Recently met two ATCs and got some interesting perspective: new ATCs are trained on COVID levels of air traffic. So as things ramp back up (still not at pre-COVID levels across the board) there are a myriad of issues. The fact that flights are being cut instead of throwing new ATCs into the unknown is actually refreshing even if frustrating.
This seems especially pertinent in New York TRACON. During busy times controllers there can be sending or receiving virtually nonstop; it's difficult enough even listening for your callsign and getting a word in edgewise.
You deserve more upvotes than you're getting, because your question is a fair one, and knowledge that may be obvious to some is going to be totally new to others. Some people would do well to remember that new people are constantly being born, and each person must learn everything from the start. I'm going to copy and paste a few answers from this 6 year old Reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xqkxc/e...
> Air traffic controllers think on the fly more than you would assume. They look at their radar scopes and plan each target to work with others by working their speed, altitude, and path. Computers could probably work out these, but then how would they relay that information to pilots?
> Another thing to think about is the vast number of VFR aircraft who are not on a flight plan going A to B. ATC is able to communicate with them, learn their intentions "we saw something neat and would like to orbit here for 5 minutes", and help them see and avoid other aircraft.
> The fact that they are humans who you can talk to is tremendously helpful in emergencies as well. If I'm fighting a sick airplane I might not have the time or focus to find the nearest suitable airport, get weather information and important notices, and plan a descent. A controller watching over me sure can though.
Humans are flexible in a way computers can't be yet.
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> All aviation-related technology is tightly regulated and goes through an immense amount of testing and consideration before use.
> All of the obstacles we have around self-driving cars-- "whose fault is it if it crashes", "how do we know it's safe enough before letting it on the road", "do you still need a licensed driver", etc-- are 10x more problematic in the sky. It isn't necessarily harder to automate, but is harder to declare "officially safe enough".
It's not enough for an automated ATC to be somewhat good or decent. There is little margin for error when the consequences of such an error could be the death of hundreds of people and the loss of a multimillion dollar plane. ATC in real life is much more difficult than it appears to casual observers.
It may be smarter than the average human, but probably not smarter than trained humans specialized in ATC, at this particular time.
ATC in particular depends on exact phrasing, in issuing commands, acknowledgement, and repetition back, so GPT’s ability to fudge something nice sounding is actually pretty bad.
ATC operation is not a search problem or an output generation problem, which is what GPT is primarily solving. It's the knapsack problem with a very complicated knapsack.
I don't know what knapsacks have to do with LLMs. I didn't say anything about search or output generation, nor did I say those are the only things transformer models can solve.
This guys being too nice which leaves the door open to low effort replies: OP wasn’t even downvoted, and you have to watch about 10 min of air traffic videos on YouTube to understand. And I’m high on the GPT supply
It's a matter of decades of tradition. They'd have to change the way this stuff works for this to work properly. If you think about it, 99% of ATC exchanges are entirely routine exchanges of very basic information. Requesting and answering such basic questions as: Who the hell are you, what type of airplane are you flying, what are your intentions, change course to X, altitude to Y, altimeter settings, etc. And that's before we start talking about more complicated approach and departure proceedings.
Essentially all of that can be changed to exchanging information digitally and automatically. In fact most of that information exists digitally. It's not a technical challenge to do that. There are many ways to make this happen. The challenge is entirely institutional because it would represent massive changes to an industry that resists all form of change for decades on end. And that's for good reason: safety. But it also means that a lot of very flaky technology keeps on getting used and that pilots are task saturated with a ridiculous amount of work during safety critical portions of flight. When they get behind on their tasks, dangerous situations happen. When they stop practicing, they lose the ability to stay on top of things. It's that hard. And their pilot license shortly after (currency is not optional).
If you'd design the procedures and communication from scratch using modern tools, you'd end up with a very different system than what we have today. The fun thing indeed is that with modern AI, what might happen instead is that we end up with AI assisted ATCs and pilots delegating the ritualistic exchange of information via VHF radios to AIs. They could just send each other digital messages instead that are then processed automatically and acknowledged manually when needed. But on the off chance of one of the pilots or atcs still being stuck in the nineteen sixties, it's going to be easier to pretend that everyone is and have AIs imitate human actors participating in this.
