America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/business/air-traffic-controller-shortage/index.html

by mooreds • 1 year ago

346 640 1 year ago

cnn.com

ranger_danger3• 1 year ago

Then start paying them

Ekaros• 1 year ago

Or cut down on flights. You could easily ban private flights until there is enough capacity.

jmount• 1 year ago

1000 times this. Fly as much as one can safely, not more.

eterm• 1 year ago

Don't ban. Tax. Never ban.

Tax low capacity flights more. That both reduces the number of flights and raises money which can be put toward paying ATCs more and increasing the headcount.

You then have a lever available to dial up and down to further reduce flights / raise money.

Banning is expensive and increases legislative and judicial burden.

Taxing is a much more efficient way to stop people doing things.

You have to be careful not to only lock the poorest in society out while the rich enjoy carrying on regardless, but in the case of low capacity private jets, I don't think that's a significant problem.

If the tax doesn't put off people enough, just raise it more until either it does start to dampen demand or you're raising so much money through it you no longer care and have a new revenue stream to spend on fixing whatever problems they're causing.

JSteph22• 1 year ago

Exactly. The article enumerates all the ways to improve hiring, except for compensation.

lifestyleguru2• 1 year ago

With so many billionaires, the country certainly can afford paying more to people whose tasks are crucial for others' lives.

ta12434• 1 year ago

The reason there are so many people worth $1b instead of a poor $100m is because of the tax cuts diverting money from crucial jobs.

runako7• 1 year ago

Seems like a colossal error to have asked them all to quit.

I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.

taeric3• 1 year ago

I'd be interested to see the daily staffing levels over the past couple of weeks. If anyone knows where that could be found.

RationPhantoms• 1 year ago

I couldn't find anything immediately definitive but this 2023 survey of federal workers was quite eye-opening: https://ourpublicservice.org/fed-figures/a-profile-of-the-20...

lenerdenator4• 1 year ago

if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B?

In theory you could do what Reagan did and tell the military to do ATC.

Whether or not this is a good idea is another matter.

robert_foss• 1 year ago

Reagan taking away collective bargaining rights for ATCs seems to be what have led to the shortage and the helicopter accident last week.

pfannkuchen2• 1 year ago

I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work. Like, if you are thinking about quitting because you don’t want to come in, here have an extra incentive to do that and take some time to find another job.

ATC already couldn’t work remotely. The only people who would take a deal like this would be people who were thinking about quitting or retiring anyway. I suspect ATC will not be substantially affected by people taking that deal.

csa5• 1 year ago

I thought the buyout offer went along with the cancellation of remote work.

Your sentiment is a result of their incredibly vague first attempt at messaging.

The offer was (or ended up being) a full buyout offer. The “offer” is probably genuine, but it’s not a clean offer, as many edge cases are unclear (e.g., can they terminate you if they accept the offer… currently there is nothing stopping them from doing that, how can someone of retirement age accept the offer and then retire, etc.).

Iirc, ATCs can accept the buy out if they so chose. I’m guessing most won’t, as the ATC deal is good to stick with until you retire.

Edit: Per the article, the status of the offer is unclear. It wasn’t cleared with the union before the letter was released, and it hasn’t been officially rescinded either (despite comments that it has from DoT).

runako7• 1 year ago

The other set of people who might take the deal are people who are concerned that the new administration will consider them "DEI hires"[1] and fire them later in the year. This is not an unreasonable fear given that the administration has already blamed the DC crash on "DEI" and pledged to root out "DEI" everywhere.

If you expect to be fired ~ in the fall, it is not unreasonable to be interested in the offer to keep getting paid from your federal job while you look for alternate employment.

1 - I am not going to get into who fits this category. The point is which employees might think they fit into this category.

whycome6• 1 year ago

Wait, why can't ATC work remotely? Serious question. They're looking at data on a screen and communicating via radio. Would the latency of any radio-digital relay be too high? Sure it's feeling like one step closer to Ender's game. But it could be possible in theory?

randerson• 1 year ago

ATCs have the upper hand in this negotiation because they're essential and can't be quickly replaced.

If enough ATCs quit that major airports have to be shut down or reduce flights, the airlines (and stock market) will turn against Trump pretty quickly. My guess is the going salary for ATCs is going to increase substantially once they realize they need to lure back those who quit.

I would love to see all ATCs in DC quit, and for others refuse to work there, so that Trump and Musk feel the consequences for their actions directly. Wouldn't it be great if Air Force One was stranded because of this.

Octoth0rpe3• 1 year ago

Wouldn't it be great if Air Force One was stranded because of this.

I was under the impression that AF1 flew in/out of Andrews air force base, which I (possibly naively?) assumed did not use civilian ATC. But yes, that would be great :)

mayneack2• 1 year ago

It seems they clawed back the offer or never gave it in the first place.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-exempt...

johnnyanmac5• 1 year ago

So what does that really mean for those he outright fired? They didn't "resign".no one who (stupidly) responded to that email to resign would have taken any effect anyway.

runako7• 1 year ago

They have nonetheless signaled that a subset of the staff is marked for firing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42936406

lesuorac• 1 year ago

It's a colossal error to accept. The government isn't authorized to do a buy-out by congress so you're just quitting and won't receive the payment.

germinalphrase• 1 year ago

It never was a buy out, and everyone should stop referring to it as such.

stevenwoo2• 1 year ago

The number that I've heard that accepted that offer across the government is in line with normal attrition rates with federal employees - the only people who bit were already planning on quitting. It appears that most or all else was wise to how shady this deal was.

CYR1X2• 1 year ago

Part all of this BS is sure at twitter if you pull this you might get a decent attrition rate but isn't the federal government known for people never quitting? If they quit, it's quiet quitting coming in every day and doing nothing. Isn't that generally the purpose behind this too? Like...good luck get a real amount of people to quit they are going to hold on for dear life

Apreche• 1 year ago

How many of those nerds who role play as air traffic controllers on flight simulations at home qualified to do it for real? How much extra training would they need?

7speter• 1 year ago

From what I understand, if they are over 30 and have less than 20/20 vision, they aren’t qualified.

wry_discontent3• 1 year ago

Do you have a date when that policy was instituted? I've known a lot of air traffic controllers, and most of them wore glasses.

lenerdenator4• 1 year ago

Seems like a problem to me; nearsightedness is becoming more and more common.

psunavy036• 1 year ago

The irony of someone on THIS site of all of them scoffing at other people for being nerds . . .

schmookeeg2• 1 year ago

It's an interesting thought. I wonder if VATSIM could provide a meaningful "pre-ATC" qualification. The people are already clearly interested/enthusiastic about the job.

fatbird2• 1 year ago

I was told by a private pilot that the people on VATSIM are usually real air traffic controllers keeping in practice to do things like ATC the big air shows, which are volunteer ATC.

hansvm• 1 year ago

This should be easy enough to solve. Cut the hours back to something sane, and as much as possible time the airport closures in ways that affect the ruling class. You get bonus points if their jets are also delayed during normal taxiing and clearance requests -- explain that it's for their safety, since they're more important than everyone else and can't slot in to the same sorts of back-to-back landings that the common folk use.

wry_discontent3• 1 year ago

The ruling class makes the rules, though. That's their whole deal. That's why nothing works right.

kelseyfrog3• 1 year ago

It works right for them though. Curious question: Shouldn't those with a bigger stake in the economy have a bigger say in how it's ran?

_jss3• 1 year ago

You'd have to change more regulations, because airports don't close when ATC closes, it regresses to an untowered airport environment (and related airspace designation).

ATC is there to provide specific services that increase safety and throughput (mostly by sequencing and separation).

If you did this with the ruling class, they'd likely pass regulations that would benefit themselves disproportionately and hurt general aviation (the small little Cessnas flying around). There is already a bunch of problems with privatized ATC, don't make it worse.

GiorgioG2• 1 year ago

Cut the hours back to something sane, and as much as possible time the airport closures in ways that affect the ruling class

The ruling class flies private aircraft and don't have to operate out of large municipal airports.

sc68cal• 1 year ago

They're not going to want to fly to a tiny airport in the middle of nowhere and then have to drive into the city. That defeats the whole point

psunavy036• 1 year ago

This is childish.

patmorgan23• 1 year ago

No, it's making the people who have influence feel the pain of the problem so that maybe they'll fix it.

wry_discontent3• 1 year ago

My dad was an air traffic controller until the mid 10's and this has been a problem easily since like 2005.

They struggled to recruit people who could do the job at all, and when people got into the building to be trained (after an initial training) most of them would quit because they couldn't do it.

fatbird2• 1 year ago

Is there no way to restructure the job to be less onerous to the individual? I don't mean software that automates things, I mean things like more staff, shorter hours, etc. Or is there an irreducible complexity to it that mandates a single person handle everything in a given sector?

toast03• 1 year ago

I'm not an ATC, but I think there's a clear need for awareness of potentially conflicting traffic. If you divide that traffic over more people, you need to add communication between the controllers in a way that you don't when it's all handled by a single person.

