FAA offering more incentives as air traffic controller shortage worsens

https://ktla.com/news/travel/faa-offering-more-incentives-as-air-traffic-controller-shortage-worsens/

by toomuchtodo • 1 year ago

81 110 1 year ago

monero-xmr2• 1 year ago

It would be great if actually needed, demanding government jobs could pay a market rate. And even better, we could somehow pay better people more. And even even better - fire poor performers. The more-less lockstep pay scales across the US government are bizarre, as well as government unions, negotiating with politicians. As FDR said:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees.
… Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government.”

- FDR, 1937 https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-the-resolut...

duxup3• 1 year ago

The limits on government salaries seems entirely counterproductive.

I am all for evaluating things in an effort to establish more government efficiency.

But that means you need smart people who understand that domain evaluating, and you need to be able to bring smart people on board to do the work…. not artificially low wages/ arbitrary cuts…

jedberg2• 1 year ago

The limits are there to limit corruption.

If managers could set arbitrary salaries, the employees could just agree to cut their manager in on 10% of their raise.

This probably happens outside of government, but it's just the private org who loses money, so it's up to them to stop it. But in the case of the government, it's the taxpayers who lose.

monero-xmr2• 1 year ago

Then the question is, “how do we prevent politicians from hiring their family and friends on excessive salaries”?

Then it’s, “how do we quantify success without the profit motive for something society needs, but doesn’t earn a profit”?

Then I would conclude, the solution is a small government with a hyper-competitive process for providing public services, with actual democratic feedback on the success of such provided services with teeth to remove bad private sector contractors.

jltsiren• 1 year ago

Easier firing would increase the market rates for every role. At least unless combined with generous unemployment benefits, as in Denmark. It could make the government more efficient in the long term, at the expense of higher spending (and therefore higher taxes) in the short term. Which many voters would not like.

The issue with unions negotiating with politicians is mostly a consequence of an excessive number of political appointees. Many things would be cleaner with more career civil servants in top positions. Top officials would have fixed-term appointments, and they could not join unions or be fired without a criminal conviction. They would run their departments, while political appointees would only set the goals and directions with little direct control. And then the rest would be more like ordinary employees who just happen to be working for the government.

Government employees are a mostly irrelevant category anyway. Depending on the time and place, the exact same job can be performed by an actual government employee, outsourced to a private contractor, or done by an employee of a company fully owned by the government. What the employee can or cannot do should depend more on the actual role than on the administrative structures above them.

fracus• 1 year ago

I would currently be very afraid flying to the USA for a multitude of reasons. It doesn't help that I'm afraid of flying.

RandomBacon5• 1 year ago

As for not falling out of the sky or hitting other aircraft, I think the U.S. still has the safest airspace. If you're referring to immigration/law/customs/etc, I can't help you there.

Even flying (commercially?) in other countries is still probably safer than driving.

chneu2• 1 year ago

Air travel is insanely safe, even in the shittiest countries.

you only hear about the dozen or so crashes every year. You don't hear about the 30-40 million other flights that don't have issues in a year.

ourmandave• 1 year ago

While the incentives are a step forward, officials caution that hiring alone won’t resolve the deeper problems.

The nation’s air traffic control infrastructure is aging, with 51 out of 138 systems currently labeled as unsustainable — some using components more than 50 years old.

An announcement regarding technology upgrades and infrastructure improvements is expected next week.

Haven't they been trying to modernize air traffic control since forever?

I wonder what announcements they're going to make.

_moof• 1 year ago

I feel like I've been hearing about NextGen for decades.

Just looked it up and I'm not far off. NextGen started in 2007 and is still ongoing.

derbOac2• 1 year ago

Based on what I read earlier, I wouldn't be surprised if it was based on AI that Musk recently purchased. I sincerely hope I'm wrong though. I also hope whatever it is, it doesn't make the ATC system dependent on some proprietary monopoly.