So, text to speech and speech to text on both ends combined with an AI that has enough contextual information to take simple decisions and control systems escalating to pilots and controllers only when needed to might be more doable than coming up with a new system. I'd say chat gpt 4 would be well up for a "pretend you are an ATC controller" type role playing session.
There does already exist a system for ATC to send info to Pilots via text. Particularly used when in heavy-traffic areas to limit the amount of voice communication.
If I read the page correctly - and I am NOT knowledgeable about the topic - the CPDLC is not used for approach control, which is the issue in NYC and DC. The example uses given are oceanic routes and above FL195 or FL285. It mentions "continuous descent approaches" as a future possibility.
Isn't approach one of those times where 1) you don't want the pilot distracted by more visual information (instead of audio), and 2) pilots listen to exchanges with other pilots to keep situational awareness?
I'm not sure how feasable AI or automation is. How would you respond to a failure in the automated system once there are more planes in the air than ATC controllers in that area? That could be a single point of failure. ATC Can optimise for severe degradation of service but how would automation be able to respond to a sometimes unavoidable impossible situation?
You can define rules how planes should and shouldn't fly, verifying that this is always possible would be a nightmare.
Simple, just build in some escalation mechanism. Pilots should be able to get to talk to a human, and be listening in on the exchanges in case their attention is required. Of course, insisting on heavy handed, laborious, and error prone human exchanges all the time has its own risks.
ATC getting overloaded with more traffic is a given either way. Loads of electrical drones will start showing up in the next decades. Some piloted, some autonomous. ATC will have to adjust to that. And keeping everything the same with more human controllers is not going to scale.
> On August 5 [1981], following the PATCO workers' refusal to return to work, the Reagan administration fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, and banned them from federal service for life. In the wake of the strike and mass firings, the FAA was faced with the difficult task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired. Under normal conditions, it took three years to train new controllers. Until replacements could be trained, the vacant positions were temporarily filled with a mix of non-participating controllers, supervisors, staff personnel, some non-rated personnel, military controllers, and controllers transferred temporarily from other facilities. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...)
At least the Wikipedia article doesn't mention anything about cutting flights...
> By prioritizing and cutting flights severely (about 7,000), and even adopting methods of air traffic management that PATCO had previously lobbied for, the government was initially able to have 50% of flights available
So I read the article, but my immediate question was, "is 11 000 a lot?"
There seems to be no reference to how many flights these 2 areas serve in a "normal day" so it's hard to know if 11000 is "all the flights" or "a drop in the bucket".
Plus the period in question seems to be "the summer", which seems to be "May to September". So 5 months?
NYC = JFK + LGA + EWR
DCA = Washington Reagan
JFK averages about 42000 flights per month for that period [1]
EWR around 24000 flights per month. [2]
LGA - Google says around 5000 flights per month
DCA - around 25000 flights per month. [3]
so that's 96k per month, or 480k for "the summer".
So 11000 flights is around 2.3% reduction.
I'm no aviation expert, but this seems like "normal variation" to me.
Linking this to ATC Staff Shortages seems like a bit of a stretch. (I mean sure.... if we need 3% more ATC staff....)
As a percentage of "all US flights" of course it's microscopic.
So 11 000 - is it a lot? Well I guess that depends on whether you're a headline writer or not.
> According to the FAA, the air traffic control center in New York is staffed at 54% compared to the national average of 81%. The agency is asking all major airlines ... to cut service to all New York City area airports by as much as 10% for the summer months. "This is another unprecedented situation," Pauline Frommer, editorial director for Frommer's guide book, said. "We've never seen the FAA asking the airlines to cut flights because they simply don't have enough air traffic controllers"
>all major airlines Delta, Jet Blue, United, and American Airlines to cut service to all New York City area airports by as much as 10%
This pretty much excludes most international flights, and also regional flights.
From my walk through the stats quite a bit of traffic is regional, and I'd expect some hefty proportion of flights into JFK at the very least is international.
Plus of course the "minor" airlines servicing the same location.
So 10% from this select group of airlines, is not out of line with an overall reduction of 2.5%.
(and of course "asking" is not necessarily "getting" :)
I think the better question is 11,000 Flights is how much revenue lost?
Airlines are a cut throat business when it comes to operating margins. So while to you it might not sound statistically significant to you but there are likely other reasons why it is a big deal.
