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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

#221

Post by nine_k »

pbalau wrote: post #180
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…

I think this is a naive way of looking at the problem. People that start working in banks, generally do that as a starting point. ATC is the end of the road for that career. Working in a bank is the start of a quite lucrative career, working as an ATC is the end. Indeed, we can offer more money to ATC, but there is not a lot, progression wise. Honestly, how would a junior ATC look like, compared with a senior?

Look at how much a senior airline pilot makes, compared to a junior.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#222

Post by [deleted] »

kccqzy wrote: post #207
avn2109 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#223

Post by Graziano_M »

Khaine wrote: post #219

It should be noted that the FAA is facing a lawsuit alleging it discriminated against capable candidates[1]. If this is true, this surely must factor into the shortage of air traffic controllers. Admittedly, its a big if, and second even if it is true it is not clear to me how much of a factor this is in the shortage. [1] https://mslegal.org/cases/brigida-v-faa/

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

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#224

Post by kayodelycaon »

landryraccoon wrote: post #213
giantrobot wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am completely naive about the challenges presented. The problem isn't collision detection or predicting movement. They're not a bunch of particles on simple ballistic trajectories. They're powered objects traveling in a turbulent and difficult to predict medium. In emergency conditions they can turn from a powered vehicle to an unpowered one. They can need to land immediately when flight worthiness changes in fli…

This is a general objection to AI responding to real world events in general : "What if something unexpected happens?" It comes up in self driving as well. Things like "What if something suddenly appears in the middle of the road" or "Can it drive in snow conditions with zero visibility? My question is, how do you know that in general human beings respond better to unexpected or very complex / difficult situations th…

> I'd like to see some statistics on the opposing hypothesis : How good are humans, really, when encountering unexpected situations? Do they compare better with automated systems in general?

This is already out there. You can go research how Airbus and their automation works in practice.

You can also listen to air traffic control recordings to get an idea of what types of emergencies exist and how often they happen. I'm sure the FAA has records you can look at. :)

Now that apply that to something 3 orders of magnitude more complex.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#225

Post by Melatonic »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #183
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.

If anything tech upgrades could potentially just make the job less stressful for current traffic controllers - which might end up (long term) with big benefits for everyone.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#227

Post by WillPostForFood »

robert_foss wrote: post #38
lenerdenator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? In theory you could do what Reagan did and tell the military to do ATC. Whether or not this is a good idea is another matter.

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

It was 44 years ago. We have had 6 presidents since then. Every single ATC controller from 1981 is retired, most for over a decade. You probably should be looking at a more proximate cause.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#228

Post by Melatonic »

sombrero_john wrote: post #138
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a good career path for people retiring from commercial aviation. They have been on the other end of ATC and know the gravity of the situation.

You must be younger than 31 to qualify for training as an ATC: https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-age-requirements-individual...

Does seem odd to me - why restrict it this low? People are living longer and healthier than ever into older years (and better vision)

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#229

Post by ajsnigrutin »

landryraccoon wrote: post #213
giantrobot wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am completely naive about the challenges presented. The problem isn't collision detection or predicting movement. They're not a bunch of particles on simple ballistic trajectories. They're powered objects traveling in a turbulent and difficult to predict medium. In emergency conditions they can turn from a powered vehicle to an unpowered one. They can need to land immediately when flight worthiness changes in fli…

This is a general objection to AI responding to real world events in general : "What if something unexpected happens?" It comes up in self driving as well. Things like "What if something suddenly appears in the middle of the road" or "Can it drive in snow conditions with zero visibility? My question is, how do you know that in general human beings respond better to unexpected or very complex / difficult situations th…

In theory, everything works. In practice, we can't even master automated driving, on two dimensional streets with painted lanes, relatively slow speeds, and cars that can just stop in case a decision could not be made. If we can't make this happen, how do you expecct the same with higher speeds, an additional dimension, planes with radio-only (no additional telemetry) and pilots with heavy accents?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#230

Post by bilbo0s »

mrguyorama wrote: post #212
bilbo0s wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The entire point of Human ATC is that those rules are breached regularly in normal operations and we still expect traffic to be routed safely despite that One complaint I've seen is that the ATC should not have let the helicopter do visual spacing in that regime, that it was somewhat careless and unsafe and possibly discouraged. If the ATC operator was overloaded with work, they would be incentivized to "outsource" t…

that it was somewhat careless and unsafe and possibly discouraged

This is what I mean. Clearly, people are unfamiliar with what actions certain military/government pilots are able to take in that airspace. It's rules. It's not about being encouraged or discouraged or overworked or underworked or rainbow farting unicorns. That's not how ATC works.

I would want to change the rules that allow military pilots to do this sort of thing. Or at least, have a reasoned conversation about why it's necessary to allow them to do this sort of thing. But that sort of conversation is difficult. So everyone wants to talk about everything else instead. The issue being that everything else is very likely not the root problem.

I hope when the reports do come out we can stop this nonsense about ATC, or Reagan being a moron, or civilian airliner holding patterns or whatever else and actually have the hard sit down on that issue.

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