America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

Kinda. Collective bargaining rights are great for employees but they do not automatically lead to better outcomes for customers/citizens/etc.

A good counter-example of ATC would be police. Police have strong collective bargaining rights, but mostly came at the expense of accountability and citizen oversight. (And also police departments are still chronically understaffed).

You could use max gross weight and/or number of seats > 6. Not a lot of flight training or hobbyist flying going on in Beechcraft 18s or Cessna 402s. And people who like private jets aren't going to step down to a 6 seater.

There's a lawsuit going on:

>FAA embroiled in lawsuit alleging it turned away 1,000 applicants based on race — that contributed to staffing woes https://nypost.com/2025/01/31/us-news/faa-embroiled-in-lawsu...

The guy behind it is quite interesting. Got 100% on his exams but told they were only hiring 'diverse' folk https://archive.ph/ixmFB

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 training and onboarding process is incredibly long, and turnover is high

- The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years

- Most people are just not capable of the amount of stress and risk associated with the job

- Seriously, it's a really freaking stressful job

I would argue an ATC employee is worth every penny, 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. These people are already very well compensated, and at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools.

The real need is new and modern technology that automates much of the mistake-prone, human-centric tasks. But nobody wants to risk introducing changes to such a fragile system.

> When Mr Brigida tried again to become an air traffic controller under the new tests, he said he failed the biographical questionnaire because he “didn’t fit the preferred ethnic profile”.

This dude leading the lawsuit is incredibly unreliable. The ATC biographical assessment didn't have any race-based questions - it was just a decision making questionnaire: https://123atc.com/biographical-assessment

It was a questionable assessment, but the idea that he failed it for being white is peak self-victimization.

The risk of DEI was fast-passing under-qualified candidates, or that they were misplacing their recruitment efforts. But the idea that they would not be filling necessary positions with qualified white people continues to be something of a polemic myth.