This discussion of ATC makes me nervous, as mandated sudden adoption of new, often proprietary tech nationwide has created a lot of nightmares in other fields like healthcare. Instead of learning lessons from that, we seem to be repeating it over again but even more so.

kj4211cash2• 1 year ago

I haven't been able to find it since but at one point I came across a quote saying that NextGen was the "greatest failure in the history of organized labor." Or something to that effect. A bit of an overstatement but I have to admit I found the parts I could see circa 2010 ridiculous.

OrvalWintermute2• 1 year ago

The US can easily fill in gaps by taking the Special Operators Combat Controllers (CCTs) who are actually all certified Air Traffic Controllers.

Furthermore, the Air Force could additionally take the Terminal Air Control Party (TACPs) - think of them as a Radio/Strike guy that coordinates Air Strikes, that accompany tactical platoons and cross train them into Air Traffic Control, further augmenting their ability to perform this role.

somerandomdude2• 1 year ago

It would be great to help keep CCT skills fresh and current - rotate them around with 'deployments' to civilian facilities. It'd be a win all the way around.

throwaway484768• 1 year ago

It takes 1-3 years of facility based training in order to qualify as an ATC for a specific tower. A military enlistment is only 4 years. CCTs would end up doing their entire enlistment at one facility leaving no time to train as a CCT. You'd have to hire another person who's job is 100% CCT, at which point, why not just hire an ATC?

tdpvb• 1 year ago

It sounds like a nice idea, but the only common factor between ATC and CCT is the certification and some fundamental core training -- everything else is super nuanced specific to each scenario. Some CCT who's specialized in deconflicting a stack overhead in wartime can't just waltz into ORD tower and say "all right boys and girls, go ahead and take a break, I've got this." Each requires domain-specific experience.

And to add on what others have said: yes CCTs represent a pool of proven ATC candidates, but depleting that pool just to knee-jerk a short term-ish solution creates an equal problem for the military -- and it's a hell of a lot harder to recruit adequate candidates for CCT. For example, they have to do like, lots of pushups...

philwelch6• 1 year ago

This doesn’t solve anything because the military still needs those people.

dragonwriter• 1 year ago

If I was an enemy of the United States, I would very much like the US to increase the degree to which applying its warfighting capacity required stripping out hard to replace experts on which its civilian air transport ability relies for safe operation, and vice versa.

It would fit in well with the present administrations policy orientation, both toward militarization and toward making th country weaker and more fragile in general.

ericjmorey• 1 year ago

The US Government is not interested in hiring outside of law enforcement so they won't be able to find people to fill positions outside of law enforcement.

dmix• 1 year ago

Maybe federal government which hasn’t grown much (they contract everything). State and especially local government employment has been growing consistently for years, or growing very fast if you count education

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

ATC should probably be private like it is in Canada, where it functions very well, and also better lines up with how the federal gov operates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nav_Canada

sokoloff• 1 year ago

A lot of services are provided by contractors, including a few hundred control towers, the weather briefing system, the vast majority of flight and medical examiners, etc.

jbm• 1 year ago

Canadian ATC has serious issues, and the whole air travel system is much, much more expensive than the US.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-ai...

throwaway484768• 1 year ago

One of the biggest problems with ATC hiring is that location assignments happen after trainees pass the academy. A lot of the academy graduates quit when they get an assignment they don't like. It's not like the military where they can force people. The trainee pay also sucks so the prospect of getting sent somewhere undesirable and then barely being able to afford it just isn't attractive. If they would hire based on location like they used to graduates wouldn't quit as often.

The other big problem is Obama changed the hiring test from testing intelligence to testing personality in a bid to increase diversity. There was a lawsuit over this. The effect was academy failure rates soared and because class sizes are fixed there was a shortfall in the number of graduates making it to towers to train.

