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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

#491

Post by DangitBobby »

kristjansson wrote: post #465
fastball wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those questions are relevant.

How is the composition of the ATC workforce independently relevant, except as mediated through staffing levels?

It's relevant that people were told they'd be a shoe-in for the job if they spent time and money on education and training and passed the relevant aptitude tests, but were instead denied on the basis of race. That also likely had the knock-on effect of reducing the number of people willing to take an educational track to become an ATC, because e.g. colleges could no longer tell their students it was a viable path for them.

"Like 85% of their fellow CTI students, Brigida and Reilly found themselves faced with a red exclamation point and a dismissal notice: “Based upon your responses to the Biographical Assessment, we have determined that you are NOT eligible for this position."

The article also mentions that there were fewer applicants and fewer offers extended from 2014 onward.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#492

Post by jillesvangurp »

kgilpin wrote: post #401

Today, hacker news solves air traffic control with either: a) More money b) Video game technology To truly get this problem, you really need to be in it. Either as a pilot or as a controller. Watching threads like this reminds me that I have expertise within a couple of specialized domains and that’s it. Beyond those, I’m a tourist.

If you were to design a modern way to solve this problem, you wouldn't end up with a pile of nineteen sixties era equipment and some very stressed ATC people and pilots trying to communicate over a noisy VHF radio channel.

The challenge:

- electrical planes are coming and are going to cause an influx of pilots who can now afford to own and fly their planes. Teslas with wings basically. Cheap to buy, cheap to fly, lower noise, no emissions, what's not to like? It will take some time but early versions of these things are being certified right now. The 100$ hamburger run becomes a 5$ coffee run. It's going to have obvious effects: more people will want to get in on the fun. Way more people.

- a lot of those things will be used to fly medium distances for work in bad weather; which creates an obvious need for some level of ATC interaction.

- Likewise, cheaper/sustainable commercial short hops are going to increase traffic movements.

- Autonomous drones and planes are going to be part of the mix of traffic ATC has to factor in. Autonomous operation is key to operating safely. Especially in low visibility situations. Shuttle flights between city centers and terminals, short local hops, package deliveries, aerial surveillance, etc. On top of regular planes with way smarter auto pilots than today. The volume of this traffic will be orders of magnitudes of what ATC deals with today.

There's some time to prepare for this. Certification processes move slowly. But a lot of this stuff is being experimented with right now at small scale or stuck in the certification pipeline already. We're long past the "will it work" moment for most of this stuff. Technically, this would be happening right now if the FAA would allow it. They'll be fighting a losing battle to slow this down and delay the inevitable here. But the end result is that ATC needs to be ready for orders of magnitude more movement in their controlled air spaces. And right now they clearly aren't.

In short, all this requires new, modern tools. It's obvious. Training more ATC people to do things the way we have been doing them for the last 50 years is not a good plan for the next 50. It's a stop gap solution at best. With a very short shelf life.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#493

Post by mrweasel »

Yeul wrote: post #308

The Netherlands has a shortage too. But they just cancel flights or even entire airports if they are understaffed. As an employee it is your duty to refuse orders that potentially risk lives.

That brings up an interesting solution: Figure out how many flights can be services with the current number of air traffic controllers, take away 5 - 10% to deal with illness and unforeseen issues, cap the number of flights to that number.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#494

Post by throwaway2037 »

Gud wrote: post #419
chii wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those "low view" is out of jealousy and the idea that they're "doing evil" to get that money. It's a personal bias, which i personally also would ignore. I have respect for lawyers, and i have respect for investment bankers (who make huge merger/acquisition deals work).

It’s not out of jealousy. Many people believe investment bankers are a net negative for society. In the case of lawyers, a necessary evil. I have respect for people, not a profession.

To be fair, the term "lawyer" is generic in the US. It can mean many different things: (1) in-house corporate counsel, (2) external corporate counsel (advise on merge/acq/deals/contract), (3) civil lawyer (sue/divorce/personal injury/intellectual property, etc.), (4) defender (public or private), (5) public prosecutor (work for attorney general office), (6) law professor, (7) judge (Can you be a judge in US without a law degree? It seems hard to imagine in 2025.). And there must be other categories that I forgot. My point: Most people will have differing views on each category. Example: Most people would view public defenders, law professors, and judges as honorable, socially beneficial jobs.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#495

Post by otikik »

jerlam wrote: post #258
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…

> Sounds like a doctor? Not disagreeing, but the US also has a doctor shortage for at least a decade that it is seemingly unable to fix.

And part of the problem there is that money and profit got introduced in the healthcare system.

In other countries people become doctors because they want to heal others. Not because they want to become wealthy. In the US doctors spend half of their time haggling with the insurance companies.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#496

Post by otikik »

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 their cost of life is also lower.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#497

Post by wand3r »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #460
vdqtp3 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's refreshing to see someone say it. As a (non-commercial) pilot it's honestly infuriating watching people who have never tried to fly a plane, never tried to locate and identify another aircraft from the air, and never controlled (or even sat with a controller or toured a tower, tracon, or center) make these claims and statements about how easy these problems they don't understand are to fix as if they're experts…

Welcome to hacker news! The confidence is strong amongst the readership here and often confidently wrong at that!

A lot of naive uninformed people who had no expertise and were told by experts how they could never contribute to a problem or field have successfully built businesses funded by the very people who created this community.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#498

Post by wand3r »

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?

I know nothing about this field, but if the main claim is personnel shortages, it seems like reducing your workforces hours by 75% would not be optimal.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#499

Post by throwaway2037 »

bruce511 wrote: post #409
chii wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those "low view" is out of jealousy and the idea that they're "doing evil" to get that money. It's a personal bias, which i personally also would ignore. I have respect for lawyers, and i have respect for investment bankers (who make huge merger/acquisition deals work).

You miss the point. why the low view exists is irrelevant. Frankly, while I acknowledge their necessity, I have a poor (default) view of both bankers and lawyers. I don't see them as bad people, but people in their professions do many bad things. If my son brings a banker home as a prospective mate, well, let's say they're not earning status points from their profession. You (may have) and I (do) have respect for peo…

One thing to consider about investment bankers: Many of them do pretty mundane work, like work on non-national/federal gov't and corporate bond issuance. (In most countries, national/federal gov't can directly issue bonds without investment bankers.) There is literally trillions of dollars of these bonds issued each year (usually to roll-over maturing debt) across all highly developed nations. It is fundamental to modern capitalism. I would estimate that 99.5% of these bond deals use "vanilla term sheets" (my term) -- literally copy and modify from the last deal. And, the buyers of these bonds are 99% institutional: our pension funds, mutual funds, and bond ETFs.

Also, secondary equity issuance is pretty non-controversial, and an important fund raising option for publicly-listed corporations.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#500

Post by joenot443 »

nradov wrote: post #364
joenot443 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My simple understanding is that the width of the bottleneck is controlled by existing doctors who are (unfortunately) monetarily motivated to limit the supply of new doctors.

Nope, your understanding is mostly wrong. It's primarily controlled by Congress in the form of Medicare limits on residency funding. And to a lesser extent by the management of teaching hospitals. Most of those people aren't doctors. At one point the AMA lobbied Congress for those funding limits but they reversed position on that years ago. https://savegme.org/

Ah damn, looks like my understanding was incorrect. Thanks for the link, that's very illuminating!
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