Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 660 posts

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#341

Post by foxyv »

userbinator wrote: post #321
foxyv wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA Air Traffic deaths spiked back in 2018 during the Boeing 737 Max debacle. They have declined since then. With the introduction of ADS-B things are only getting safer for commercial air travel. A lack of ATC personnel will probably just mean airport delays and cancelled flights. They can't get any more tired and burnt out than they are now.

No, the 737 Max didn't cause any fatalities in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air_Flight_610 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_302

Ahh, you're right, I was looking at international data. Thank you! This is the USA data:

https://www.bts.gov/content/us-air-carrier-safety-data

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#342

Post by rlpb »

_jss wrote: post #28
ryandrake wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careless and hamfisted taxing/banning of "private jets" can have the unintended effect of also killing light piston general aviation, flight instruction, and the whole pipeline of training the next generation of airline pilots. Flight training is almost always low capacity (one-on-one) so uncarefuly-crafted legislation could catch it in the blast radius. Piloting is already one of the more expensive careers to train…

Landing fees already have this built into the structure, along with waived fees for fuel purchases, etc. It probably is reasonable to look at occupancy percentage along with engine type, and adjust landing fees based on that. Two out of 18 souls on board with a turbine? High landing fees, divert some to an ATC fund.

> Two out of 18 souls on board with a turbine?

Very common. How do you think pilots train to fly such aircraft? Would you prefer pilots not to be trained, or for this type of aircraft to cease service?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#343

Post by themaninthedark »

stevage wrote: post #189
bobthepanda wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find the moderation here frustrating at times when people will down vote but not explain why.

There may be a very go reason to not allow anxiety medication, I don't know enough about it myself.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#344

Post by 0xB31B1B »

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…

I think you're simplifying the frame far too much here. My wife works in medicine as an ENT surgeon. There is an ENT surgeon position open in a rural hospital outside of fresno CA that pays 1.1M dollars/year, or about 2.5-3x the salary a large hospital in a major metro would pay for the work. The position has been unfilled for 4 years. As best I can tell, the two main reasons the job goes unfilled are a combination of (1) it has a stressful call schedule and (2) its in an remote and undesirable location. ATC jobs have a wide geographic distribution. You need ATC at the commercial airports in Klamath Falls OR and Elmira NY and these are places people are generally moving away from, not moving into because they are run down and have low opportunity and general prevalence of rural poverty. Paying more money doesn't automagically fill these roles, and there is an upper limit to how much you can pay someone and have it be a net benefit.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#347

Post by OJFord »

taeric wrote: post #297
nradov wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no restriction on medical school admissions. It's really just residencies.

My understanding is that this is a distinction that doesn't make a difference? Without a residency, can you become a doctor?

Yes, because you have to be (or be about to be and in time to start) a doctor in order to be apply for residency.

Resident doctors are doctors, exactly as junior SWEs are software engineers.

(UK doctors have for some reason long objected to 'junior' and recently become 'resident doctors' over exactly this. All the more confusing - throughout and still there's been 'Senior House Officers', because 'house' used to be what it was called, like US residency, doing house, there were junior and senior house officers, so why not just revert to that? Who knows, but now they're all resident doctors - and some of which are senior house officers - until they're registrars/consultants, and they're happier with that than junior doctors.)

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#348

Post by 0xB31B1B »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #329
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…

> about money Some light Googling tells me that median pay is about 100K to 120K USD per year. Most people here would say that is not outstanding for such highly skilled work. Why don't other highly developed countries have the same issues finding employees? You never read about "ATC hiring crisis" in other countries. Why only the US? > The real need is new and modern technology that automates much of the mistake-pro…

"Why don't other highly developed countries have the same issues finding employees?"

Baumol effects. Our economy is incredible, extremely high productivity along with full employment. Its why we have ordering kiosks at fast food restaurants, pay 225k for bucee's managers and 20 dollars/hour to flip burgers at fast food restaurants. ATC is a low productivity growth job, technology hasn't increased the number of planes or amount of airspace one ATC can manage. As other jobs and sectors of the economy improve in productivity, people migrate to those sectors from low productivity sectors like ATC because on average high productivity sectors can pay more. The salaries of ATCs rise because there is more competition for the limited pool so you end up paying more but getting the same or worse outcomes over time.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#349

Post by _jss »

rlpb wrote: post #342
_jss wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landing fees already have this built into the structure, along with waived fees for fuel purchases, etc. It probably is reasonable to look at occupancy percentage along with engine type, and adjust landing fees based on that. Two out of 18 souls on board with a turbine? High landing fees, divert some to an ATC fund.

> Two out of 18 souls on board with a turbine? Very common. How do you think pilots train to fly such aircraft? Would you prefer pilots not to be trained, or for this type of aircraft to cease service?

I would expect them to do the bulk of their training flights out of airports with minimal congestion and lower landing fees.

They don’t have to be trained in class B airspace to get their type rating.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#350

Post by daemonologist »

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 believe this is incorrect - your vision just has to be correctable to 20/20 in both eyes: https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FAA_Order_39... (Also you can't be color blind.)

Still a bit of a risk though - if your vision ever degrades you might be out of work unless you can get transferred to a desk job or something.

Post reply on HN