That's not to say there's not ways to divide it up, but it's not always easily divisible. Well implemented technology can help, but poorly implemented technology can hurt, so everything needs to be done slowly and carefully.

gtsop3• 1 year ago

Of course there is a way to make it less burdensome, exactly everything you listed. It's just that it is cheaper to take the risk to crash a few people here and there than do all that.

ArlenBales• 1 year ago

I fear this will lead to Trump pushing OpenAI to use AI for air traffic controllers, which is going to result in a lot of deaths. Could AI eventually do the job? Maybe, but it will be a bloody road to get there.

xnx• 1 year ago

Wrong! He'll push to use Grok. /s

SideburnsOfDoom• 1 year ago

If you mean the current fad for LLMs, then yeah it's absolutely the wrong tools for the job.

But "planning what best goes where when" could very much be algorithmic, yes. AI in the sense that A* path finding, and Kuhn's Hungarian algorithm for optimisation are "AI".

butterlettuce• 1 year ago

Fellas, I got a question.

Is it really safe to fly these days if this is now a national discussion?

psunavy036• 1 year ago

It has always been and will continue to be more safe than driving to the airport. The fact that something extraordinarily safe is potentially less safe is a topic for discussion, but not at the expense of realizing the relative risks of everything else.

Prior to the midair at DCA, there had not been a fatal (edit) airliner crash in this country since 2009, and there had not been a midair collision involving an airliner since the 1970s. The fact that some people have an irrational fear of flying does not justify that irrational fear dictating policy any more than people who have an irrational fear of clowns wanting them banned.

iancmceachern3• 1 year ago

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

kaikai2• 1 year ago

Where are your dates from? According to the Wikipedia page, there have been multiple fatal plane crashes in the US since 2009, including a midair collision in 2019 (although not an airliner).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_accidents_and_...

sho_hn• 1 year ago

There are fatal plane crashes in the US every year - in General Aviation (which often may not talk to ATC at all). Important to make the distinction :-)

almosthere• 1 year ago

whats the current miles driven vs miles flown vs death rates of both? Not taking a side, I'm just curious here.

johnnyanmac5• 1 year ago

The fact that something extraordinarily safe is potentially less safe is a topic for discussion, but not at the expense of realizing the relative risks of everything else.

Given the leadership, I don't trust it to not get less safe, fast. We're not in statistically normal times. I highly doubt it's a coincidence that Trump fires various controllers and less than a week later we get that first midair collision in 16 years.

You can talk statistics, but the physics are another magnitude. I get in a really bad wreck and car safety standards may let me walk away without a scratch. No amount of safety can protect against a multi thousand foot droop from freefall.

gtsop3• 1 year ago

The fact that some people have an irrational fear of flying does not justify that irrational fear dictating policy

Go tell that to the casualties. Oh wait, you can't. Which part of them being dead is irrational exactly?

mooreds2• 1 year ago

Here's a study[0] looking at data from 2022 that says flying keeps getting safer. The press release[1] has some nice quotes:

“You might think there is some irreducible risk level we can’t get below,” adds Barnett, a leading expert in air travel safety and operations. “And yet, the chance of dying during an air journey keeps dropping by about 7 percent annually, and continues to go down by a factor of two every decade.”

0: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09696...

1: https://news.mit.edu/2024/study-flying-keeps-getting-safer-0...

bloopernova3• 1 year ago

I think the grandparent comment is asking within the context of the past couple of weeks.

Not saying that your sources aren't useful or anything.

foxyv3• 1 year ago

USA Air Traffic deaths spiked back in 2018 during the Boeing 737 Max debacle. They have declined since then. With the introduction of ADS-B things are only getting safer for commercial air travel. A lack of ATC personnel will probably just mean airport delays and cancelled flights. They can't get any more tired and burnt out than they are now.

userbinator2• 1 year ago

No, the 737 Max didn't cause any fatalities in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air_Flight_610

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_302

ranger_danger3• 1 year ago

I don't think there can be a single simple answer to that question.

ethbr1• 1 year ago

As with all things in current news: yes.

The reason this (and Boeing before it) are in the news is because the US air system is incredibly safe.

For perspective, there are ~27,000 US passenger flights per day. [0]

I think the last commercial US passenger carrier midair collision was in 1990? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mid-air_collisions

[0] https://www.airlines.org/impact/

umanwizard• 1 year ago

Define safe. A fully loaded 747 could crash in the US every day and you’d still have a 99.98% chance of being fine when you fly.

(Approximate numbers: 3M US passengers per day, 600 people on a 747).

trunnell• 1 year ago

To those who know more about ATC: is there any hope of automation?

kelseyfrog3• 1 year ago

I don't know more about ATC, but it looks like a field ripe for disruption and innovation. AI should be able to handle the coordination of flights without the downside of the delays and limitations of the human training pipeline, worker fatigue, and stress - all for less expense. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I could have something tangible at the end of a weekend or two - at least a prototype.

unsnap_biceps2• 1 year ago

one that you would trust the lives of thousands of humans to every day? It seems unlikely we are anywhere close to a point where we can ensure that any AI won't hallucinate and cause an issue.

c-cube• 1 year ago

I sincerely hope this is satire (it sure is very HN in nature). "AI" in its current generative incarnation is prone to hallucinations/confabulations that cannot be avoided. In what world is that compatible with a job where a mistake can kill hundreds of people a few minutes or seconds later?

parliament32• 1 year ago

I would not want a text generator to "handle" anything responsible for human lives.

District5524• 1 year ago

Could Congress support AI research and innovation by asking AI company CEOs found guilty of overpromising to prove the reliability of their latest technology by flying in AI-controlled airplanes and relying on AI-managed air traffic, instead of using private jets with human pilots and air traffic controllers? /s

opoolaka• 1 year ago

Ton of people are working on it,

but forget the focus on automating air traffic control, datalink, complex ground IT, remote controls.. That is way to costly and difficult to do in the context of a collection of decentralized legacy systems.

Instead most people are trying to get rid of paper strips (notes used by ATC), and sell complex system that try to automate conflict management.

The hard thing is to improve the UX, the ATC has to communicate with humans (hard even with the highly codified language used), and DO NOT want to solve technical issues, the system has to indicate potential conflicts well in advance but not nag for it at a bad time. They are a lot of human factors to take in consideration and a system well designed with the air traffic controller at the center of it could help a lot.

Grevling• 1 year ago

I was in ATC training in the 90s and this was discussed among teachers and ATC personell. The common saying was that pilots would disappear from cockpits before ATC personell were removed, at least from tower control. There are typically three kinds of ATC: Tower control, approach/departure control and area control for controlling planes when cruising. I haven't followed this in years but my impression is that better monitoring equipment allows for fewer area controllers to control bigger areas. I believe area control is the most likely to get automated but this is quite a guess. Approach control is about using radar (or no radar, procedural approach control is a thing) lining up planes to land on a runway. The planes are handed over from approach to tower control when the plane is on final approach. There is also ground control for taxiing on larger airports. But, not least. Do not underestimate the value of having trained personell using radio to great effect. Any belief that modern touch gadgets are better than radio is silly. Humans are also very capable at speaking while performing advanced tasks.

paraboli• 1 year ago

It's been reported that the elevation of the helicopter was reported as hundreds of feet off. It's unlikely it was just an issue at the specific tower the crash occurred at. If they can't even get accurate elevation data there's no way they'll be able to automate.

harimau777• 1 year ago

How much do they get paid?

mooreds2• 1 year ago

From https://www.faa.gov/jobs/career_fields/aviation_careers :

The approximate median annual wage for air traffic control specialists is $127,805. The salaries for entry-level air traffic control specialists increase as they complete each new training phase.

duxup2• 1 year ago

Seems like reasonable pay for what is a very important job. Wouldn't object to paying much much more.

metaphor2• 1 year ago

That's a significant low ball estimate relative to BLS statistics[1], which pins national median annual wage (circa May 2023 dataset) at $137,380.

For the DC locality specifically, median annual wage is $170,350 with a location quotient of 3.5 (!!)[2].

To be sure, this is just base wage, which explicitly excludes things like holiday premiums, weekend premiums, overtime, shift differentials, bonuses, etc.

This also doesn't include that oh-so-sweet defined benefit pension. The most ambitious civil service employees absolutely love gaming the shit out of this by lateral transfer to a high cost of living locality (e.g. DC metro area) for the last 3 years before retiring (at age 56) and moving to relatively low cost of living areas (e.g. Florida).

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes532021.htm

[2] The location quotient is the ratio of the area concentration of occupational employment to the national average concentration.

francisofascii• 1 year ago

Found this helpful site. https://123atc.com/salary Assuming it is accurate, the pay scale at an airport like DCA is $137K - $185K. SFO $180K-237K. Smaller airports are a lot less. Lancing, MI: $70 - 94K.

metaphor2• 1 year ago

Assuming it is accurate...

Why assume with some random .com TLD source when authoritative data is both public[1] and direct from the cow's mouth?