Also, just thinking it through, how does it look for the heart of the countries financial center to be reducing flights. There certainly is a ripple effect to all businesses with a reduction of flights.
It's always hard to estimate revenue lost. yes, some proportion of visitors might be impacted (as in "I can't come, I can't get a flight") but more likely people will just fly on another available plane, so (for the airline) seat usage goes up.
In other words if most planes are at say 85% capacity, then that 10% is easily absorbed. If anything it likely makes the airline more profitable. and of course if it does get up to 100% utilization, then fares go up anyway.
If anything the impact on the airline is positive, the impact on Joe Traveller might be negative (reduced schedule options ; possibly more expensive).
> All ATC applicants must be 30 or younger on the closing date of the application period to qualify for the position, according to the FAA. This is because the agency has determined through extensive research that the older someone is, the harder is it for them to complete the rigorous training.
Having sat with a controller for an hour while they managed Midwest airspace (ARTCC ZAU) in my younger years, I am somewhat inclined to believe it.
EDIT: Pilots had mandated retirement at 60, which was bumped to 65 in 2007 due to pilot shortages, and there are discussions of pushing it to 67.
Not ATC but recently obtained my pilots license at the ripe old age of 41 and trained at the busiest class delta in the US. 30 year old age limit seems pretty restrictive .
Are you a pilot or ATC? They’re different, but you build a visual representation of traffic in your brain in both arenas. As a pilot you cannot rely on ATC- you have to fly the plane first and keep yourself safe.
Not the GP but I've been a pilot for about 6 years and have friends who are controllers, and being a controller is entirely different, and pretty difficult.
You can fly VFR without services and you really only have to worry about yourself. There's no equivalent as an ATC. You're often working multiple frequencies on your own. Even if you don't typically do it on your own, if your coworkers gets sick now you are. I've had friends manage two tower frequencies as well as ground due to staffing issues.
Not to mention the fact that when you become a controller it's much like the military where you get assigned a place and you go there. You get preferences of course, but there's only so many suburban airport controllers needed - somebody needs to be in JFK tower and somebody needs to be in the middle of nowhere Montana and they're not flying in for their shift the way pilots can.
I'm inclined to trust the FAA's data that it's just not feasible to dump training resources into someone who statistically is either not going to make it or is going to quit if they don't get their preferred assignment and find out they need to move their family to Utah.
I assure you the mental picture you need to keep in your head as a controller is far more taxing than single pilot operation when you are primarily concerned with your own separation. A controller can be managing a 1 to 2 dozen aircraft, dealing with pop up IFR, flight following, traffic advisories, handoffs, etc. There's a reason you get a mandatory break after 2 hours.
It's not about the mental task. It's about selecting for a demgoraphic group that's more compliant and less likely to take risks. They want to lessen their chances of having egg on their face because they hired some young cowboy who, when faced with some impossible set of bureaucratic constraints decided he'd shirk whichever one of the conflicting restraints they didn't like rather than just take the KPI hit.
The under 30 crowd has a lot more of those types than the over 30 crowd.
After Reagan fired all the controllers in the 80s Clinton allowed for them to come back in the 90s. The washout rate of folks coming back was super high from what I recall (part of that is also probably due to increased traffic load).
On August 5, following the PATCO workers' refusal to return to work, the Reagan administration fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, and banned them from federal service for life. In the wake of the strike and mass firings, the FAA was faced with the difficult task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired. Under normal conditions, it took three years to train new controllers. Until replacements could be trained, the vacant positions were temporarily filled with a mix of non-participating controllers, supervisors, staff personnel, some non-rated personnel, military controllers, and controllers transferred temporarily from other facilities. PATCO was decertified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority on October 22, 1981. The decision was appealed but to no avail, and attempts to use the courts to reverse the firings proved fruitless.
that's a very roundabout of sayin that is because older people are much harder to trick into working with disregard to their own health.
then again, younger people by virtue of their youth can overwork a lot more than older people (who will also notice they're being overworked)
> Section 633 of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 permits federal employees to sue over any adverse personnel action that is influenced by age, even if age was not the determinating factor.
> The private sector basically can’t give IQ tests
False.
> but can give work-related skill tests that are extremely similar IQ tests.
