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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

#381

Post by whycome »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #107
robert_foss wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The official investigation report is of course going to take a bit, but the ATC audio is public, and the helicopter was warned twice about the plane, and said they had a visual of the plane. Besides never missing an opportunity to 'slam' the opposition, I have no idea why this is being construed as an ATC failure.

That's a system failure if there's no way to verify just what plane the helicopter had in its sights. If continuing with visual separation in the same place, ATC may very well adjust their language. It would help to identify where in the sky the plane is. Or, if there's a potential for cutting it close, just getting the helicopter to hold back until the plane lands? We wouldn't let a plant fly 200ft above another plane in any other situation

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#382

Post by datadrivenangel »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #235
fiftyfifty wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The general problem here is that we need to do something about the government contracting process. It has been thoroughly captured by large government contractors who do mediocre work for enormous sums of money while excluding anyone who could do better from the process through corruption and red tape. Which in turn means that important systems become frozen in time because upgrade attempts become boondoggles that ca…

A lot of this is also driven by the government insisting on every modernization effort covering every issue, and then changing their mind when they learn that it will take 10 years it upgrade, so they spend 2 years of requirements gathering to get ~6 months of upgrades, which is basically enough to keep things barely maintained...

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#383

Post by whycome »

slt2021 wrote: post #158
lenerdenator wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, if not police, then teacher's unions: there's not a lot of available studies, but most point to a non-existent or negative relationship between CBAs and student performance. I'm going to guess that there are far stronger correlations with household wealth when it comes to student performance than there are whether the students are taught by teachers who are employed under a CBA. > Or in the private sectors, n…

not true, it is better for the brand long-term to build good cars. but unionized workforce makes it economically unfeasible. GM makes crappy because, if they tried to make high quality cars, they would be priced like Cadillacs

Wait is the joke that Cadillacs are GM cars?

It's interesting that other car companies have backed off from the multiple brands/badges. We don't have plymouth, Oldsmobile, mercury, Pontiac.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#384

Post by isodev »

tw04 wrote: post #201
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 s…

> Only 10% of applicants are physically and mentally qualified?

Another way would be investing in education (instead of dismantling it, or mixing it with religion and politics), making it more accessible so more people come out who are better equipped to take on "complex jobs"

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#385

Post by whycome »

tayo42 wrote: post #101
robert_foss wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Did reagan do anything good in hindsight? Everytime I hear about him he seems like the worst president until trump came along

The challenger/teacher in space thing was under his watch. It was a great idea. It just got screwed by NASA failures.

Also, his handling of the disaster was pretty good.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#386

Post by amluto »

bilbo0s wrote: post #230
mrguyorama wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have a description of or citation for the rules you’re mentioning? I’m curious what they are.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#387

Post by xyst »

tim333 wrote: post #75

There's a lawsuit going on: >FAA embroiled in lawsuit alleging it turned away 1,000 applicants based on race — that contributed to staffing woes https://nypost.com/2025/01/31/us-news/faa-embroiled-in-lawsu... The guy behind it is quite interesting. Got 100% on his exams but told they were only hiring 'diverse' folk https://archive.ph/ixmFB

NY Post and The Telegraph are sensationalist rags. Overstating the claims by the plaintiff and not even bothering to go through the actual court case

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#388

Post by fn-mote »

imoverclocked wrote: post #324
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…

> Technology hasn't changed is a political problem due to lack of... money. Tell me you haven’t worked in aerospace without telling me you haven’t worked in aerospace. There is plenty of money sunk into all corners of the field but progress is slow because the risk of change is lives lost. At some point, the risk of not changing means more lives lost… and that’s when things will change.

> There is plenty of money sunk into all corners of the field but progress is slow

… because of mismanagement, just like other large software rewrites that you are probably familiar with.

It’s the same problem - updating a complex system - except there’s no other vendor you can switch to.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#389

Post by pj_mukh »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #107
robert_foss wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The official investigation report is of course going to take a bit, but the ATC audio is public, and the helicopter was warned twice about the plane, and said they had a visual of the plane. Besides never missing an opportunity to 'slam' the opposition, I have no idea why this is being construed as an ATC failure.

Can I just admit how insane it feels that in the Year of our Lord Automation 2025, air safety basically amounts to:

"Yo watch out for that big plane on your left" and then hope for the best.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#390

Post by whycome »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #39
runako wrote: post #4

Seems like a colossal error to have asked them all to quit. I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.

I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work. Like, if you are thinking about quitting because you don’t want to come in, here have an extra incentive to do that and take some time to find another job. ATC already couldn’t work remotely. The only people who would take a deal like this would be people who were thinking about quitting or retiring anyway. I suspect ATC will not be substanti…

Wait, why can't ATC work remotely? Serious question. They're looking at data on a screen and communicating via radio. Would the latency of any radio-digital relay be too high? Sure it's feeling like one step closer to Ender's game. But it could be possible in theory?
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