[1] https://www.faa.gov/jobs/working_here/benefits#collapse5386

bloopernova3• 1 year ago

(this is going to sound like I think this can be fixed with a technical solution. I don't)

I wonder what the software UX is like for ATC, and if there's room for improvement? Is the software/hardware ancient? I'd hope that it is absolutely rock solid but knowing big custom projects I'm not very hopeful!

perihelions• 1 year ago

They have fascinatingly ancient UX:

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/tfdm/efs (Image caption: "Paper flight strips currently in use")

everybodyknows2• 1 year ago

Look up deployment date of upgraded tech at your local airport here:

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/technology/tfdm/implementati...

Notable entry:

Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA), Washington, D.C.

July 2028

gamedever• 1 year ago

this is going to sound like I think this can be fixed with a technical solution. I don't)

Why? It's seems ripe for technical solution. Technical solutions have solved tons of things in the past. What's special about air traffic controlling?

bloopernova3• 1 year ago

Oh I just don't like the tendency of tech folks to reach for technological solutions before they consider social/organizational ones.

ggm3• 1 year ago

The time to certify life-or-death changes to systems exceeds the time to train more people, or pay better to retain existing staff.

"do both" is actually a good answer. The Manhatten project did this. Thermal diffusion and other forms of concentration were initially put head-to-head in competition. It took a while for people to realise both worked, and should be run in parallel or even enriching feedstock. A competitive A or B not both position would not have worked out better.

So yes. research tech replacement, but expect it to be a 15-20 year project with the same costs as other 15-20 year projects. At the same time, don't assume tech will solve social issues, and pay ATC better and increase richness of training programmes by cloning the schools.

Shinolove5• 1 year ago

ATC people are surprisingly resistant to change. They eat up whatever bullshit of a UI they are fed by the few companies producing that specialized software and when the time comes for a change they are too used to the old systems they want an exact replica. My current project is literally a huge ATC system and the more we try to bring in actual controllers for feedback the more we realize they just constantly yap about how they are doing it CURRENTLY in their ancient systems and ask of us that we make it the same. THEY ARE USING MICE WITH 3 buttons!

joshuaheard• 1 year ago

Seems ripe for disruption with AI.

ryandrake7• 1 year ago

If you live in the Bay Area on the Peninsula, you'll be excited to know that the San Carlos airport and the FAA are in a pissing match over their air traffic controllers' pay, threatening to un-staff the control tower and leave that very busy airspace without tower control. The tower was set to go dark on Feb 1st[1] but it looks like there is now a temporary extension[2] keeping it staffed. Why these guys need to play a game of chicken when lives are at stake, I have no idea.

1: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-airport-losing-...

2: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-carlos-airport-reach...

schmookeeg2• 1 year ago

I still don't understand why KSQL is a contract tower and not a full FAA-managed tower.

jjtheblunt• 1 year ago

Did the call sign go to KSQL because of Oracle being right there?

vdqtp36• 1 year ago

Contract towers in general are a terrible idea. The level of service is consistently lower than FAA towers.

Melatonic3• 1 year ago

From what I heard the San Carlos controller were pissed that their pay was being drastically reduced - especially considering its not a cheap area to live in.

Aloisius4• 1 year ago

I'm confused.

Why would the FAA be involved in locality pay or staffing a Contract Tower? I thought the whole point of Contract Towers was a private company staffed and paid them and the FAA merely dispersed the contractual amount to the company.

ryandrake7• 1 year ago

The FAA chooses the contractor, and, according to the article:

The contract, however, did “not include locality pay to account for the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area.” This resulted in the new offer to SQL’s air traffic controllers coming in “significantly lower” than their current compensation, according to the county.

jeroenhd• 1 year ago

I don't get why lives are at stake here. Surely the consequence of reduced ATC coverage means less flights moving through the area, not the same amount of flights being managed by fewer people?

There's only additional risk if you treat the amount of planes in an area as some kind of inevitable force of nature. If an area isn't safe because of a lack of staff, flights can be canceled to reduce the load on remaining staff without impacting safety.

Sucks for the people who bought a ticket, but a canceled flight is a lot better than dying in a plane crash.

ceedan2• 1 year ago

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

RandomBacon14• 1 year ago

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.

ceedan2• 1 year ago

I would have expected by now that tipping air traffic control would have been seen as a way to boost wages, and create more interest for the job… but I could see how travelers of different airlines might tip more/less which could influence behavior

tim3333• 1 year ago

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

legitster8• 1 year ago

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.

RandomBacon14• 1 year ago

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.)

rufus_foreman• 1 year ago

> The ATC biographical assessment didn't have any race-based questions - it was just a decision making questionnaire

Looks like this is the case, https://casetext.com/case/brigida-v-buttigieg-1.

"Though not at issue in this motion, the Plaintiffs allege that the FAA failed to 'validate' the Biographical Questionnaire, and that the Biographical Questionnaire awarded points to applicants in a fashion untethered to the qualifications necessary to be an air traffic controller. For instance, applicants could be awarded fifteen points, the highest possible for any question, if they indicated their lowest grade in high school was in a science class. But applicants received only two points if they had a pilot's certificate, and no points at all if they had a Control Tower Operator rating, even though historic research data indicated that those criteria had 'a positive relationship with ATCS training outcomes'. Further, if applicants answered that they had not been employed at all in the prior three years, they received 10 points, the most awarded for that question."

Can you explain to me why it was more important for air traffic controller candidates to be bad at science and unemployed than it was for them to be pilots or trained in air traffic control?

XCabbage• 1 year ago

Indeed, it didn't have race-based questions, which I don't think anyone claimed. Rather it had totally arbitrary questions, not related to merit in any plausible way, and a score cutoff that made it highly likely you'd fail if you hadn't been tipped off with the correct answers.

For instance, there is a 15-point question for which you have to answer that your worst grade in high school was in Science, and a separate 15-point question where you have to answer that your worst grade in college was in History/Political Science; picking any of the other options (each question has 5 possible answers) means 0 marks for that question. Collectively, these two questions alone account for one eighth of all the available points. (Many questions were red herrings that were actually worth nothing.)

But then the same blacks-only group that had lobbied internally to get the questionairre instituted (the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees) leaked the "correct" answers to the arbitrary questions to its members, allowing them to get full marks. Effectively this was a race-based hiring cartel. Non-blacks couldn't pass; blacks unwilling to join segregated racial affinity groups or unwilling to cheat the test couldn't pass; but corrupt blacks just needed to cheat when invited to and they would pass easily, entering the merit-based stage of hiring with the competition already eliminated by the biographical questionairre.

(A sad injustice is that blacks who wouldn't join the NBCFAE or cheat the test, and so suffered the same unfair disadvantage as whites, are excluded from the class in the class-action lawsuit over this whole mess. Since the legal argument is that it was discrimination against non-blacks, blacks don't get to sue - they lost out because of their integrity, not their race, and they have no recourse at law for that.)

See the questions at https://github.com/kaisoapbox/kaisoapbox.github.io/blob/main... or read an account of the story at either https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... (short) or https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa... (long).

xyst2• 1 year ago

NY Post and The Telegraph are sensationalist rags. Overstating the claims by the plaintiff and not even bothering to go through the actual court case

fastball4• 1 year ago

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

legitster8• 1 year ago

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.

RandomBacon14• 1 year ago

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 spot is reserved for a random person one week behind them in the FAA academy, and the pay won't make it worth moving away from their family.

There are more examples, and appropriate pay would fix most of them.

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

legitster8• 1 year ago

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.

Yeul2• 1 year ago

Ofcourse it would. Capitalism is all about dealing with shortages in exchange for money.

So clearly someone just doesn't want to pay up.

grotted• 1 year ago

I work closely with transportation dispatchers, and this applies almost word for word

ryandrake7• 1 year ago

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.

It wouldn't happen overnight, but surely if ATC had a similar compensation reputation as, say, investment banking, we wouldn't have the pipeline problem that we do now. Surely banks don't have a problem finding young, quick thinking minds to put through their pressure factories. I don't think the ATC candidate pool is currently even close to the limit of people who could take the stress and do the work. Offer controllers starting salaries of $1M/yr and see how things start to change.

Your point in the other thread about marketing the job to teenagers is also good. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the people interested in ATC aren't already "aviation adjacent" to some degree (ex-military, family are pilots, and so on)

b1123• 1 year ago

It's a different kind of pressure. Lives aren't on the line making trades, not like air travel. This lends to a different type of stress.

Losing millions for your boss, losing your job != killing hundreds with a single mistake made in seconds.

bobthepanda6• 1 year ago

part of the problem is the structural problems caused by high turnover are themselves causing high turnover. people can't take vacation, people need to work 6 days 12 hours a week.

there is also the issue of location. where applicants are and where controllers are needed is often two distinct circles and once you throw relocation into remote areas into the mix it becomes really unattractive.

avn2109• 1 year ago

The million dollar salary thing is compelling. I would certainly switch careers from ML engineering for a million bucks of cash comp, especially in a low CoL location :) Also, the "30 years old" thing mentioned in the GP seems excessive, surely if they were really desperate to staff up, they could loosen that age limit.

pbalau2• 1 year ago

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?

mp052• 1 year ago

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

The mass of unemployed CS grads?