Legally, the conditions in which the private sector can give work-related skills tests that are extremely similar to IQ tests are when they fulfill the exact same requirements with regard to those tests that they would need to fill with regard to IQ tests to be able to legally give them; if they are functionally very similar, the circumstances in which they will satisfy those conditions will also be very similar.
The fact that the case establishing the rule on disparate impact discrimination involved (among other hiring practices) the use of IQ testing doesn’t mean that the disparate impact rule applies differently to IQ testing than to other “extremely similar” tests.
I can buy this defense if they have a reasonable justification for this determination published somewhere publically (via court documents or otherwise). Do they? This isn’t something that we just take their word for it.
You're acting like this is some new development (presumably because you just now learned about it), but it's been this way since forever. If it were legally dodgy, then why hasn't it been challenged in court and torn apart? Because you're the first to be offended by it, or because it isn't dodgy and the FAA are on firm ground? The latter. Age limits for pilots and ATC are textbook examples of BFOQs.
> This isn’t something that we just take their word for it.
If you want to hit the books, knock yourself out. I am perfectly content to take the FAA's word for it, and think you'd be wasting your time.
Will customers at your company die if you make a mistake? I do not support age discrimination (roughly around 40), but also want to survive my flights, medical procedures, and anything else where age impacting ability intersects with life safety. A tricky balance for sure.
Is there documented scientific evidence demonstrating that pilots, surgeons, etc over 40 crash more with statistical significance? 50? 70? I’m sure there is a date when that does happen, but if you are going to be slapping age related restrictions on everyone, you had better come in with guns blazing on your numbers demonstrating that statistically this is bad for society
There's lots of room to nitpick the evidence, but the studies are published:
> The relationship between age and job performance for Air Traffic Control Specialists (ATCSs) is an issue that has been revisited many times over the past few decades (Trites, 1961; Trites & Cobb, 1962; Cobb, 1968; VanDeventer & Baxter, 1984). Researchers have consistently found a negative relationship between controller age and performance across studies that have used different ATCS options (enroute, terminal), career stages (age at entry into training,current age on the job), and criterion measures (on-the-job ratings, academy performance) (Trites, 1961;Trites & Cobb, 1962; Cobb, 1968; VanDeventer & Baxter, 1984).
Thank you! This is the kind of data and study I was looking for. In this rather large thread you are the only one as of the time of this posting actually answering the original question I asked, “why does the rule exist?”
I don’t really see a problem with discrimination like this in this context as long as there is a well published scientific background of studies demonstrating why it makes sense, and there aren’t confounding variables (like a history of discrimination) that would skew the results. In this case it looks legitimate and well studied.
My only beef/complaint otherwise is that these papers should be front and center on the application page explaining why only 30 and unders are accepted.
Cool. Makes sense. Where is the evidence that was used to make this determination and the document released by FAA using that evidence to make said determination?
Its easy to find. This tone suggests that the person's argument is somehow invalid because they reference easy to find documents without linking them. Perhaps this isn't the intent, but it reads to me as combative, which seems unnecessary.
Sure. It was kept under conditions where if it was exposed to atmosphere it would immediately auto ignite and explode, obliterating about 10% of the chemical plant.
As a safety precaution.
Explosion was the desirable alternative because the products of combustion were far less harmful.
I guarantee that if some 50-year-old guy tried out and they found he could play better than Michael Jordan in his prime, they'd take him.
Of course, this is extremely unlikely, and he might have a hard time getting in front of the right people to prove himself.
Pro sports doesn't have age limitations that I'm aware of; it's all entirely performance-related. People who can't perform don't get new contracts, regardless of their age, and of course as people get older (and accumulate more sports injuries), they become less competitive.
> as people get older (and accumulate more sports injuries), they become less competitive.
I don't think they wait for you to get injured. Before signing you on, they surely require you to pass some physical examinations first. Old people are unlikely to pass those psychicals regardless of how good they are at basketball, since their bones and joints are relatively weaker and therefore more susceptible to injury. What's the point of hiring the world's greatest basketball player if he'll break a hip the first time he falls? If a player has an unusually high risk of being severely injured, then it doesn't make sense to sign them in the first place. Doing so would be tragic and exploitative.
Anyway, the oldest NBA player ever was 45, and there have only ever been 7 who played past 42. Michael Jordan retired at 40 years and 58 days, and that was notably old. A player at 50 who makes the cut is basically fantasy.
