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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

#471

Post by vdqtp3 »

RandomBacon wrote: post #402
calmbonsai wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fiction, but for some sense of ATC stress, watch "Pushing Tin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_Tin

ATC here, I love that documentary :-) (Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.) I have some wild stories, but unfortunately sharing them would dox me. The most inaccurate thing though is a transfer CPC (fully-certified controller at their previous facility) plugging in and being able to work without months of training in that area.

Obviously you're aware of this, but even swapping areas within a center isn't a plug and play process. Most people have no idea the level of effort required to control, between flight following, separation, LOAs, diversions, weather, and answering "how are the rides today?" or "is higher any smoother?" every 4.7 seconds.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#472

Post by histriosum »

pimlottc wrote: post #414
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…

> - 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 This stands out to me: > Be under the age of 31 > Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the c…

The use of "bifocal contact lenses" is not allowed. Bifocal glasses are fine.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#473

Post by School-Cotton »

butterlettuce wrote: post #16

Fellas, I got a question. Is it really safe to fly these days if this is now a national discussion?

Define safe. A fully loaded 747 could crash in the US every day and you’d still have a 99.98% chance of being fine when you fly.

(Approximate numbers: 3M US passengers per day, 600 people on a 747).

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#474

Post by fefferkorn »

wqaatwt wrote: post #361
sweeter wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean going to school for 10 years only to be in debt for 100K-300K+ dollars, and not have a good idea of whether you will be able to pay that back... is a massive problem. Most countries don't have this issue, for example. They have an abundance of doctors and engineers, because people who actually want to do those things, are able to pursue those careers without financial investment. We are snubbing an entire gene…

> They have an abundance of doctors and engineers They are usually paid several times less than people doing the same jobs in US.

But in other countries they dont need to pay so much for social system, insurance or healthcare, kindergarden and so on.. You can not always compare everything with money, when there is a lot around it.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#475

Post by dwaltrip »

stevage wrote: post #470
Aurornis wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some of those meds seem perfect for this job, putting you in a very mellow, but focused state. Many drugs, especially some anxiety medications, produce false feelings of sobriety. I can’t believe I have to write this, but: Feeling mellow and focused from drugs does not mean you’re okay to perform well at mentally demanding or safety-critical tasks like driving or directing air traffic.

These hypotheses seem eminently testable. Give people (with and without underlying conditions) these drugs, test their performance. Rather than simply prohibiting entire categories of drugs.

This has been done already.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#476

Post by tim333 »

fastball wrote: post #454
xyst wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

NY Post and The Telegraph are indeed sensationalist. On the other hand as the blog article puts it

>... investigative reporting from outlets like the New York Times has failed to consider the role of the hiring scandal at all

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#477

Post by AnthonyMouse »

azemetre wrote: post #366
tzs wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could this be anything to do with Reagan firing them? Echoes. The fired workers were replaced as rapidly as possible. That would result in massive change in the age distribution of controllers. It takes a few years to train a new controller so lets assume the youngest new hires were 22. New controllers have to be 31 and under. Let's take the best case and assume all the new controllers are 22 through 31 and are…

Also you know... seeing a job get absolutely decimated by a labor hating President might make future candidates less likely apply to a hostile job where asking for better conditions mean you will lose your livelihood.

They rehired anyone willing to go back to work. No one was required to lose their livelihood.

The union's problem was that they assumed air traffic control was so important they could dictate terms and then they got called on it and lost. Public sector unions don't really work because the other side of the table is the government (and by extension the public), so the two possible outcomes are that the union gets screwed by the government or the public gets screwed by the union.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#478

Post by callc »

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…

> Offer more compensation.

> Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it.

I highly doubt that solving the problem with just money will get the right people.

A high salary becomes the goal in an of itself, and everything else falls to the wayside.

Do you really care about safety? Applicants may say they do, but only want to retire after 10 years and will lie through their teeth.

Money is a corrupting factor. I don’t like to take this side of the argument, since I want people to be paid fairly, but there’s something fundamental to seeing unpaid volunteers having the best intentions and most love for their craft

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#479

Post by bobthepanda »

ketralnis wrote: post #154
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #118

We have planes moving hundreds of miles an hour being managed exclusively by audio channels. Does this not blow anyone else's minds? This seems like a clear case of 'because we've always done it that way'. There's no way if a system was being developed today they'd say to hell with screens, lets just give them instructions over audio and assume they'll follow them to a T if acknowledged.

That there is a computer at ATC that a human looks at, reads what it says with their eyes, speaks those instructions over the radio in a specific protocol, another human listens to it (and confirms within that protocol), and inputs those control signals into the airplane. Computer -> human -> radio(spoken protocol) -> human -> plane. There aren't a lot of practical reasons it can't just be Computer -> radio(digital p…

In the latest crash, the heli was on VFR, and that situation happens often at DCA since it also serves general aviation.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#480

Post by b112 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #200
b112 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we are an aged society, with such an incredibly low birth rate, this will only get worse. There are only so many competent people in our society, and that talent pool is being spread thin across all sectors of society which require such candidates. There are looming doctor shortages, too. Professionals of all stripes.

The birth rate thing is a bit of a canard in this context. There are something like 100 million Americans under the age of 30.. we’ll have some demographic problems in a generation or two but there are plenty of people to staff the physician and ATC roles. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...

Is it?

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/ag...

Look at 1980's population pyramid. Look at 2020's. 1980 is how societies with mild population growth look. 2020 is how populations with below replacements look (see the graph end?)

It doesn't matter how many Americans are under 30. It matters how many are between 20 and 60. And my comment was about "coming up". Over the next 10 years.

There is a very significant shift in our populations, all across the entire planet. The US isn't as bad as some regions, but it's still bad. Moving from "lots of young people" to "the same amount of young people as old", means more taxes, fewer people working in society, and so on.

Older people require more doctors, too. So you have fewer people in the working pool (as a percentage of the overall population), but with doctors you need more, the more aged your population is. And it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse and worse, with such low birth rates. A downward spiral.

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