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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

#91

Post by legitster »

RandomBacon wrote: post #83
legitster wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 questi…

I don't know anything about the lawsuit, but I do know that someone leaked the "answers" to members of a group representing people of a specific race. (Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.)

I literally linked to a study website for test, I don't think you had to be a member of a secret racial kabal to get answers.

Furthermore, the bias was literally baked into the test - certain minority candidates got to skip the test altogether. Although it's still not evidence that qualified white people were prevented from filling in vacancies.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#92

Post by lenerdenator »

legitster wrote: post #90
dttze wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police are the state's manifestation of the monopoly on violence. Comparing that to civilian safety orgs makes no sense.

Okay, if not police, then teacher's unions: there's not a lot of available studies, but most point to a non-existent or negative relationship between CBAs and student performance. Or in the private sectors, non-unionized manufacturers like Toyota and Honda always outperform legacy manufacturers in the US on quality. I'm not saying there's not a strong argument for unionization, but an improvement in quality is not on…

> Okay, if not police, then teacher's unions: there's not a lot of available studies, but most point to a non-existent or negative relationship between CBAs and student performance.

I'm going to guess that there are far stronger correlations with household wealth when it comes to student performance than there are whether the students are taught by teachers who are employed under a CBA.

> Or in the private sectors, non-unionized manufacturers like Toyota and Honda always outperform legacy manufacturers in the US on quality.

That could very well be because of how the cars are engineered and made versus the union representation for the people who make them.

GM, for example, tends to build cars in a way as to make them as cheap as possible to build. That lets them compete on price versus quality. You need the car now, after all; what happens in 40k miles isn't as important to you now. Of course, that comes with the risk, like when some essential component on my college girlfriend's Pontiac's shat the bed, and they'd had to take the entire front of the car apart to replace it because it was cheaper to build that way. They've just taken the price of having a functioning vehicle and charged you for it at the mechanic, not the dealership.

Toyota and Honda used to do the opposite, of course. You were going to pay more (depending on exchange rate) upon purchase of the vehicle but the result was that the car wouldn't need as many trips to the mechanic. They've since started doing more value engineering.

There's also a cultural difference between Japanese and American businesses, but that's far more nebulous.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#93

Post by legitster »

RandomBacon wrote: post #80
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…

> 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 would be more people interested in aviation choosing to be ATC than a pilot if our pay matched that of major airline pilots. There are people going through the training and then quiting when they realize that can't get an opening in their hometown because that s…

> at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools

I don't think any sane person would be against raising ATC wages. But to refer back to my post, the situation might be different if it there were not also a massive pilot shortage as well! If these two pools of talent mostly overlap raising wages on one will probably just pull from the other.

It's probably a combination of raising wages and putting more money into recruiting teenagers considering vocational programs.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#94

Post by runako »

csa wrote: post #89
runako wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but this implementation has been haphazard (at best). Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels. But like the OMB memo says -- taxpayers still have to spend the money for these employees whether they do any work or not. The reason they are doing this haphazard mess is that their positions are not popular and therefore cannot pass in Congress.

> Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels. Hmmm… this is short-term correct (at a minimum), but may not be correct long term. Time will tell. Yes, the money for current jobs has been allocated/budgeted for the fiscal year, and the folks who resign will actually be paid for not working until the end of the fiscal year. This is standard buyout…

You are correct that done deliberately, this could show the lack of need for some roles. But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result.

I think both sides are aligned in the desire to reduce the size of government. (Which has been steadily declining relative to the size of the population/economy for something like 4 decades.)

However, the administration is not pushing for right-sizing the workforce. They are proposing deeply unpopular cuts to things Americans actually value, without any debate or discussion of tradeoffs.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#95

Post by iancmceachern »

psunavy03 wrote: post #64
iancmceachern wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it as safe today as it was a year ago today?

Statistically, yes.

How many crashes do the statistics allow before they start reflecting a different answer to my question?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#96

Post by RandomBacon »

legitster wrote: post #91
RandomBacon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about the lawsuit, but I do know that someone leaked the "answers" to members of a group representing people of a specific race. (Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.)

I literally linked to a study website for test, I don't think you had to be a member of a secret racial kabal to get answers. Furthermore, the bias was literally baked into the test - certain minority candidates got to skip the test altogether. Although it's still not evidence that qualified white people were prevented from filling in vacancies.

> I literally linked to a study website for test

It looks like you did not read what you linked to.

That's not a study guide for the biographical questionaire. There was never a study guide for biographical questionaire.

> certain minority candidates got to skip the test altogether.

Source?

> I don't think...

That's okay. I know the answers were leaked. However you can speculate all you want about ridiculous "secret racial kabals".

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#97

Post by RandomBacon »

ceedan wrote: post #43

Honestly surprised that airlines don’t have options to tip the air traffic control crew, with how tipping culture is these days

I don't think we're allowed to take bribes. We are not even supposed to own stocks in any of the airline companies. I give everyone "direct" equally, to the best of my ability barring any restrictions.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#98

Post by csa »

runako wrote: post #94
csa wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, this doesn't save us any money at all. Congress allocates money and in many cases specifies employment levels. Hmmm… this is short-term correct (at a minimum), but may not be correct long term. Time will tell. Yes, the money for current jobs has been allocated/budgeted for the fiscal year, and the folks who resign will actually be paid for not working until the end of the fiscal year. This is standard buyout…

You are correct that done deliberately, this could show the lack of need for some roles. But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result. I think both sides are aligned in the desire to reduce the size of government. (Which has been steadily declining relative to the size of the population/economy for something li…

> But as it is structured, it is designed to get the best folks to leave, and from unpredictable parts of the org and thus is unlikely to show that result.

I believe that this is largely how this round will turn out. The numbers look very low so far (20k?).

> the administration is not pushing for right-sizing the workforce. They are proposing deeply unpopular cuts to things Americans actually value, without any debate or discussion of tradeoffs.

Just to be clear, I agree with all of this.

As I mentioned above, this is an absolute shit show. If chaos ensues, I think that will be seen as a success by those making the top-level decisions.

Our system of checks and balances is completely broken right now, and the limits are being tested by a group of folks who have no concept of noblesse oblige.

The results will be interesting.

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