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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

#261

Post by toast0 »

kccqzy wrote: post #220
toast0 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an ATC, but I think there's a clear need for awareness of potentially conflicting traffic. If you divide that traffic over more people, you need to add communication between the controllers in a way that you don't when it's all handled by a single person. That's not to say there's not ways to divide it up, but it's not always easily divisible. Well implemented technology can help, but poorly implemented techn…

What if you divide the work by time? Give each person a two-hour workday. Would that reduce stress?

That works in theory. Again, I'm not an ATC, but might be better to have reasonable length workdays (maybe two hours is a reasonable shift though) and more time off between workdays. Similar to shift work in hospitals, where more hand offs means more opportunities to fail to hand off successfully. But I suspect it may be easier to hand off an airplane than to hand off an ICU patient.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#262

Post by jerlam »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #135
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…

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.

A lot of pilots seem to retire into commercial aviation after their military careers. They already have all the training and flight hours. After 20 years and a pension they're keen to keep on flying, but not as high-speed.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#263

Post by Tatar_grade »

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…

*turnover = money

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#264

Post by saagarjha »

lazystar wrote: post #243
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.

20/20 vision in each eye (no contact lenses) is also a requirement. I have a feeling thatll rule out a lot of software engineers on this site.

I assume plenty of people will be happy to go through LASIK for that

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#265

Post by Tatar_grade »

d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #254
tw04 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> 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. I think the guaranteed respect and admiration that comes from the title is actually a more powerful draw. Don't get me wrong, the money is good, but on par with senior manager in any large tech firm. Doctor is a primal respect that technical roles do not carry. You're not getting i…

there's something about the guaranteed aspect, whereas a senior manager is at the behest of office politics and the business cycle

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#266

Post by 10u152 »

giantrobot wrote: post #196
jasondigitized wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

Aircraft work within an envelope. You can model what a max speed/min speed max/climb min climb/ trajectory is and work that in. It's a solvable problem. Aircraft can't go from 200-0 knots or 0-200 knots instantly etc

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#267

Post by sangnoir »

bombcar wrote: post #245
bilbo0s wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The real problem is that the problem could happen. Even if the helicopter ATC guy was present, and HAD vectored them behind and they HAD complied, or X or Y or Z or whatever had prevented this accident, it would have happened eventually. The problem isn't that the controller didn't notice they were too close; it is that less than 1000 feet of separation is considered fine and normal and commonplace. It's too close an…

You're just highlighting a different aspect of parent's concern: there shouldn't be special-casing for military aircraft in shared airspace.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#268

Post by kalleboo »

wNjdbfm wrote: post #255

Is this a US ONLY problem? I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm genuinely wondering for example: European air travel doesn't seem any less safe than the US so whatever they are doing seems to work just as well. Do they have trouble hiring and keeping ATCs? Is their comp/work life/training/etc very different than ours? Would appreciate any insight from folks that know.

It looks like Europe also has staffing issues, but they're more likely to cancel/delay flights rather than overwork their ATC https://skift.com/2023/08/22/europes-air-traffic-controller-...

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#269

Post by Jtsummers »

wNjdbfm wrote: post #255

Is this a US ONLY problem? I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm genuinely wondering for example: European air travel doesn't seem any less safe than the US so whatever they are doing seems to work just as well. Do they have trouble hiring and keeping ATCs? Is their comp/work life/training/etc very different than ours? Would appreciate any insight from folks that know.

There was a mass firing in the early 1980s (~90%) which led to the development of a bathtub curve in ATC staffing. By the 2010s this had become a critical issue but was met with a hiring freeze (not the first). Now we're seeing the outcome of those poor decisions paired with the slow hiring/training process to fill the roles.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#270

Post by unsnap_biceps »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #155
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one that you would trust the lives of thousands of humans to every day? It seems unlikely we are anywhere close to a point where we can ensure that any AI won't hallucinate and cause an issue.

Sure, AI can spit out nonsense, and that’s a real concern. But in engineering, we deal with imperfect tradeoffs every day - it’s baked into the job. If we insist on a flawless solution before shipping anything, we’ll never ship. There’s always an optimum where we uphold safety standards without sacrificing forward progress

Yes, however, we need to hold different bars depending on the consequences of the failure. AI in a game that randomly spins around and breaks emersion for a player is fine, an AI that crashes a plane is not fine.

I have zero issues with research into AI research into those areas, but I think it does a major disservice to claim that a weekend is all it takes to get something close to ready for life or death decisions.

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