. Design is also an apples to apples comparison, it's not a union job.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#205

Post by intended »

bilbo0s wrote: post #176
bombcar wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll bet the final NTSB report lists as a contributing factor that there was only one controller that night; a second controller might have had the time to notice the altitude was too close, or vector the helicopter behind.

No. There are also rules on who can do what. Put another way, military aircraft, especially certain military aircraft, can do things that civilian aircraft can't. If I were piloting a helicopter in that airspace, that ATC transcript would have been significantly different. We should be looking at root causes. Which means we should ask the uncomfortable questions about the deference given to some military/government a…

>Staffing at air traffic control tower ‘not normal’ during Washington plane crash, FAA report reveals

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/dc-plane-c...

>on Wednesday evening was also monitoring planes taking off and landing, according to the FAA report reviewed by The New York Times. These jobs are typically assigned to two different people, the outlet reported

But:

>However, the National Transportation Safety Board said they will not speculate on the causes of the crash and will release a preliminary report on the incident within 30 days.

So perhaps its not staffing. Although I don't really know what world the report is going to be going out into in 30 days.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#206

Post by cj »

ketralnis wrote: post #154
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #118

We have planes moving hundreds of miles an hour being managed exclusively by audio channels. Does this not blow anyone else's minds? This seems like a clear case of 'because we've always done it that way'. There's no way if a system was being developed today they'd say to hell with screens, lets just give them instructions over audio and assume they'll follow them to a T if acknowledged.

That there is a computer at ATC that a human looks at, reads what it says with their eyes, speaks those instructions over the radio in a specific protocol, another human listens to it (and confirms within that protocol), and inputs those control signals into the airplane. Computer -> human -> radio(spoken protocol) -> human -> plane. There aren't a lot of practical reasons it can't just be Computer -> radio(digital p…

Sometimes having humans in the loop is a feature, not a bug.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#207

Post by kccqzy »

avn2109 wrote: post #172
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…

The million dollar salary thing is compelling. I would certainly switch careers from ML engineering for a million bucks of cash comp, especially in a low CoL location :) Also, the "30 years old" thing mentioned in the GP seems excessive, surely if they were really desperate to staff up, they could loosen that age limit.

My own experience tells me that past 30 years old my thinking is slightly slower in the form of slightly longer reaction times, and slightly longer time to recall specific facts. This hardly matters in my current job but perhaps ATC would be different. Perhaps they are taking that into account.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#208

Post by bluGill »

GiorgioG wrote: post #82
sc68cal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not going to want to fly to a tiny airport in the middle of nowhere and then have to drive into the city. That defeats the whole point

A friend of mine is a pilot for these types of folks (founders of non-tech household names), unless they're going to an event (say the Super Bowl), they fly into smaller airports.

Even the super bowl they are flying into smaller airports in the region.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#209

Post by mplanchard »

kaikai wrote: post #86
jgwil2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent commenter misspoke; they meant there was not a fatal accident involving a commercial airliner from 2009 to 2025. Commercial aviation is much more highly regulated, and much safer, than general aviation.

Nope, sorry, that page describes multiple commercial accidents resulting in fatalities, since 2009. The Asiana crash at SFO had multiple fatalities, and was in 2013. From the Wikipedia page: “This is a list of fatal commercial aviation accidents and incidents in or in the vicinity of the United States or its territories. It comprises a subset of both the list of accidents and incidents involving airliners in the Unit…

The 2009 fact is commercial US airlines, specifically

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#210

Post by rdtsc »

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…

There has been a buzz of having "computerized, automated ATC" since, well, forever. It's like the flying car of the aviation world. I don't know if the government still hopes that is "right around the corner" so they don't really want to ramp up hiring. I mean, look ChatGPT can solve math problems already, surely it can funnel planes into an airport... /s

There certainly some automation involved, but not at the level where we can just let the all the people go home and have it take over.

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