FridayoLeary• 1 year ago

Another problem you haven't mentioned is the level of union control in the industry. Which is great as far as protecting jobs and salaries for existing controllers but it makes getting a desirable position difficult for a new graduate. From your comment it sounds like they just get dumped with the least desirable location until they've climbed high enough up the totem pole to get a good job.

throwaway484768• 1 year ago

Most ATCs spend their whole career at one or two towers. 'Desireable' in the case of graduates is usually wherever they or their family was living when they got hired. The union doesn't have any say in tower assignment.

sandworm101• 1 year ago

> a desirable position difficult for a new graduate.

These generally are not positions that people compete for across the nation. Once in a particular airspace, controllers will generally stay in that airspace. An outsider unfamiliar with an airspace would be at significant disadvantage to any local.

RandomBacon5• 1 year ago

U.S. ATC here. I don't think you know what you're talking about: the union is doing nothing for our salaries. The union has no say on where new graduates get placed.

Our union is a joke. They send emails saying they're "monitoring the situation" instead of talking with the media stating our case for better working conditions.

Our salaries have not kept up with the industry. Do not use this to try to push an anti-union agenda.

fallingknife2• 1 year ago

I really want to like unions. They make all the sense in the world in principle. But in practice they always seem to end up centered around this "pay your dues" climb the ladder bullshit.

anonymars10• 1 year ago

Ronald Reagan is laughing at the notion of a powerful ATC union (PATCO 1981 Strike)

philwelch6• 1 year ago

The other big problem is Obama changed the hiring test from testing intelligence to testing personality in a bid to increase diversity. There was a lawsuit over this.

It was even worse than that. What they actually did was write up a phony “personality test” and distribute the answer key to applicants who were members of preferred racial organizations.

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

Aloisius• 1 year ago

In the actual OIG report, it seemed the person who gave "answers" to the test didn't actually have the behavioral test or the answer key.

He stated he stressed things like answering questions like an air traffic control "and we’re alpha personalities, we’re dominating, we don’t take no for an answer." He also mentions that he got calls, from multiple people, saying they failed the behavioral test.

So it seems that while he did coach answers, they weren't the literal test answers, but rather advice one could have gotten from public sources with enough research or presumably, talking to some FAA air traffic controllers.

In the end, the report stated the findings in the investigation did not warrant a referral to a federal prosecutor.

decimalenough2• 1 year ago

This is indeed a thing that happened, but blaming "Obama" personally for it is absurd, it was entirely the FAA's fuckup.

anonymars10• 1 year ago

Is Donald Trump personally carrying out all the acts he's condemned for?

Is it really unreasonable to say that pushing for diversity was a notable goal of the Obama administration?

exabrial• 1 year ago

It actually is though, I would go ready about it.

Havoc• 1 year ago

Why the hell would you test for personality or intelligence. Surely the key skill here is calm under pressure and stress?

derbOac2• 1 year ago

Surely the key skill here is calm under pressure and stress?

... which is personality.

Not trying to defend or not defend what actually happened, but there's growing use of personality measures in various vocations for this very reason.

throwaway484768• 1 year ago

It was just an artificial way to select the 'right' color of candidate. The link has the full details.

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

timewizard• 1 year ago

Most of the job is exceptionally routine to the point of being boring. In busier airspaces the most common stress is just associated with maintaining timing. Ironically the ground controllers face more of this problem than anyone. The further you get from the airport and it's class B airspace the easier it all gets.

Until an emergency or a conflict suddenly occurs. There's often very little you can do here other than quickly and clearly provide the necessary information and instructions to aid pilots in averting the disaster. The pilot is in full control during emergencies and you're simply there to give them anything they need. In a severe emergency and in an ATC center they're going to dedicate you to the emergency and bring another controller on to manage other planes in that airspace.

As the technology became available to give planes the ability to see and avoid each other with Traffic Advisories and automated Conflict Resolutions we made it mandatory equipment for passenger transports. We made it mandatory for pilots to obey this system with _higher priority_ than any prior or new instructions from ATC.

