America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

Post by mp05 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 11:31 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #128

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 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…

Post by dblohm7 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 11:36 PM UTC

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.

Post by ggm » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 11:40 PM UTC

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.

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 11:41 PM UTC

jasondigitized wrote: post #184

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…

Post by AnthonyMouse » Tue, Feb 04, 2025, 11:44 PM UTC

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…