0xB31B1B2• 1 year ago

I think you're simplifying the frame far too much here. My wife works in medicine as an ENT surgeon. There is an ENT surgeon position open in a rural hospital outside of fresno CA that pays 1.1M dollars/year, or about 2.5-3x the salary a large hospital in a major metro would pay for the work. The position has been unfilled for 4 years. As best I can tell, the two main reasons the job goes unfilled are a combination of (1) it has a stressful call schedule and (2) its in an remote and undesirable location. ATC jobs have a wide geographic distribution. You need ATC at the commercial airports in Klamath Falls OR and Elmira NY and these are places people are generally moving away from, not moving into because they are run down and have low opportunity and general prevalence of rural poverty. Paying more money doesn't automagically fill these roles, and there is an upper limit to how much you can pay someone and have it be a net benefit.

kylehotchkiss4• 1 year ago

It seems like a good career path for people retiring from commercial aviation. They have been on the other end of ATC and know the gravity of the situation.

el_benhameen• 1 year ago

There is a maximum age for atc applicants (31) that unfortunately makes this infeasible.

sombrero_john• 1 year ago

You must be younger than 31 to qualify for training as an ATC: https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-age-requirements-individual...

jerlam2• 1 year ago

A lot of pilots seem to retire into commercial aviation after their military careers. They already have all the training and flight hours. After 20 years and a pension they're keen to keep on flying, but not as high-speed.

AutistiCoder• 1 year ago

I've dreamed of having an AI model run ATC.

Just train an AI on ATC recordings and other data, maybe throw in some reinforcement learning,and then test it in low-stakes commercial airspace (like a regional airport)

paulproteus• 1 year ago

Sounds good! Maybe you can start a business and have a low-stakes regional airport work with you. I think the main way to do it is as an add-on/assistant for the existing toolset.

jaredwiener• 1 year ago

What is "low stakes"? This is quite literally life-or-death.

Also, just FYI -- airports don't hire their own ATC; it's all FAA (or the equivalent wherever you are located.)

calmbonsai• 1 year ago

It's fiction, but for some sense of ATC stress, watch "Pushing Tin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_Tin

RandomBacon14• 1 year ago

ATC here, I love that documentary :-)

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

I have some wild stories, but unfortunately sharing them would dox me.

The most inaccurate thing though is a transfer CPC (fully-certified controller at their previous facility) plugging in and being able to work without months of training in that area.

fiftyfifty• 1 year ago

I've toured a couple of ATC towers recently and my impression was they were surprisingly low tech. A tech upgrade seems like the most viable solution at this point. There are processes for writing and testing software and hardware for environments such as this, but the government needs to be willing to make the investment.

Melatonic3• 1 year ago

If anything tech upgrades could potentially just make the job less stressful for current traffic controllers - which might end up (long term) with big benefits for everyone.

AnthonyMouse5• 1 year ago

The general problem here is that we need to do something about the government contracting process. It has been thoroughly captured by large government contractors who do mediocre work for enormous sums of money while excluding anyone who could do better from the process through corruption and red tape.

Which in turn means that important systems become frozen in time because upgrade attempts become boondoggles that can't meet requirements until they're so far over budget they get canceled, or never attempted.

One of the major problems that should be fixed immediately is that the government pays for code to be written but then doesn't own it, which makes them dependent on the contractor for maintenance. Instead they should be using open source software and, when custom code is necessary, requiring it to be released into the public domain, both for the benefit of the public (who might then be able to submit improvements to the code they're required to use!) and so that maintenance can be done by someone other than the original contractor.

appreciatorBus• 1 year ago

* the voters need to be willing to not scream bloody murder if long term ATC investment raises taxes or airfares by $0.01

nradov9• 1 year ago

The government is making that investment. Upgrading the legacy system will take decades regardless of how much money they spend.

https://www.faa.gov/nextgen

jasondigitized• 1 year ago

I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the challenges presented.

stevage3• 1 year ago

Fortnite is a closed system, everything controlled by one company. ATC is not.

But yes, presumably there is scope for improved tools.

giantrobot• 1 year ago

I am completely naive about the challenges presented.

The problem isn't collision detection or predicting movement. They're not a bunch of particles on simple ballistic trajectories. They're powered objects traveling in a turbulent and difficult to predict medium. In emergency conditions they can turn from a powered vehicle to an unpowered one. They can need to land immediately when flight worthiness changes in flight. A situation on the ground can make landings unsafe or impossible and an aircraft needs to diverted disrupting traffic at another airport.

Automating ATC works until one or more exceptional conditions arises. Then it's completely unsuitable and everyone from pilots to ATC need to work against the happy path automation to keep people alive.

mschuster91• 1 year ago

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 existing aircraft can be so huge that the entire aircraft needs a new certification. Hell if you want and can acquire such a thing, you can fly aircraft that's over a century old. Many avionics systems still in use today fundamentally date back to shortly after WW2 - VOR/DME for example is 1950s technology.

For tower control systems, you'd need a system that's capable of dealing with very very old aircraft, military aircraft that doesn't even have transponders activated a lot of the time, aircraft that don't have transponders at all (e.g. ultralights), has well defined interfaces with other systems (regional/national/continental/oceanic control zones)...

Oh and someone has to pay for all of that.

pjc50• 1 year ago

TCAS exists. It doesn't always work and of course not all aircraft have it.

Everyone likes to imagine the controller has a screen with perfect information on it. They do not. Especially when light aircraft are involved.

Shinolove5• 1 year ago

I work on ATC software in another country. In my experience the biggest hurdle is the way the software is being developed and sold. ATC authorities and service providers buy these systems as a product but they don't have the code. Developers of the products (people like me) constantly have to maintain different versions deployed all around the world for different areas or countries or service providers. And there are hundreds of different systems working in parallel for no reason. For example there is an airport with 5 runways here and they installed a specific software just to monitor the speed and altitude of the planes taking off from this runway. They already have 5 different survelliance monitors feeding this info as well as direct view from the tower. Every new software now also has to consider and integrate with this specific system and many like it.

tw04• 1 year ago

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 side.

Technology hasn't changed is a political problem due to lack of... money. There isn't an issue with new technology, there's an issue with the government refusing to invest in upgrading the technology. Canada doesn't have this issue and they're far smaller than the US.

Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it.

I do absolutely, 100% think that this is a problem that can easily be solved with money.

I also think our politicians will flounder around making excuses about how the problem is unsolvable because it doesn't directly help their chances of re-election.

The first time a plane goes down carrying a dozen congress critters and their families, you can bet there will magically be money in the banana stand.

crmd• 1 year ago

I respectfully disagree - there's always money in the banana stand.

d0gsg0w00f• 1 year ago

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.

I think the guaranteed respect and admiration that comes from the title is actually a more powerful draw. Don't get me wrong, the money is good, but on par with senior manager in any large tech firm. Doctor is a primal respect that technical roles do not carry.

You're not getting instant respect from mother in laws and pastors as an ATC.

jerlam2• 1 year ago

Sounds like a doctor?

Not disagreeing, but the US also has a doctor shortage for at least a decade that it is seemingly unable to fix.

janalsncm3• 1 year ago

Too much stress?

Not just that, but having a shortage means each ATC does more work which is inherently stressful.

natnat2• 1 year ago

I don't honestly think that technology is meaningfully downstream of money. A startup or hobbyist can build something that costs Google several million dollars in a weekend. Most of these systems are complex, but not as complex as e.g. an operating system.

But upgrading technology requires government administrative capacity. That's generally cheaper than outsourcing technology development to third parties, but does require a commitment to try to understand the thing you're managing.

Politicians don't hire competent administrators because they believe that building a solution yourself and buying a solution from a contractor are basically equivalent, which anyone on this website can tell you is not true. This is an easier problem to solve than most think, but it's not trivial. And it's really hard when you have clowns like Elon Musk purposefully destroying institutional knowledge for no good reason.

imoverclocked2• 1 year ago

Technology hasn't changed is a political problem due to lack of... money.

Tell me you haven’t worked in aerospace without telling me you haven’t worked in aerospace. There is plenty of money sunk into all corners of the field but progress is slow because the risk of change is lives lost. At some point, the risk of not changing means more lives lost… and that’s when things will change.

jltsiren• 1 year ago

Paying too much can be counterproductive, if the job is demanding, people don't find it inherently rewarding, and most people are not qualified for it. If you earn enough to retire after 10 years, you also earn enough to feel financially secure after 3 years, quit, and find a better job.

isodev• 1 year ago

Only 10% of applicants are physically and mentally qualified?

