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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

#521

Post by watwut »

robertlagrant wrote: post #516
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…

> Want to attract more applicants? Offer more compensation. This was already addressed in the original post. Why write in this "spelling it out for you" style when they already addressed it? > 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 side. This is really reductive. There are multiple reasons: - very stable employment - very prest…

Doctors dont have interesting tales to tell, nor should have due to things being private by law.

Stability of employment is something that traffic controllers could have, this is just a question of "working conditions" and solvable by money.

I really do not see why traffic controller could not feel good about being traffic controller. They do more "life saving" jobs then any of us on hacker news.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#522

Post by robertlagrant »

watwut wrote: post #521
robertlagrant wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want to attract more applicants? Offer more compensation. This was already addressed in the original post. Why write in this "spelling it out for you" style when they already addressed it? > 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 side. This is really reductive. There are multiple reasons: - very stable employment - very prest…

Doctors dont have interesting tales to tell, nor should have due to things being private by law. Stability of employment is something that traffic controllers could have, this is just a question of "working conditions" and solvable by money. I really do not see why traffic controller could not feel good about being traffic controller. They do more "life saving" jobs then any of us on hacker news.

> Doctors dont have interesting tales to tell, nor should have due to things being private by law.

Identifiable tales are illegal, yes. That's not all tales. Surely you know a doctor and they've told you stories before?

I'm listing other reasons doctors like being doctors over just money. I don't know what the rest of your comment has to do with this.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#523

Post by ta1243 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #155
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one that you would trust the lives of thousands of humans to every day? It seems unlikely we are anywhere close to a point where we can ensure that any AI won't hallucinate and cause an issue.

Sure, AI can spit out nonsense, and that’s a real concern. But in engineering, we deal with imperfect tradeoffs every day - it’s baked into the job. If we insist on a flawless solution before shipping anything, we’ll never ship. There’s always an optimum where we uphold safety standards without sacrificing forward progress

Any solution would have to be better than the current one. The last 30 years of the computer industry tells me that is not going to happen.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#524

Post by ta1243 »

wand3r wrote: post #498
kccqzy wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is the personnel shortage is because most people can't handle 8 hour shifts, then it's plausible that you'd have more than 4 times as many people that can handle 2 hour shifts

If 1 in 100k can handle 8 hours, and 1 in 10k can handle 2 hours, then the solution is to employ 4 times as many people for 2 hours.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#525

Post by V99 »

daveguy wrote: post #443
V99 wrote: post #416

The first problem is that everybody who wants to do the job needs to go through the FAA academy in Oklahoma, which is seriously limited by physical & instructor capacity. So only a couple thousand people a year can work their way through there, no matter how many are willing to do the job. So first we need more training capacity, and they already have trouble hiring and retaining instructors. This is a more direct pl…

So, you're saying the FAA is struggling because we don't fund them enough to hire instructors? Seems like a Republican problem.

This has been a snowballing problem since Reagan fired 11,000 controllers for striking in 1981... so sort of, but not the one you're thinking of, and there's been plenty of both sides of the aisle doing nothing to solve the problem in the meantime.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#526

Post by Timshel »

bombcar wrote: post #113
deathanatos wrote: post #81

"US ATC System Under Scrutiny" "Fatal crash brings attention to shortage" "There are simply not enough air traffic controllers to keep aircraft a safe distance from one another." Like, perhaps there is merit in arguing for more controllers or more pay for controllers, and perhaps that would lead to a safer airspace, but the attempts to implicitly tie the fatal crash to ATC in this case seems pretty poor form, here. W…

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.

I would bet on "Normalization of deviance", such a close altitude separation should probably just not exists (default is 1000ft).

If it had become a norm then a second controller would probably not change anything.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#527

Post by V99 »

kristjansson wrote: post #449
whycome wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Hint: why do they work in a tower?

A lot of them don't. They work in nondescript windowless buildings controlling all the airspace that isn't right above an airport.

There have also been trials done with "virtual towers" at smaller airports, using a bunch of cameras and with controllers remotely monitoring them and communicating.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#528

Post by ta1243 »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #100
ranger_danger wrote: post #2

Then start paying them

With so many billionaires, the country certainly can afford paying more to people whose tasks are crucial for others' lives.

The reason there are so many people worth $1b instead of a poor $100m is because of the tax cuts diverting money from crucial jobs.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#529

Post by ibejoeb »

deathanatos wrote: post #81

"US ATC System Under Scrutiny" "Fatal crash brings attention to shortage" "There are simply not enough air traffic controllers to keep aircraft a safe distance from one another." Like, perhaps there is merit in arguing for more controllers or more pay for controllers, and perhaps that would lead to a safer airspace, but the attempts to implicitly tie the fatal crash to ATC in this case seems pretty poor form, here. W…

This is pretty much right, by the book. It seems clear that there were multiple confounding factors: a high risk, under-resourced training mission performed by relatively inexperience pilots operating as a normal transport mission as far as the controllers were aware.

I think we're going to wind up talking about SOP and whether visual separation is permissible in this class of airspace when using NVGs or under other conditions present in this mishap, e.g., on nighttime training. There are companies (lufty for instance) that, by policy, prohibit visual separation at night.

There might be some scrutiny on the controller for approving visual separation in the first place, and I think that'll get into weeds of how he should have known the risk factors for the helo. Still, as Juan notes, it didn't sound like thoughtful consideration, but like rote call and response.

This would have been prevented if the helo had to take vectors. There would be no talk of visual separation. The controller was aware of how tight it was, and if it were simply a rule, he would have told the helo to hold present position, waited for an appropriate place in the sequencing, and then given a clearance.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#530

Post by V99 »

dickfickling wrote: post #178
ryandrake wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you can process and respond to audio without taking your eyes off of whatever they are on, and without taking your hand off the stick/yoke. I hear in my headset "Clear for the option runway two-five-right, number two behind a cessna, two mile final, on the go make right traffic" and I know exactly what is expected of me without having to look at a screen. A digital display would be a step backwards.

It doesn't sound like GP is saying we have to do away with audio, just that it's absurd to stick to _just_ audio. Great to have a screen that shows "Clear for option 25R etc etc". I think I saw the latest Cirrus planes have something like that, doing live transcription of tower/ATC calls. EDIT: I will add I get that adding something like that to a general aviation cockpit is much easier than putting it on a commercia…

It's really sort of the opposite. You don't see 727s or MD-80s at the terminal anymore (freight somewhat excepted). Airliners are used constantly, wear out and get replaced/sent to other countries. Buying another computer is a negligible cost in a new 787 or retrofit into anything an airline currently flies.

But there are tons of flying general aviation planes that are from the 50s/60's, and a long tail going back even further than that. Some of them don't even have a radio to talk on. Or an electrical system to run it.

Mandating ADSB took many years, and still has exceptions carved out. And that's a fairly simple technology. There are companies that build it all into a replacement tail light LED "bulb" to provide compliance for ~$2000.

Still that might be 5-10% of the value of your 1977 Cessna 152. If you take the cheap airframes out of the sky, that makes new pilots getting their 1500 hours more expensive before they can go get a job on the big boy planes.

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