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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

#561

Post by acdha »

runako wrote: post #441
acdha wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they quit, it's quiet quitting coming in every day and doing nothing You think air traffic controllers are “doing nothing”? What VA staff, park rangers, food inspectors, etc.? I realize this stereotype is something a lot of people spend money reinforcing but you should consider why you believe it to be true of a nationwide group doing a huge range of jobs and what evidence that’s based on.

I'm convinced a lot of people who espouse this view have never worked at any large[1] private sector organization. My last stint working at a big company included seeing people routinely taking naps at work and generally behaving in the ways people associate with government employees. Smaller organizations are more efficient, but are limited in possible scope of impact. [1] "large" here generally meaning over 100k em…

That matches my experience, too. I’ve worked in .com, .edu, and .gov and people are the same everywhere. The main thing I notice is that there tends to be a lot of selection bias when people talk about the private sector where the most successful companies are used to represent the whole concept, when almost everyone has had to interact with, say, a cable or health insurance company (my local DMV is sooo much better than Comcast).

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#562

Post by sgarland »

ryandrake wrote: post #281
saagarjha wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume plenty of people will be happy to go through LASIK for that

As far as I recall, in the Aviation world, LASIK is still a major gamble. If you're a pilot or ATC and come out of LASIK surgery with any weird surgery-induced vision abnormalities like "halos" or "starbursts", you're out, permanently.

Which is why when I got mine done around 2015, Navy pilots were still required to get PRK. Much more painful and longer recovery, but the risk of defects was lower. I heard they can now get LASIK; presumably advances have been made since then.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#563

Post by sgarland »

newsclues wrote: post #378
mcmcmc wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think CS grads would be good candidates for a high stress job that requires excellent communication skills?

Ability to rapidly process information and react to changes. Communication is a learned skill. Ability to handle stress and thrive under pressure is the key.

I don’t think your average tech worker has any notion of what stress is, unless you’re consistently on-call overnight. Even then, it’s not the same.

This isn’t meant to belittle or scoff at people’s lived experiences, but the difference between “if I get this wrong, my company will lose millions of dollars” and “if I get this wrong, hundreds of people die” is VAST.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#564

Post by daveguy »

V99 wrote: post #525
daveguy wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only one party has been drooling about cutting taxes for the rich and defunding the government since the 80s. Guess which one.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#565

Post by llamaimperative »

DannyBee wrote: post #541
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…

There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do. The notion that if you just pay enough, people who are otherwise qualified will do anything, is amazingly reductive. It's a super US-centric view, and not surprisingly, it does not have an amazing history of working out (especially compared to other mechanisms). Given the people in question have good other options, why would they do this,…

All salient things being equal, which pretty much have to be the case for ATC (it will always have very high demands), adding more compensation will get more applicants.

Do you have other ideas on what constraints can be relaxed?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#566

Post by llamaimperative »

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 think the ATC is “exonerated” in the sense of it not being their fault, however that does not necessarily mean a fully staffed and more attentive ATC team wouldn’t have prevented the disaster.

Noticing aircraft flying off assigned course is exactly the type of thing that a resource constrained ATC would be guiltless in NOT noticing, but that a non-constrained ATC probably would notice.

Obviously if ATC were fully staffed and this happened, it wouldn’t be worth seriously looking into, but there’s a reason the intended staffing levels are what they are, which can basically be summed up as “cognitive burden.”

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#567

Post by marcusverus »

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…

> This was already addressed in the original post. Why write in this "spelling it out for you" style when they already addressed it?

The supply of labor for a given job is related to the market price of the job. This is literally ECON 101.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#568

Post by bill_joy_fanboy »

DannyBee wrote: post #541
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…

There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do. The notion that if you just pay enough, people who are otherwise qualified will do anything, is amazingly reductive. It's a super US-centric view, and not surprisingly, it does not have an amazing history of working out (especially compared to other mechanisms). Given the people in question have good other options, why would they do this,…

Why not at least try to pay people more? Everyone gives exactly your argument without ever trying to raise the base salary for new hires and give existing workers a boost in pay.

You can't say it doesn't work until you've raised the median salary in the field and observed the effect. Managers and bean counters aren't willing to do this so it will never happen.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#569

Post by bill_joy_fanboy »

pif wrote: post #545
DannyBee wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do. The notion that if you just pay enough, people who are otherwise qualified will do anything, is amazingly reductive. It's a super US-centric view, and not surprisingly, it does not have an amazing history of working out (especially compared to other mechanisms). Given the people in question have good other options, why would they do this,…

> Plenty of folks take pay cuts to work remotely Pay cuts are not important; profit is! If I get paid 100 less, and spend 90 less because of no commuting, I'm gaining more than before.

This is completely true.

I make less working remotely in a LCOL area than I would in the HCOL area where my office resides. The differential in COL, though, is so high that I'm saving a lot more. In other words, I'm making less but I'm building more wealth.

Most of the money that goes into living in a HCOL area and commuting to office is just pure waste to satisfy the egos of upper managers who want to preside over a big floor of workers.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#570

Post by mercyandgrace »

swores wrote: post #519
hattmall wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a class action of about 900 people who were rejected based on the FAA prioritizing diversity in ATC hiring. That would be a good place to start hiring new people.

Do you have a source? Because that doesn't pass the smell test to me. If they're hiring 10 people and have 20 good, qualified applicants then sure, maybe diversity efforts would mean that a straight white man gets overlooked. But we're talking about the context of them complaining that they can't hire enough people, and absolutely no diversity program anywhere is saying "well we need to hire people, and there aren't…

This provides a good overview. There are some good sources within if you want to dig deeper.

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...

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