>since their bones and joints are relatively weaker and therefore more susceptible to injury.
Regular 50-year-olds, sure. But if they find some genetic mutant who looks like he's 25 even though he's 60, and passes all the physical tests as well as a 25-year-old, age isn't going to be a factor.
Meanwhile, over in the aviation field, that same genetic mutant would be unable to become a pilot purely because of his age.
Right on. At least they give a reasoning. It does feel kind of arbitrary but maybe they had a history of older applicants failing abysmally. It would be nice if that is the case that they would actually make said research public information. If you are going to blanket exclude a group on possibly shaky legal grounds (age is a protected class) you had better have some data and explanation to back it up. Even then with the data it feels more appropriate to say something like “<1% of applicants over 30 succeed, we strongly discourage you from applying”, rather than just saying “sorry, you can’t apply at all because you’re over 30”
Sure, but that means if I’m age 30-39 and wanting to be an ATC, im not legally protected, but the second I turn age 40, all of my above arguments apply. So basically the same argument as above, but also pointing out that in the context of ATC, there’s this weird situation where people aged 30-39 don’t have as much recourse to argue against something clearly illegal
Decades back when I had a training slot for Chicago (probably not hard in mid 80’s), they told me “the younger the better”. 18 year olds were eligible as long as they were 19 by finishing at OKC and were more willing to handle the stress, rotating shifts and survive three years of hell to get to journeyman.
Journeymen were making $180K at Center back then. Way more than most First Officers.
While I love aviation and I love our ATC’s, I can’t help but think that it’s an antiquated system desperate for disruption. Growth of air travel is outweighing growth in staffing for the FAA. We need a new system. Maybe automate parts of flight that are the routine parts (cruise handoffs, etc) and have staff for the complex bits (takeoff/approach/landing/taxi).
ATCs are a government entity so innovation and disruption are not realistic options. Change in bureaucracies generally comes from operational failure or systemic breakdown which leads to a full replacement with a better system.
This article is describing operational failure which is encouraging but unfortunately instead of upgrades the chosen solution is limiting functionality until the world routes around the damage. There's still hope that AI can help somehow in the future but it's slim at best and we're likely going to need an alternative less regulated transportation system like point to point transportation via airborne drones.
It will be inevitability disrupted due to the age demographic bomb. Too few people are being born, and retirees are beginning to outnumber working adults. we will either be constantly short of staff in multiple industries or we will start augmenting staff shortages with AI and eventually full replacement
The third world is not an infinite factory of human flesh to patch societal issues that the developed world can't be bothered to address. Birthrates in the developing world are mostly at or below replacement already.
That doesn’t mean themitigating isn’t right. He is. The issue is that immigration isn’t a permanent solution since only central Africa isn’t suffering from the male fertility problem.
Still, immigration is a needed tool to buy us time to find a solution. Right now, AI is the top contender regardless of how people feel about it
Only the case in parts of Subsaharan Africa at this point. India for instance is at around 2.0 and many Latin American countries at a similar level as the US.
Why not cut back on general aviation flights first? My naive solution (granted I know little about ATC) would be to give commercial flights priority over GA flights if ATC is overloaded. No 8-seat business jet is more economically important than a 200-seat airliner. Say nothing of recreational piston-engine flights. At the very least slap a $5000 surcharge on every GA takeoff or something.
Typically your single piston GA flight will be operating in very different airspace than a 200 seat airline. Just as you can't take a single piston pilot and put in as the pilot in command of a 200 person airliner, ATC personal are not easily hot swappable between airports or airspace.
Couldn’t overpopulation and the problems caused by an inverted population pyramid both be true? Arguably they both are for the moment. But the pain of an inverted pyramid was always likely if you want to bring a population down ethically.
China inverted it unethically with forced sterilizations and forced miscarriages that were mandated during the one child policy. Overpopulation may be a myth depending on whether you believe humans will ever leave earth or are destined to disappear when the sun goes out.
Exactly. The whole economy is paycheck to paycheck, from the government to multi billion dollar corporations to hourly gig employees. We need to build a more resilient economy than the one that maximizes profits for Wall Street.
