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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

#611

Post by lazystar »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #353
lazystar wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link, I was curious if I'd be a candidate and it turns out I was eliminated by the very first qualification: "must have 20/20 vision in each eye, no contacts" This will be more and more of a bottleneck as time goes on; growing up in-doors and looking at computer screens all day will increase nearsightedness.

> must have 20/20 vision in each eye, no contacts The page doesn't say that. It says: > Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable. Some light Googling will tell you that glasses or contact lenses to fix distant or near vision are fine.

thank you for proving cunninghams law still applies! much appreciated.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#612

Post by silvestrov »

mrweasel wrote: post #542
silvestrov wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you have the problem that Congress overrules you. > The number of flights at Reagan National is capped because of its congestion. But lawmakers have an interest in boosting direct flights to their states – for themselves and their constituents – because the airport is more convenient to downtown than Dulles International Airport https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/30/safety-... So the knew the airp…

That not just selfish, that's irresponsible. Why not ensure better transportation links for Dullas instead. Aren't the two airports less than an hour away from each other?

Pentagon to Dulles Airport is 20 miles in direct distance.

It takes 1 hour by subway as there is no direct connection and the lines have a lot of stops.

The real solution would be a direct subway with no stop between Dulles and Pentagon. 20 miles using a fast subway should be no more than 25 minutes in travel time. The subway could then continue making a loop in central DC, serving all the offices next to the White House etc.

But that would be good public transportation and that is outside of Congress' Overton Window.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#613

Post by gwill »

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.

i think you have your numbers flipped, but for me personally no commute is worth the drop in stress and increase in free time

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#614

Post by egberts1 »

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…

Sure, let's have FAA reject qualified ATC applicants because they answered "science" as their worst subject in high school and/or "history" in college. (The core crux of Brigida vs FAA 2015 lawsuit)

Or the passive visual skin color test (Brigida vs Buttigieg 2021 lawsuit).

That'll be about 4,120 qualified ATC applicants that won't be coming back: would you come back if a sizable class-action award is forthcoming?

If that was the plan (to lock up and away FAA ATCs, to inflate supply-demand, that's a shrewd economic move, but I don't think so).

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#615

Post by foxyv »

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…

> but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work

There is an iron law of nature that, hiring is never a problem of shortages, just insufficient pay. If you don't pay them enough they will get a job doing something that pays more and/or has better working conditions.

Labor isn't any more immune to market forces than any other good. The only people who are qualified for the job and willing to do it for cheap are the ones on the right side of the bell curve. Pay moves that bell curve and exposes more of it.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#616

Post by pbalau »

nine_k wrote: post #221
pbalau wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a naive way of looking at the problem. People that start working in banks, generally do that as a starting point. ATC is the end of the road for that career. Working in a bank is the start of a quite lucrative career, working as an ATC is the end. Indeed, we can offer more money to ATC, but there is not a lot, progression wise. Honestly, how would a junior ATC look like, compared with a senior?

Look at how much a senior airline pilot makes, compared to a junior.

English might not be my native language, but I think we are not talking about pilots here.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#617

Post by vdqtp3 »

nine_k wrote: post #238
mschuster91 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. With Fortnite, Epic pushes one update and a week later virtually every gamer has the update for free. And when an update goes bad, or the game goes down, usually nobody dies. With aviation? Lifecycles there are measured in decades, and the changes needed for new control systems in an existi…

How many ancient aircraft are there? What would be the cost of upgrading them, as compared to the cost of training more ATCs, and having them burn out and leave in a few years?

The vast majority (or at least a very significant portion) of GA aircraft are from the 60s-70s. Plenty of 135 and even some 121 aircraft are old also (90s, 2000s, etc). The Lear that crashed in Philly was from 1982.

Upgrading to the latest avionics costs tens of thousands of dollars in the cheapest case. Multiply that times the number of aircraft, and the weeks or months it takes for the upgrade to be completed and you're talking about a staggering economic impact.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#618

Post by WalterBright »

mhh__ wrote: post #446
WalterBright wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't know why radar does not detect aircraft on a collision course. Why technology still does not track every airplane at the airport and flag runway incursions. Why there still are not cameras constantly recording flight ops at the airport. Why are we relying on accidental dash cam recordings? Why the cockpit voice recorder still does not record video.

> Cameras You might be interested to know that the video feed (the marketing one at least, not the one for engineers) for the recent boom supersonic flight was just a phone and a starlink in one of the planes following. Things can be done.

Oh, I know. Think of the dash cam people have in their cars. The idea that one cannot be installed in the cockpit because of the expense is absurd.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#619

Post by wrfrmers »

jessriedel wrote: post #403
ch4s3 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how this isn't a giant public scandal. Is there something I'm missing here?

The test wasn't explicitly discriminatory, just the way that it was used. And the way that it was used is disputed. The facts are still being litigated. All the coverage is from opinion pieces or right-of-center newspapers. https://archive.is/lDyOB

It would also be damning of recruitment patterns across American institutions. Getting ahold of prestigious or lucrative opportunities often requires pressing unfair advantages that other applicants don't even know exist, by design. My personal anecdote: my SAT score was higher than yours (statistically-speaking, this statement is correct 9 times out of 10, maybe slightly less considering the audience); my alma mater's ranking is lower than yours. I was not privy to he means required to capitalize on my performance. No one bats an eye at this; if the guidance of the adults in my life and my own ambition didn't drive me to a better school, that's tough luck. Never mind that the incidence of this sort of situation has a likewise racially-biased bent.

Perhaps if these sorts of tactics, or even just circumstances, weren't so prevalent, then they wouldn't seem like such a good idea to purposely replicate.

No one is gullible enough to believe that, if the alleged is true, it would be the first time that unscrupulous methods were used to advantage a particular group in recruitment for jobs or education, right? Or that, when it has happened, it has been primarily used to advantage black applicants?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#620

Post by WalterBright »

Shinolove wrote: post #551
WalterBright wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't know why radar does not detect aircraft on a collision course. Why technology still does not track every airplane at the airport and flag runway incursions. Why there still are not cameras constantly recording flight ops at the airport. Why are we relying on accidental dash cam recordings? Why the cockpit voice recorder still does not record video.

there is an insane overhead to any improvement that can be made to these systems.

Yes, it's ludicrously expensive to install an hd camera in the tower and point it at the runway, and record in a loop.

Not.

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