America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

Answer to first question:

Some days people don't have any leave bid, some days maybe one person who works on the morning shift and one person who works on the evening shift both have the day bid off, some days everyone who works the evening shift has the day bid off.

Whomever is making the schedule has to balance the controller availability with the minimum-required staffing numbers for that time of day.

Some facilities will let you flex in early, so you could just plan to arrive half an hour early (and leave half an hour early). If once in a blue moon you are a few minutes late due to unusually bad traffic, most managers are okay with that as long as it isn't a common occurance, in which case you need to leave home earlier.

Answers to second question:

(I have smaller suggestions that are needed, but I figure I'll try to be efficient with people's time and give probably the biggest two issues that I think everyone can get behind.)

1) Fix initial facility assignment. It's currently random and wastes a ton of time and money. If you're from a small town that has an opening in the control tower or you're from a large city that has an approach control or "center", you should be able to choose to go there (or close to there) once you graduate from the FAA academy. As it is now, the spot could go to a random person in a class behind you at the Academy who doesn't want that spot, and you go to some random place where you're miserable, waste everyone's time and FAA money while training there, then apply to transfer (and it's basically impossible to transfer when everywhere is below staffing and they won't release you), and then spend more time and FAA money training again at a new facility (and that other person who got the spot you wanted will also be wasting time and money training at a facility they don't want to be at either). There should be a way to submit a list of preferences and have an algorithm place you close to one of your top 10 choices/areas. If someone in authority asked me to develop a system/algorithm and a fair set of rules that's hard to game, I could probably do it, but it would take some work to come up with and then a lot more work to develop and test, but it would be worth it to the NAS (National Airspace System). Unfortunately such an assignment would probably go to the union for them to hand out to their buddies (Article 114 of the collective bargaining agreement).

Suggestion 1 (above) will save money and be more efficient in the long-run. Suggestion 2 (below) will cost more money initially, but should balance out in the long-run by attracting more qualified people who will be less likely to wash-out (whereas money is wasted on training people who will eventually wash-out, or quit when they realize it's not worth it.

2) Pay us more. Attract more qualified people who will be better controllers, by offering a better salary. The salary used to be better, but it has been eroded away through inflation. Pilots are getting 40% raises (over a couple of years) and we get 2% raises (well, 3.6% or so with the union contract). There are a lot less Air Traffic Controllers than pilots, and we are vital to the nation's security and economy. Qualified people who might be interested in ATC realize they can make just as much money in other industries that don't kill them mentally and physically like ATC does for the same if not more amount of money.

(Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.)

> There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do.

If you think that, you aren't considering paying them enough money.

> Given the people in question have good other options, why would they do this, even if you paid more?

You ain't thinking about offering them enough money. Enough money means as much as it takes to make your offer better than any other option they have.

> In fact - plenty of smart people will take pay cuts for better qualify of life.

True, but also the same people will take quality of life cuts if you offer enough money.

Also, in general, the best way to improve one's quality of life is... through more money.

> Example: Plenty of folks take pay cuts to work remotely from places they like more, and because they find it a better quality of life.

Counterexample: add four zeros to the salary offered, and watch how many of them won't be happy to uproot and move with their whole family to your location within 24 hours.

> Not everyone is money driven, and the assumption that here is that the intersection of "money driven, capable of doing this job, etc" is large enough that increasing the amount of money will make the result larger.

This assumption is sound in theory and almost always true in practice, it's just rarely attempted, because you need to spend money, which people absolutely hate.

Almost all cases of skilled staff shortage can be solved with multiplying the payment by 2-10x (and convincing people you mean it - at the 10x end, people may start having doubts, precisely because it's so uncommon to see). Do that, and you'll have your competitors' staff jumping ship, and a wave of skilled applicants from abroad, committed to relocate if you let them. If the market for the skill is growing and you're able to sustain the pay bump, people will retrain and entrepreneurs will start schools for future candidates.

And yes, with that much extra money available, other entrepreneurs will try and pitch all kinds of software and hardware that will reduce your need for skilled labor, hoping you pay them instead.

Of course, 2-10x bump might make the whole endeavor stop making business sense on your end. It's often the case. But in this situation, saying there's shortage of labor is a lie. It's only a shortage at the price you're willing to pay.

This all just follows the same dynamics everything else in the economy does. If you believe employment is a special case where this doesn't apply, you're still not imagining paying enough money :).

> There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do.

Would you mind listing 2 or 3 examples? All the jobs that I do not want to do that I can think of, are actually poorly compensated.

We don't? I.e. if "10% more" doesn't seem to affect anything, we should maybe try "10x more" instead, and if that doesn't do anything, then conclude there's no more relevant labor left in the pool.

Do you think this is a counterargument? The implication is that for 20% + n% you'd go back to a 5 day week.