Our reaction was inevitable due to the flaws of human nature. It’s part of the pandemic. Kind of like how stampedes are inevitable after a certain human body density with the proper noise trigger.
You could say that - in my circles there's quite a few oldtimer lecturers and professors who decided to retire instead of exposing themselves to the pestilence and risk death, the older you are the more likely that you won't survive.
If mitigation methods hadn't totally gone out of the window they'd have stayed on.
Not to be dismissive or mean but what percentage of the workforce are "old timer" professors and lecturers? If I've learned anything about academia is that the most common personality trait of this demographic is their own sense of self-importance. Often as a consequence of their own local job/life experience where young people look up to you before entering real life, combined with the typical boring institutional hierarchies.
Making a big deal about their retirement/exit, or at least connecting it to something wider and currently culturally relevant, is on-character in that context.
Why would anyone bother when you're stripped of your career for life if you try and organize collective action as an ATC? It's a sacrifice of a good deal of freedom and submitting yourself to malevolent companies and a government that doesn't care about you.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. It is widely known that Reagan broke PATCO strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...
(Whether or not public sector unions should exist is a different question, of course. FDR, for example, was of the opinion that "no", because you can't effectively negotiate with a police/teachers/etc union.)
Because it’s totally irrelevant to today. The fact is anyone can be fired from any job they refuse to do. That’s something that happened 40 years ago and it’s incredibly odd that people keep bringing it up as if it’s got any relevance to what’s going on today.
I still fail to see what a strike from 40 years ago has to do with a worker shortage today. Especially because many different industries are reporting shortages. The strike was 40 years ago, are your really claiming that people suddenly remembered it and are now refusing to work? That’s an incredibly disingenuous take.
Just a few years ago during the government shutdown controllers were legit concerned about being paid (and from what I recall - they weren't. Airlines were literally sending pizzas to control towers and facilities).
I believe during the shutdown there was a period they weren't receiving compensation for hours worked. Keep in mind that due to understaffing - folks were already working additional hours/days on top of that. I believe they eventually got paid out months after it, but a bit of a raw deal and could make you think twice about working for the govt.
I believe you’re just making this up. People are paid generally on a biweekly or weekly basis, the shutdown lasted a few days, even if the fed missed a payday, there is no chance it wasn’t paid the following payday. Not trusting the federal government to pay means not trusting in the US dollar at all… kinda unlikely.
It’s not strange at all if you understand the differences between a private sector union and a public sector one. What’s really strange is how anyone that’s not a member of a public sector union could think it’s a net benefit for society as whole.
You could argue many things are a "net benefit to society" but which are untenable for moral, political, or practical reasons. In this case, however, I think you have to exclude government employees to from society to consider this a "net benefit" instead of a zero-sum benefit. The benefit to society is offset pretty much exactly by the income government employees are screwed out of by being denied basic rights to negotiate for themselves (amazing that sentence can be written about a free country). It might even be net-negative if it turns out the government can't hire good people due to artificial wage suppression created by short-term thinking.
When you hear stories from controllers both in the US and other nations about the constant pressure to cut corners and operate with fewer people I think you do need an organization to advocate for them.
Look at that midair in Europe (euro control) where one overnight controller was managing a giant chunk of airspace and was task saturated. Then afterwards all this scandal on how the contracting facility was cooking the books around staffing levels to look like things were on the up and up.
Is this post COVID pains or is it more fundamental, that the latest generation workers are not willing to take up the ATC staffing work and the overall pool of talent is shrinking?
I can easily see it as post COVID pains that training new ATC workers takes months to years.
COVID probably didn’t do the FAA any favors, but it goes back further than that[1]: it’s hard to entice people to a high-stress job when the president can declare your union illegal and erase your entire career permanently.
It was a watershed moment in labor relations, and is well within living memory. Combined with the fact that ATC requires specialized training, and it would be surprising for it to not affect peoples’ career choices.
For you, I 100% agree, but for those who were "born into this problem" (including myself), this is simply "just-the-way-things-are"^tm.
An analogy is, "how did 9/11 affect you?". I was born in 83. I can talk about this for hours. Anyone born after (or even near it) just know that TSA is a fact of life with that time when "airplanes crashed into some towers". -And this is the next generation of ATC controllers.
Unions, labor relations, Regan, etc for those under 30 have no idea.
I’m under 30, so I was also “born into this problem”!