So you want people who think ahead, constantly prepare for conflicts, and have a reliable level of vigilance. So when the emergency happens they're situationally well prepared and capable of managing all available resources that their stress levels barely increase. A bad weather day with lots of cancelled flights and closed airports should be the highest stress factor they face in their careers.

sega_sai• 1 year ago

I am sure the attempts of hiring for government jobs will go well, after all the indiscriminate firings experienced by many government agencies thanks to the DOGE and company.

tbihl2• 1 year ago

How bad were the firings in ATC?

RandomBacon5• 1 year ago

Non-existent as far as I've heard (source: am ATC)

mint2• 1 year ago

“Yes, it’s true 95% of the forests in CA are prone to wildfire and many have recently burnt, but trust me my house in the forest is safe, it isn’t in a forest that has burned yet!!! Would you like to buy my house?”

So nearly every org in our government has been decimated twice over, including many critical ones, under staffed ones, and efficient ones. Is it far fetched that people would now be incredulous about the well being of the few departments not yet decimated twice over?

frustratedlazy• 1 year ago

More context - https://viewfromthewing.com/diversity-in-the-skies-faas-cont...

Flatcircle• 1 year ago

"The nation’s air traffic control infrastructure is aging, with 51 out of 138 systems currently labeled as unsustainable — some using components more than 50 years old."

this is okay for the post office or DMV, but probably not as okay for air traffic control infrastructure.

joezydeco• 1 year ago

Didn't DOGE just lay off a number of probational employees (new, promoted or transferred) in the infrastructure division?

https://apnews.com/article/faa-firings-trump-doge-safety-air...

Jtsummers3• 1 year ago

FAA, but not ATCs. I think a lot of the FAA folks were also offered their jobs back, like with other agencies. As a consequence of court decisions and "oh shit, those are actually important jobs".

lanfeust6• 1 year ago

Not a surprise after the reputation they've built - https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

iamleppert• 1 year ago

What incentives could possibly exist to go to work for government at this point? It used to offer job security but that’s no longer the case. All I see is low pay, poor benefits, no job security, lack of employer diversity and significant regulatory risk that is tied to whatever administration happens to be in office.

deadbabe• 1 year ago

That’s the point, just hire private industries to do everything instead.

chneu2• 1 year ago

they'll never prioritize money over safety. nope, never.

watwut• 1 year ago

Of economy becomes bad enough, those jobs will be desirable again.

kj4211cash2• 1 year ago

Can any controller or person who otherwise works in this area comment on the tracingwoodgrains blog post? I always see it linked on HN, but never mentioned anywhere else. Seems like there would be a huge scandal with lot of commentary and links if it were true.

RandomBacon5• 1 year ago

U.S. ATC here: opinions are my own and do not necessarily reflect that of the FAA. But to be safe: no comment. Otherwise, if I knew something was untrue, I could say that.

NaOH• 1 year ago

I'm not qualified to evaluate that post, but there was some critique of it and the suit's merits in a thread a few months ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42874983

ivraatiems• 1 year ago

I'm not sure how "we want ultra-high non-woke pure-meritocracy hiring standards and we'll aggressively filter out anyone who even smells like they won't pass those standards" is compatible with "we need butts in seats doing this work immediately." I also am not at all surprised that people do not want to begin working for a government which has made it clear it despises all of its workers. You really can't have it both ways. (And plenty of perfectly capable/qualified people, myself included, read all this "anti-DEI" stuff exactly the same way that the anti-DEI people read DEI itself, as a means of preselecting who is entitled to compete for jobs.)

The solution is not to "de-wokify" anything - nor is it to "wokify" anything. All of that stuff is a sideshow. The solution would be to offer massive incentives in order to get highly competent people to see ATC as a good career choice. That means big salaries, very flexible training timelines, and in general, willingness to spend a lot of money on the program to make it attractive. ATC is an intense job being done by people who are under a lot of strain. It doesn't sound appealing to most. That would need to change.

What am I missing here?

more_corn• 1 year ago

Didn’t they Doge just fire all their recently promoted and hired air traffic controllers?

FAA offering more incentives as air traffic controller shortage worsens

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