Another way would be investing in education (instead of dismantling it, or mixing it with religion and politics), making it more accessible so more people come out who are better equipped to take on "complex jobs"

kshahkshah• 1 year ago

mid 100k salary... not worth it for that level of stress

8note• 1 year ago

i dont think offering more compensation solves the problem.

the people you might want mignt

1. always have a better option elsewhere and if your raise the offer, competitors will offer something even higher instead, beyond the pittances the government is willing to spend 2. never be willing to take on the job as specified - huge responsibility and risk of killing people, with long hours and no recognition 3. never finds out that the pay is high - nobody talks about it, or sells its existence as an option. 4. doesnt have a parent in the business to teach them what to do

raising the payment seems to fail a lot, even though its suggested naively all the time as the solution to all labour problems.

alternatives might be to increase outreach, immigration, enslaved prison workers, stronger unions to make the job more like what people are willing to work, etc

callc• 1 year ago

Offer more compensation.
Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it.

I highly doubt that solving the problem with just money will get the right people.

A high salary becomes the goal in an of itself, and everything else falls to the wayside.

Do you really care about safety? Applicants may say they do, but only want to retire after 10 years and will lie through their teeth.

Money is a corrupting factor. I don’t like to take this side of the argument, since I want people to be paid fairly, but there’s something fundamental to seeing unpaid volunteers having the best intentions and most love for their craft

RobotToaster2• 1 year ago

Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it.

Or pay people enough they can afford to work part time. A stressful job is less stressful if you only have to work 2 days a week.

trod12342• 1 year ago

Everything you have listed could be solved with money.

No that's actually not true. Government jobs are soul crushing. The way the bureaucracy works, its all about social standing, politics, and seniority. In these jobs you trade your sanity for money, and they have a long reputation for being just like this which is why few ever apply.

No reasonably average intelligence person is going to do that unless they are absolutely desperate. Its a dead end job.

skirge• 1 year ago

with more money you will attract greedy people and greedy is contradictory with being responsible

robertlagrant5• 1 year ago

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 prestigious job, and has been for centuries. Conveys authority. Your family can boast that you're a doctor.

- very interesting tales come out of employment, and your family probably

- very easy to feel good about being a doctor - directly helping people etc

Not all of those for everyone, and they no doubt don't all turn out to be the case, but doctors apply for multiple reasons, and many of them aren't in high-paying areas at all. Doctors (in America, which I assume is what you're focusing in on) are paid well partly because they have high expenses in terms of liability insurance.

mihaaly2• 1 year ago

You must be an economist. :D

- Can you swim now?

- No.

- What if I give you money?

DannyBee6• 1 year ago

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, even if you paid more?

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

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.

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.

It's totally non-obvious this is true.

joakleaf• 1 year ago

Sorry. But people in general do not choose to study medicine because they can make a lot of money after the study.

I have had some experience with family, girl friends, friends and med-students. And it was definitely not the primary reason any one of them chose that path.

I don’t think money is a strong enough single motivator for med-school or any other long term hard study/job.

michielderhaeg• 1 year ago

Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it.

Don't underestimate just how high-stress these jobs are and what it does to you. People quit these kinds of jobs for 2 reasons

  1) They can't deal with the stress mentally, or don't want to.

  2) They were not smart enough to choose option 1 and their body just physically gives up and they are no longer capable of performing their job as an ATC.

I know someone who is now legally handicapped because her lungs don't function properly anymore due to the stress and was forced to retire early.

egberts12• 1 year ago

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).

SkiFire13• 1 year ago

Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it.

I feel like this could be counterproductive. If people retire after 10 years instead of after 30 years, you now have to hire 3x the amount of people over time.

asdefghyk2• 1 year ago

RE "...The first time a plane goes down carrying a dozen congress critters and ...."

Is it realized it almost happened in the recent helicopter / aeroplane crash. As it was said the helicopter was used for moving VIPS ....

cranky908canuck• 1 year ago

Everything you have listed above could be solved with money.

Except that when money was on the table, Reagan fired them. ATC is remote from most people's day-to-day awareness unless planes hit each other, but medical help that's held back is really in-your-face.

Granted, that's decades in the past. No way anyone would jump in and try to gut the public service like that today [1].

[1] sarky.

adolph2• 1 year ago

some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements.

So what happened? Why did the FAA upend a stable hiring process, undercut the CTI schools it had established to train its workforce, and throw the plans of thousands of eager would-be air traffic controllers into disarray?

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

specialist• 1 year ago

That was quite the rabbit hole. Thanks for sharing.

rdtsc• 1 year ago

There has been a buzz of having "computerized, automated ATC" since, well, forever. It's like the flying car of the aviation world. I don't know if the government still hopes that is "right around the corner" so they don't really want to ramp up hiring. I mean, look ChatGPT can solve math problems already, surely it can funnel planes into an airport... /s

There certainly some automation involved, but not at the level where we can just let the all the people go home and have it take over.

lazystar3• 1 year ago

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.

throwaway20378• 1 year ago

    > 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.

Reason077• 1 year ago

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

Isn't this, ultimately, the real problem? Improved technology with radically more automation would both improve safety and reduce workload on controllers.

What's really needed is some sort of "next-generation ATC" moonshot project. But of course, in such a safety-critical and risk-averse domain, generational improvement is really hard to do. You certainly can't "move fast and break things", so how do you prevent such a project getting bogged down in development hell?

amluto3• 1 year ago

SpaceX moved fast, broke things, and still did pretty well on their safety-critical Dragon program, all things considered.

But SpaceX is solving a simpler problem because it’s a greenfield program (aside from docking with ISS, but there’s a spec and they implemented it). ATC involves interactions with the entire existing enormous worldwide fleet of aircraft and pilots.

All that being said, a system that allocates certain volumes of airspace to aircraft and alerts aircraft if they are on a trajectory likely to encroach on someone else’s allocated airspace seems doable and maybe even doable in a backwards compatible way. But this, by itself, would not meaningfully increase capacity.

And I agree this is silly and unfortunate. SFO, for example, has two parallel runways, and airplanes can only land simultaneously on them if visibility is very good. Surely modern GNSS plus radio (which can do time-of-flight and direction measurements with modern technology!) plus inertial measurement could let a cooperating pair of planes maintain appropriate separation and land simultaneously, safely, with zero visibility, even under conditions of active attack by a hostile system. But that would require a kind of competence and cooperation between the government and vendors that does not currently exist.

DrFalkyn• 1 year ago

There are some small airports that don’t have an ATC. You could start with those

Tatar_grade2• 1 year ago

*turnover = money

janalsncm3• 1 year ago

Assuming all you’ve said is true, why doesn’t every country have an ATC shortage?

cannibalizing other talent pools

If we accidentally paid ATCs so much that it ate into the investment banking or high frequency trading talent pools I think we’d still be ok

chii5• 1 year ago

but what if it ate into a doctor or surgeon's talent pool instead?

capitainenemo• 1 year ago

Problem is US is stalled on modernising and far behind the rest of the world and has been for decades.

https://www.montrealgazette.com/business/article267028.html

https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107917

steele• 1 year ago

The education and training could be subsidized-- this was done for nursing.

throwaway20378• 1 year ago

    > about money

Some light Googling tells me that median pay is about 100K to 120K USD per year. Most people here would say that is not outstanding for such highly skilled work.

Why don't other highly developed countries have the same issues finding employees? You never read about "ATC hiring crisis" in other countries. Why only the US?

    > 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.

This sounds like a Catch-22. The current system is "fragile", but so fragile that we cannot improve it with new technology? This argument reads like a tautology. Repeating my previous point, why don't we hear the same about ATC systems in other highly developed nations/regions (Japan, Korea, EU, Canada, AU/NZ, etc.)?

The link that shared is excellent. When I looked under the medical requirements area, and section "Eye", I see:

    > 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.

Is it possible to get a job without 20/20 near vision?

rlpb3• 1 year ago

You never read about "ATC hiring crisis" in other countries. Why only the US?

The UK has a controller hiring/retention problem at the moment, too. The less lucrative airports keep losing controllers to the bigger players and can’t replace them. Periods of service reduction are common.

0xB31B1B2• 1 year ago

"Why don't other highly developed countries have the same issues finding employees?"

Baumol effects. Our economy is incredible, extremely high productivity along with full employment. Its why we have ordering kiosks at fast food restaurants, pay 225k for bucee's managers and 20 dollars/hour to flip burgers at fast food restaurants. ATC is a low productivity growth job, technology hasn't increased the number of planes or amount of airspace one ATC can manage. As other jobs and sectors of the economy improve in productivity, people migrate to those sectors from low productivity sectors like ATC because on average high productivity sectors can pay more. The salaries of ATCs rise because there is more competition for the limited pool so you end up paying more but getting the same or worse outcomes over time.

l2edline• 1 year ago

I'm an air traffic controller at a core 30 airport and I firmly believe that many but not all of the issues we face can be fixed by increasing compensation. Namely mandatory 6 day work weeks, high attrition, and burnout.

VincentEvans2• 1 year ago

Maybe occasional free pizza, casual Friday's, and an employee of the month plaque would help?

WalterBright4• 1 year ago

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.

hattmall8• 1 year ago

Radar sweeps, it takes time to get back, it takes time to relay information and it takes time to respond. When you have aircraft moving at hundreds of miles an hour crossing in close proximity the trajectory can change and result in impact before radar can gather data, assess it, make a prediction and relay that information.

mhh__2• 1 year ago

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.