Younger people also know aviation history, even if they don’t have the visceral experiences of the past. Reagan’s mass firing of ATCs is also a landmark in his domestic policy; I would expect most high school graduates to be at least aware of it.
Could you please stop this? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We have to ban accounts that do it repeatedly, and we've already had to warn you about this more than once before - in fact it has been a problem for many years:
ATCs are government employees, not in industry. And they belonged to a union, through which they engaged in collective bargaining (as is their right, under federal law).
The actual circumstances of their firing are worth reading about: striking is legal for unions except for unions of government employees, for whom it is explicitly illegal. What makes the situation unusual is the extreme response by the Reagan administration.
This is not accurate. There exists a number $x for which many, if not all “gen z” persons would be willing to leave their house.
It is always a question of pay to quality of life ratios. Now that there exist jobs that provide higher quality of life due to broadband internet, other jobs with lower quality of life have to increase pay to compete for quality candidates.
I'd posit that the number, $x, is beyond reach realistically.
Sure such a number exists but it's probably not worth the conversation if it's astronomic.
In my case, there is no such number: either the requirements cannot be met remotely in which case the occupation is novel and uninteresting to me or the employer is unwilling to let me work remotely for equal pay in which case the lack of respect is mutual. Outside of exigent circumstances there simply is no such number for me.
My observation has been that remote work is often a perk of already good jobs with good pay. I don't see a lot of minimum wage remote work. A good chunk of remote workers don't strictly _need_ more money, and are unlikely to be enticed with a 10% raise.
I'm kind of in the same boat as you. I work remotely, and am not particularly interested in going back to the office. I probably do have a $x that would get me back in the office, but it would probably take something like a 50-100% total comp raise. I'm doubtful anyone wants to pay that, and even if they did I'd be concerned about job security at that level of pay.
You mean that you can't direct a plane full of people that it has clearance to land on runway 3 from your mother's basement while using an 8 year old laptop connected to the Internet via a wifi router???
I wonder, have they considered recruiting from the Vatsim online community? Not sure what side effects this might have of course, but you would think that that is already something of a helpful screening mechanism for people who are both interested and have shown some ability to do the job.
It’s interesting that the airlines seem to be jumping at the opportubity to cut flights (or at least that is the impression that the article gives with words like “authorized” and “opportunity”).
From the article: "The FAA is encouraging airlines to use bigger aircraft with fewer take-offs and landings." I worked in ATC R&D for many years. NY Tracon, N90, is crazy busy and very complicated. DCA handles lots of Regional Jets. Each aircraft is an "operation". If you're an airline and can carry the same amount of passengers in fewer aircraft, re: fewer operations, you're at an advantage, and the system continues to work.
The airspace and airports with the available controllers can handle only so many operations, and the FAA will limit operations accordingly. The airlines can either let the FAA randomly deny flights, or they can say to the airlines, as they apparently did, "We can only handle so many operations. How do you want to do this?" In situations like this, airlines themselves can decide how they're going to change their operations. In NY, it's probably easier to use/lease larger aircraft. Yes Teteboro, TEB, could take some traffic if this were just airport operations limited, but I suspect it is an N90 issue, so offloading to TEB really isn't an option. With DCA, it's more likely the airport. Airlines like United can offload to Dulles, IAD. Additionally, the airlines could even work with each other to some degree to get through this. They do that in significant weather events, though this is a much bigger event than a snowstorm at someplace like O'Hare (ORD).
Slots at the busiest airports are subject to a "use it or lose it" rule. Historic slot allocations are also part of what decides future slot allocations.
The FAA is saying that they're waiving the "use it or lose it" rule for this time/airports.
If airliners feel that can consolidate enough of their passengers into larger flights without losing out on future slot allocation rounds, then this is an overall win for them (especially if they can couch the move in terms of safety and cooperation with the FAA).
In a sense, part of the value of holding a slot is just denying it to your competitors (in addition to directly making revenue off of it). This waiver allows airliners to gain this portion of the value of the slots, without partaking in the risk of actually trying to generate revenue off it is (which is why exactly the use or lose it rule is usually in effect).
Take-off/landing pairs are use them or lose them. Presumably they're being given the option here to not use them all without suffering any penalty for it. This allows them to drop only their least profitable flights