Shinolove5• 1 year ago

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

pimlottc• 1 year ago

- 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

This stands out to me:

Be under the age of 31
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.

This almost seems like a catch-22 give than approx most adults (80%+) will experience presbyopia by their mid-40s. So even if you're a qualified candidate, you've likely only got 10-15 years max before you are disqualified.

More broadly, I suspect some of these vision requirements could be reconsidered in the face of improved display technology and UX improvements (e.g. accommodations for certain forms of partial colorblindness).

chrismarlow9• 1 year ago

Yeah the under 31 surprised me. That alone would bring a shortage.

histriosum• 1 year ago

The use of "bifocal contact lenses" is not allowed. Bifocal glasses are fine.

hattmall8• 1 year ago

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.

swores6• 1 year ago

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 any good applicants left except those who don't tick diversity boxes, but still let's not bother hiring them". It really doesn't make sense at all unless those 900 people actually weren't good enough applicants and are wrongly believing that diversity is the reason.

csomar• 1 year ago

If you look at the graph, you'll realize it's a compensation (and housing crisis) issue. Detroit has 100% fill rate. My money is on the real-estate being cheap there. If you are renting a single bedroom for $2500 in Queens, then you need a $100k+ starting salary just to have an average lifestyle.

smcin3• 1 year ago

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

Ok what's the top-5 list of technology things that need to be changed? finally rolling out the decades-delayed ATCC upgrade (currently delayed to 2032)? real-time transponders? satellite location? using digital radio instead of VHF, for better audio quality? Is https://www.city-journal.org/article/reagan-national-airport... accurate?

(Total ATC salaries are 14,000 ATCs * median salary of $140K = only $1.9bn, so they could certainly hire more and pay higher.)

jajko• 1 year ago

If job is too stressful since people get overloaded, simply add more people and adjust structure so that it actually delivers more throughput. It doesn't scale linearly, but it doesn't need to, this is not some rock bottom budget service but simply a security monopoly.

The goal here shouldn't be to have a small set of brilliant people-machines that perform always 100% under various stress and understaffing, the goal is to have a larger set of good workers that are easily replaceable (ie if they call in sick, have accident or other sudden events).

Money and probably just a mild change of approach how such team is created and maintained. If you pay those folks more than lawyers and doctors, then many of those and other high performers will apply for such job. Also it would be one of the more moral high paying jobs out there.

Given how much is constantly at stake money and people wise its still peanuts, feel free to take away 10% budget from completely useless airport security ala TSA - here literally everybody would win (apart from security folks, but those jobs are crap and they hate it AFAIK)

trod12342• 1 year ago

Government is not immune to the economics of things. There is an opportunity cost for everything.

Government has historically been far behind the pay scale curve for things like this, but that isn't the main driver of people not going into these fields.

There is a huge talent pool that simply will not apply for Government jobs. That is because the work environment is toxic. A special kind of parasite that walks upright on two legs rears its head where everything is about standing, and seniority, rather than production and results, and DEI is a big part of that.

The restrictions are also very high, for any G-man job. Government jobs have gotten the worst reputation, because quite literally any good person doing those jobs eventually trades their sanity for them. Its filled with personal cost.

It also doesn't help matters that the government actually created these problems to begin with. If you don't know what I'm talking about google the 1981 Reagan ATC strike, and how Reagan broke the backs of the ATC union labor movement overnight.

The system is fragile because its centralized. Single points of failure, and front of line blocking are some of the worst types of problems to deal with in highly complex systems because they often are not obvious except to the people whose job it is to design resiliency into the system.

watwut3• 1 year ago

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

The turnover part is usually solved by salaries and working conditions. High turnover is consonance of bad working conditions and low salaries. So, this point can be solved by money.

The other points are just repetition of the same thing - people doing this job must be capable.

Justsignedup• 1 year ago

My uncle did ATC in the soviet military. They were allowed to do 2 hour shifts max. The mental work is so intense that the human brain can only sustain it for a short time.

insane_dreamer• 1 year ago

More money would definitely help.

Becoming a doctor is a long, expensive and arduous process in the US, with a very narrow funnel (much too narrow but that's another topic). But if you make it through residency, you're mostly guaranteed to make good money for the rest of your life (if you don't screw up, etc.)

Start by tripling the ATC salary and see what happens.

Then, reduce ATC hours to reduce stress and errors. That means hiring more people (==higher incentives).

bambax• 1 year ago

Yeah, I think this is one of the most difficult and demanding job in the world.

But my instinct tells me some filters happen too early. Don't know about the US but in France for example you need to be an engineer to become an air controller; and to be an engineer you need to go to prep school; and to go to prep school you need to have majored in physics in high school (not just math).

Which means that, if you choose not to take physics in 11th grade when you're 16, that's it: you will never be an air controller in France, whatever your other motivations or qualities.

But it would seem some personal qualities, like the ability to switch context easily, be resistant to stress (or even enjoying it), etc. should be more relevant to this job than just having studied physics in high school.

foxyv3• 1 year ago

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.

deathanatos• 1 year ago

"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. What we know from the ATC transcripts[1] already tells us that ATC was aware the helicopter & the plane would be near each other well in advance of the crash; ATC informed the helo, the helo responded that he had the aircraft in sight. Time passed, the ATC gets a proximity warning (labelled as "[Conflict Alert Warning]" in VASAviation's video), ATC immediately acts on it, again reaching out to the helo, the helo again confirms they have the aircraft in sight, and moments later we can hear on the ATC transcripts the crash occur as people in the room witness it and react in horror.

To my armchair commenting self, the ATC controllers seem to be exonerated by the transcript, and I'm going to otherwise wait until an NTSB report tells me why I'm wrong to break out the pitch forks on them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3gD_lnBNu0

bombcar2• 1 year ago

I’ll bet the final NTSB report lists as a contributing factor that there was only one controller that night; a second controller might have had the time to notice the altitude was too close, or vector the helicopter behind.

bilbo0s4• 1 year ago

No. There are also rules on who can do what.

Put another way, military aircraft, especially certain military aircraft, can do things that civilian aircraft can't.

If I were piloting a helicopter in that airspace, that ATC transcript would have been significantly different.

We should be looking at root causes. Which means we should ask the uncomfortable questions about the deference given to some military/government aircraft. But we don't want to ask those questions. So we keep quibbling around the edges by talking about ATC or Reagan firing everyone or even the ridiculous suggestion that maybe the civilian airliners could be in a hold pattern at certain times.

It would be humorous if it wasn't so tragic.

Timshel• 1 year ago

I would bet on "Normalization of deviance", such a close altitude separation should probably just not exists (default is 1000ft).

If it had become a norm then a second controller would probably not change anything.

ibejoeb• 1 year ago

This is pretty much right, by the book. It seems clear that there were multiple confounding factors: a high risk, under-resourced training mission performed by relatively inexperience pilots operating as a normal transport mission as far as the controllers were aware.

I think we're going to wind up talking about SOP and whether visual separation is permissible in this class of airspace when using NVGs or under other conditions present in this mishap, e.g., on nighttime training. There are companies (lufty for instance) that, by policy, prohibit visual separation at night.

There might be some scrutiny on the controller for approving visual separation in the first place, and I think that'll get into weeds of how he should have known the risk factors for the helo. Still, as Juan notes, it didn't sound like thoughtful consideration, but like rote call and response.

This would have been prevented if the helo had to take vectors. There would be no talk of visual separation. The controller was aware of how tight it was, and if it were simply a rule, he would have told the helo to hold present position, waited for an appropriate place in the sequencing, and then given a clearance.

llamaimperative2• 1 year ago

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.”

ApolloFortyNine3• 1 year ago

We have planes moving hundreds of miles an hour being managed exclusively by audio channels.

Does this not blow anyone else's minds? This seems like a clear case of 'because we've always done it that way'. There's no way if a system was being developed today they'd say to hell with screens, lets just give them instructions over audio and assume they'll follow them to a T if acknowledged.

bobthepanda6• 1 year ago

there are already a lot of screens and things to look at in a cockpit. and in emergency situations, screens can fail. audio has the advantage of being highly backwards compatible and extremely reliable, so long as the pilots are alive and conscious (and if they're not, the plane is most likely SOL anyways: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522)

ryandrake7• 1 year ago

Also, you can process and respond to audio without taking your eyes off of whatever they are on, and without taking your hand off the stick/yoke.

I hear in my headset "Clear for the option runway two-five-right, number two behind a cessna, two mile final, on the go make right traffic" and I know exactly what is expected of me without having to look at a screen. A digital display would be a step backwards.

ApolloFortyNine3• 1 year ago

and in emergency situations, screens can fail.

Audio makes perfect sense as a backup, but 99.99% of flights would benefit from having a screen showing object and current planned route.

In this particular case, simply having that information available would have allowed an onboard computer to predict a collision.

chinathrow• 1 year ago

and assume they'll follow them to a T if acknowledged

That's not how ATC works.

CYR1X2• 1 year ago

Welcome to aviation. Where we last innovated 50 years ago.

contingencies• 1 year ago

Fun napkin-view ADS-C ("control"-capable successor to broadcast-only ADS-B).

Reporting integrates approach and flight tunnel envelopes. Envelopes are specified with coordinates, not just sequential points + altitude.

Cryptographic authentication in subsequent position broadcast from plane flight systems efficiently confirms receipt and acceptance of prior control messages.

Flight systems warn on countdown to envelope exception not only actual envelope exception or altitude exception.

For passenger planes, ability of ground control to command autonomous landing with blessing of federal government in an emergency (eg. no pilots conscious, interface borked), and to send urgent, cryptographically authenticated ATC command requests (change altitude or heading immediately, etc.) for pilot consideration in the event of ATC-detected potential emergent danger conditions.

ketralnis2• 1 year ago

That there is a computer at ATC that a human looks at, reads what it says with their eyes, speaks those instructions over the radio in a specific protocol, another human listens to it (and confirms within that protocol), and inputs those control signals into the airplane.

Computer -> human -> radio(spoken protocol) -> human -> plane.

There aren't a lot of practical reasons it can't just be

Computer -> radio(digital protocol) -> plane

(There are nonzero reasons, such as the presence of weird situations, VFR aircraft, etc., but it's not a lot.)

cj2• 1 year ago

Sometimes having humans in the loop is a feature, not a bug.

bobthepanda6• 1 year ago

In the latest crash, the heli was on VFR, and that situation happens often at DCA since it also serves general aviation.

tim3333• 1 year ago

There are some technical issues in moving beyond that. For example I was talking to a pilot in Africa and apparently for long haul between Europe and South Africa the local controller in the various countries en route were considered a bit useless go they had a particular frequency where they would occasionally say this if flight x over country y heading so and so direction and altitude and other planes on that frequency could here where they were - the radio range is ~200 miles. I'm not sure how you'd replace that other than with something like starlink which is quite recent.

deadbabe• 1 year ago

If you’ve flown in any capacity you probably owe your life to an ATC, you’ve probably been on a plane that would have suffered a collision if not for the ATC.

bluGill4• 1 year ago

Sort of. Without ATC you would still be safe - but airplanes would be much less common as no sane pilot will get anywhere close to other planes without someone in control to watch separations. That means instead of planes landing every 30 seconds they will be once every several minutes to make sure everyone takes turns - this isn't just about the runway, it is also the patterns around the airport, with many airplanes refusing to join the pattern because they are not sure they can fit in that close. Airports with more than one runway (which is nearly all commercial airports) will have issues trying to get patterns to work and so likely some runways won't even be used.

But if you do manage to get in the air you will be safe and get there. You would get used to long waits in hubs and 3 transfers to get there unless you live in a hub and are going to a hub. (Boston to Salt Lake city would be fly to NYC, then to Denver, then to Salt Lake. Even Boston to Atlanta would be a transfer in NYC). Those transfers would also involve long waits, right now airlines plane everyone to arrive at the hub and leave again more in about an hour and then little traffic for several hours. However after airlines will not coordinate schedules as they can't land so layovers will be several hours.

nimbius• 1 year ago

disingenuous headline. America desperately needs to reform ATC hiring.

This is the same headline as the professional trucking shortage in the USA and glosses over the real reasons no one will take these jobs. mandatory overtime, low wages, miserable benefits, high stress and a well documented history of retaliation against organized labor.

kylehotchkiss4• 1 year ago

Certain immigrants actually seem to excel in trucking and even enjoy it (Punjabi truckers especially in California - I always see the Sikh logos on the back of their trucks between LA and SF!). A quick policy adjust would resolve any shortage in truckers with other people who'd probably also enjoy the work.

However, there isn't a massive pool of people abroad who can handle US airspace demands (which now seems to include helicopters flying in the approach pathways of active runways in VFR while wearing night vision goggles and ignoring their radar altimeters all so some DC asshat doesn't have to sit in a car for 20 minutes, and also includes people like my former college hallmates who take handheld aviation radios, ask for permission to depart, and run on the taxiways with their arms extended, to great dismay of ATC)

10000truths• 1 year ago

and also includes people like my former college hallmates who take handheld aviation radios, ask for permission to depart, and run on the taxiways with their arms extended, to great dismay of ATC

You can't just drop a tidbit like that without elaborating.

nimish• 1 year ago

The kind of person who can do ATC can make much more in tech and have a much better lifestyle.

Market problem requires a market solution.

ConanRus• 1 year ago

Oh noes, what happened?

Khaine• 1 year ago

It should be noted that the FAA is facing a lawsuit alleging it discriminated against capable candidates[1]. If this is true, this surely must factor into the shortage of air traffic controllers.

Admittedly, its a big if, and second even if it is true it is not clear to me how much of a factor this is in the shortage.

[1] https://mslegal.org/cases/brigida-v-faa/

Graziano_M• 1 year ago

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

DangitBobby4• 1 year ago

It truly boggles my mind that Trump may have a legitimate basis for alleging that DEI policies have contributed to issues with ATC staffing.

First, to liberals:
I dislike Trump as much as anyone. Maybe I’m not supposed to play my hand like that while reporting a news article, but it’s true. I’ve wanted him out of politics since he entered the scene a decade ago, I voted against him three elections in a row, and I think he’s had a uniquely destructive effect within US politics. So I understand—please believe, I understand—just how disquieting it is to watch him stand up and blame DEI after a major tragedy.
But Democrats did not handle it. The scandal occurred under the Obama administration. The FAA minimized it, obscured it, fought FOIA requests through multiple lawsuits, and stonewalled the public for years as the class action lawsuit rolled forward. The Trump administration missed it, too, for a term, and it’s likely most officials simply didn’t hear about it through the first few years of the Biden administration. No outlets left of Fox Business bothered to provide more than a cursory examination of it, and it never made much of a dent on the official record. Even when the New York Times ran a thoroughly reported article on air traffic controller shortages late last year, it never touched the scandal. It was possible to miss it.

burner20250204• 1 year ago

The Brigida case has been the subtext of recent news stories:

Trump was likely referencing it with his DEI comments about the FAA.

Pete Buttigieg's tweet response (acting as if Trump's accusation was coming completely out of left field, when there's literally a case named "Brigida v. Buttigieg"): https://x.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1885013865676562491

gtsop3• 1 year ago

If you don't have air traffic controllers, the air traffic won't be controlled... who knew?

smath2• 1 year ago

I might have missed this in the article - how is the pay level set for ATC staff? In a free market economy price is the magical signal that is supposed to increase supply when there is unmet demand.

RandomBacon14• 1 year ago

There is a formula that is negotiated with the union. See Appendix A in the collective bargaining agreement:

https://www.natca.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/2016NATCACB...

smath2• 1 year ago

Ah interesting - a formula. To me it seems that makes it not a free market. Ie the formula is producing numbers that are too low, than what the current demand supply imbalance would otherwise produce.

wNjdbfm• 1 year ago

Is this a US ONLY problem? I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm genuinely wondering for example: European air travel doesn't seem any less safe than the US so whatever they are doing seems to work just as well. Do they have trouble hiring and keeping ATCs? Is their comp/work life/training/etc very different than ours? Would appreciate any insight from folks that know.

kalleboo• 1 year ago

It looks like Europe also has staffing issues, but they're more likely to cancel/delay flights rather than overwork their ATC https://skift.com/2023/08/22/europes-air-traffic-controller-...

Symbiote• 1 year ago

Yes — it reached a point where Ryanair made a website on the issue: https://www.atcruinedourholiday.com/

Jtsummers2• 1 year ago

There was a mass firing in the early 1980s (~90%) which led to the development of a bathtub curve in ATC staffing. By the 2010s this had become a critical issue but was met with a hiring freeze (not the first). Now we're seeing the outcome of those poor decisions paired with the slow hiring/training process to fill the roles.

dblohm7• 1 year ago

The Canadian system is much better.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nav_Canada#History

ggm3• 1 year ago

This is a worldwide problem. ATC staff under 35 would be a rapid visa approval for Australia, if trained to world-class standards.

protocolture• 1 year ago

I have seen job listings for ATC's in australia that sounded much like begging.

And yeah, my understanding is we have much the same physical, mental and technical requirements as other countries.

analog312• 1 year ago

I realize it's not a complete or immediate solution, but I wonder how much buses and trains would help. I think about this, in a town with a regional airport, ~ 100 miles from a couple of "hub" airports. Flying to the hub is often slower than driving when all things are considered, and with the risk of delays. A bus or train could work a lot better if the locations of the stations were coordinated, and if there was a coordinated system for handling baggage. And, if the ticketing were consolidated. The bus is never delayed by weather.

mcmcmc3• 1 year ago

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted (minus the false claim about buses and weather), if we don’t have enough have enough ATCs to satisfy air traffic demands the other level to pull is to decrease air traffic, either by offering substitutes for cross country travel or just straight up making it more expensive to fly. A flat per flight tax, say a flat ATC fee on each ticket, would marginally decrease demand for air travel and could be used to fund recruiting/retention programs for ATCs. Or call it a public transit fee and use it to subsidize high speed rail and other mass transit.

analog312• 1 year ago

With apologies to Captain Corcoran, "Well, hardly ever."

ctrlp3• 1 year ago

Anyone remember the movie Pushing Tin with John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton?

mjmsmith3• 1 year ago

The article it was based on is worth a read: https://web.archive.org/web/20091213233937/http://www.nytime...

ctrlp3• 1 year ago

Wow. Just, wow.

RandomBacon14• 1 year ago

ATC here, I love that documentary :-)

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

I have some wild stories, but unfortunately sharing them would dox me.

The most inaccurate thing though is a transfer CPC (fully-certified controller at their previous facility) plugging in and being able to work without months of training in that area.

ctrlp3• 1 year ago

If that's a documentary, I'm never getting on a plane again :)

Yeul2• 1 year ago

The Netherlands has a shortage too. But they just cancel flights or even entire airports if they are understaffed.

As an employee it is your duty to refuse orders that potentially risk lives.

mrweasel2• 1 year ago

That brings up an interesting solution: Figure out how many flights can be services with the current number of air traffic controllers, take away 5 - 10% to deal with illness and unforeseen issues, cap the number of flights to that number.

silvestrov2• 1 year ago

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 airport was already at max number of flights that it could handle safely and yet they still increased the number of flights in pure selfishness.

searealist• 1 year ago

You can take the biographical assessment that rejected scores of applicants because reasons like they did well in Science in High School: https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/

barbarr• 1 year ago

I failed the assessment, RIP

numba888• 1 year ago

Sounds like we need more typists and horses. Will hordes of traffic controllers help, or there is a better way?

fhe• 1 year ago

this seems a domain that's distinctively suited for AI

xyst2• 1 year ago

With the dismantling of the federal government [1, 2, 5], foreign multi billionaire “special government employee” running amok in US Treasury and other agencies [3], and current administration giving no-confidence signals of FAA/ATCs [4]

Trust in federal gov is vanishing before our eyes folks. And the billionaire class is getting what it wants — no regulations, “network states” (delusional libertarian concept by Balaji and backed by billionaire shitheads like Thiel), limited power to the people and labor force.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/education-department...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/coast-guard-homeland-security-pri...

[3] https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-demands-...

[4] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-dei-diversity-policies-pl...

[5] https://apnews.com/article/trump-buyout-offer-federal-worker...

kgilpin• 1 year ago

Today, hacker news solves air traffic control with either:

a) More money

b) Video game technology

To truly get this problem, you really need to be in it. Either as a pilot or as a controller.

Watching threads like this reminds me that I have expertise within a couple of specialized domains and that’s it. Beyond those, I’m a tourist.

vdqtp36• 1 year ago

It's refreshing to see someone say it.

As a (non-commercial) pilot it's honestly infuriating watching people who have never tried to fly a plane, never tried to locate and identify another aircraft from the air, and never controlled (or even sat with a controller or toured a tower, tracon, or center) make these claims and statements about how easy these problems they don't understand are to fix as if they're experts on the topic.

kylehotchkiss4• 1 year ago

Welcome to hacker news! The confidence is strong amongst the readership here and often confidently wrong at that!

jillesvangurp• 1 year ago

If you were to design a modern way to solve this problem, you wouldn't end up with a pile of nineteen sixties era equipment and some very stressed ATC people and pilots trying to communicate over a noisy VHF radio channel.

The challenge:

- electrical planes are coming and are going to cause an influx of pilots who can now afford to own and fly their planes. Teslas with wings basically. Cheap to buy, cheap to fly, lower noise, no emissions, what's not to like? It will take some time but early versions of these things are being certified right now. The 100$ hamburger run becomes a 5$ coffee run. It's going to have obvious effects: more people will want to get in on the fun. Way more people.

- a lot of those things will be used to fly medium distances for work in bad weather; which creates an obvious need for some level of ATC interaction.

- Likewise, cheaper/sustainable commercial short hops are going to increase traffic movements.

- Autonomous drones and planes are going to be part of the mix of traffic ATC has to factor in. Autonomous operation is key to operating safely. Especially in low visibility situations. Shuttle flights between city centers and terminals, short local hops, package deliveries, aerial surveillance, etc. On top of regular planes with way smarter auto pilots than today. The volume of this traffic will be orders of magnitudes of what ATC deals with today.

There's some time to prepare for this. Certification processes move slowly. But a lot of this stuff is being experimented with right now at small scale or stuck in the certification pipeline already. We're long past the "will it work" moment for most of this stuff. Technically, this would be happening right now if the FAA would allow it. They'll be fighting a losing battle to slow this down and delay the inevitable here. But the end result is that ATC needs to be ready for orders of magnitude more movement in their controlled air spaces. And right now they clearly aren't.

In short, all this requires new, modern tools. It's obvious. Training more ATC people to do things the way we have been doing them for the last 50 years is not a good plan for the next 50. It's a stop gap solution at best. With a very short shelf life.

sureIy• 1 year ago

US doesn't innovate anymore. Looking forward to seeing what Comac and China bring to the table before 2030.

Shinolove5• 1 year ago

I am in the sector, I develop ATC software. It is not rocket science (which was also solved with money actually) you can actually solve ATC with more money.

zer0zzz• 1 year ago

Just waiting for this atc thing to become overly politicized like every other aspect of life in America. I swear over politicization and polarization is going to strangle this country and destroy it if it hasn’t already.

V994• 1 year ago

The first problem is that everybody who wants to do the job needs to go through the FAA academy in Oklahoma, which is seriously limited by physical & instructor capacity. So only a couple thousand people a year can work their way through there, no matter how many are willing to do the job.

So first we need more training capacity, and they already have trouble hiring and retaining instructors. This is a more direct place you can throw more money at now.

A start would be moving some of the primary training to the control centers. There's more than one of them, spread around the country, and they already have their own significant training departments.

A significant fraction of people who get into the academy end up not making the cut. Then another good fraction "wash out" during extensive training for the specific airport/center they end up in.

It's a very difficult job and nothing they've tried before is very good at predicting who's going to be successful at it quickly/cheaply.

xeonmc• 1 year ago

Would StarCraft ladder rank be a good predictor of suitability?

daveguy2• 1 year ago

So, you're saying the FAA is struggling because we don't fund them enough to hire instructors? Seems like a Republican problem.

vdqtp36• 1 year ago

Realistically, because standing up a new academy isn't fast, and everyone wants fast solutions and won't invest long term. That isn't a party line thing, both parties have that issue.

V994• 1 year ago

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.

wellthisisgreat• 1 year ago

Air traffic controller seems like one of the least rewarding job there are out there

bilinguliar• 1 year ago

Wait, I thought we had AI.

egberts12• 1 year ago

Too bad that we have some 2,000+ already-qualified FAA ATC of certain persuasion that are "just sitting" around waiting for their stress-free class-action money in the Brigida vs FAA 2015 reverse discrimination lawsuit.

Think they'll now work as ATC after they win?

Doesn't help to tie up 900+ more potential qualified ATC (again of certain persuadion) when FAA tried reverse discrimination AGAIN in 2021 in Brigida vs Buttigieg lawsuit.

Will they ever learn?

Source

https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

https://casetext.com/case/brigida-v-buttigieg-1

metalman• 1 year ago

As part of my student pilot training, our class was taken to the air traffic tower, to meat and see the air traffic controllers at work and build some trust as in many emergency situations fir a pilot, its ATC who can save your sorry lost ass. There were a bunch of them working,handling local and international flights,multi screen work stations. One guy stood out, he was directing several flights during the landing phase, while talking to us, then it became clear that he was also directing planes on the ground, a collegue of his came up to confer, he started telling us a joke, but of couse had to pause here and there while he attended to these other trifles but his timing was so impecable, that the joke was still funny. So thats who you want, and you cant train THAT, whatever it is, but perhapps can identify and foster those that have...IT. The controll tower itself is strait out of a sci fi movie, with a glass walkway ,the only way in, to find a completely blank stainless wall, that then opens to reveal a completly blank elevator

farceSpherule2• 1 year ago

THE PAY SUCKS...

Head over to https://www.reddit.com/r/ATC/ and have a look.

Entry level ATC salaries are about $50,000 (~$23 an hour).

And you do not get to "choose" where you land on your first assignment.

Try living on $23 an hour in a HCOL area.

farceSpherule2• 1 year ago

You can thank Reagan for mess we are in with ATC's...

Reagan was looking for a reason to break up the government unions and the union overplayed their hand. So, Reagan fired all of the striking ATCs -- 11,359 -- and banned them from federal service for life (later lifted by Clinton).

asdefghyk2• 1 year ago

RE ".... America desperately needs more air traffic controllers ....." or THE TRAFFIC at some airports NEEDS TO BE LIMITED to SAFER levels ....

I'm looking at the recent airport crash of the Helicopter and plane as an example of where traffic should be limited. Must be other over busy airports too...

America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

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