If there is one thing I've learned in the past few days, acutely so, is that the vast majority of people do not understand the sheer complexity of what it takes to have an aviation industry.

People don't understand the complexity of anything and why it cost so much, including the moron trying to make cuts.

And it applies to just suddenly hiring a bunch of people.

There’s no magic solution.

A society accustomed to "magic pills" tends to think this way.

Feels like a marketing/PR issue where every complexity or downside is hidden.

Also speaks to a society more focused on blame than improvement. Why fix things when every problem further proves your opponents are bad people?

I think “sense of urgency”, “trouble shooting”, “understanding what is influencing other people’s actions” and even the ability to run a sort of “run a mental simulation and anticipate second order effects” are uncommon skills.

I worked with a good technical support team that worked on some high end equipment, and regardless of education the ability to troubleshoot could be found regardless and … in spite of education.

In my current coding role I find myself saying “I don’t care if he used an html tag wrong, he anticipated a problem with several tickets and avoided them.” Just the will / ability to do that is so valuable.

Some of the best troubleshooters I’ve ever met were comparatively uneducated factory workers in Mexico who just assumed they were diagnosing for diagnosing and fixing everything from forklifts to PBX systems.

The culture of that factory was amazing.

A former truck driver was one of the best troubleshooters I ever met. We also had a guy who worked on as a carpenter, a lady who was a former bank teller.

Also very loyal / hard workers.

In every job I’ve had since then their resumes would have been tossed in the bin by HR, but they were hired in the late 90s when companies were desperate for warm bodies.

Redneck problem solving. I saw it growing up in Georgia too. People with 6th grade educations just knowing intuitively how to accomplish things without actually knowing the science behind it.

'“run a mental simulation and anticipate second order effects” are uncommon skill.'

There are literally people who are innately unable to do this (run mental simulations). I wonder what the percentage is though.

Did you use the right word there? Nobody's born with that ability.

You don't have to possess it as an infant for it to be innate. You don't have color vision when hour born either.

I do mean long term - unless you've got experience with dealing with complex tasks as you grow up, is there any chance at all that you'll be good at that? (Research link welcome)

I was referring to mental imagery. Please see Aphantasia.

Aphantasia is different than mental simulation. It's specifically to do with visualisation and doesn't seem to affect things like reasoning/planning.

ATC here (opinions are my own, not of the FAA, etc)

I agree those uncommon skills help make someone be a good controller.

Unfortunately I don't think the FAA is testing for that, of course the hiring process tests have changed since I was hired on.

(I hope someone from the FAA is reading this and tells CAMI. I was disappointed when there was no free text response on the survey they gave out a few weeks ago.)

> those uncommon skills help make someone be a good controller

Societies hiring norms are broken.

Everyone spends years at school before (a) being filtered by experts for aptitude, or (b) filtering themselves for fit. It is so sad to see teachers, lawyers, engineers, everyone waste years to discover they don't like a job or the job doesn't like them. The cost to society is percentage points of GDP.

Even worse is that nobody encourages us to quickly test different disciplines and discover unobvious fits. Internship or volunteer is the closest and requires me to do a lot of high-risk heavy lifting. Maybe I'd love being a teacher and maybe I'd be great at it. Who knows?

When I think of the “uncommon” hires (former truck driver, bank teller) who I encountered who had those skills I mentioned and thrived… they would never be hired today.

It’s sad.

It seems like the biggest blocker for hiring is location selection.

That is way up there too, good catch.

After going through the hiring process (application, test, drug screen, medical screening), they give you an academy start date and whether you'll be Terminal or En Route.

People who pass the Terminal training at the FAA Academy are given a list of low-level (lower pay) towers to choose from that are seemingly-random. It could be that there's a spot at a tower in your home town, but that spot is reserved for the class that graduates one week after your class, which means you can't go there, you have to take from the list you're given or quit (and some people do quit at this point).

Not sure what those qualities have in common?

I like to think of myself as a good troubleshooter and would probably have made a good police inspector or FAA analyst. I usually have good intuitions and find root causes pretty fast.

But -- I don't think I would survive two minutes as an air controller even if my life depended on it. This is the job I probably feel the least able to do and the one that impresses me the most. Not just the pressure, but the ability to hold so much information in one's head at the same time, and hold a conversation with many different people talking to you from moving objects which you need to understand the exact location of, switching context constantly -- that's crazy.

Kind of like being an instant translator in multiple languages at the same time and if you make but one mistake, hundreds of people die.

So if I struggled through education, got my degree, I have a few jobs, but I don't have IT, I'm screwed?

No, I don't want to be management. No, I don't want to have a hard job. I want to be a NEET basically. If I work I just work and go home anyway and watch YouTube.

You are replying to a comment talking about how "having IT" is the exception rather than the rule. You'll be fine.

I mean there's an entire cult of people who think 5G causes Covid and RF changes your DNA.

Well, Covid is likely made In USA. https://usrtk.org/covid-19-origins/foi-litigation-on-origins...

And RF really changes your DNA https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E....

The evidence of RF causing gene mutation is not conclusive.

I Agree. all in all it's not looking good.

Well you could think that and still win a Nobel... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier

A majority of people are not systems thinkers.

Of course I agree with you, but is it that complicated?

There’s a cynical, non actionable POV: “people want immediate gratification” or “it’s all marketing” or “security theatre” or whatever.

Another is: “what design for airline safety gives laypeople the aesthetic experience of safety that also aligns with real safety?”

That’s hard! You can’t just rely on the invisible hand of a market to create that. Someone still needs to go and do it.

I’ve never once read a suggestion for an alternative to the TSA for example. I’m sure people have written whole PhDs about this. Give them a voice. You’re already talking to a very literate audience. Go for it.

This is all true. But I don't think in London, Paris or Amsterdam you have military helicopters doing training flights at night, across the landing and departures tracks of a busy civilian airport. Specially when they dont even share the same frequencies and have to rely on visual cues...

Or a well functioning government for that matter

Hundreds of qualified applicants were denied jobs through a "Biographical Assessment" that you can take yourself:

https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/

Spend a bit of time taking it and it's clear what at least one reason for this shortage is.

[delayed]

It was dropped in 2018

Then it's topical for understanding the makeup of ATC controllers right now, isn't it? The impact of hiring decisions in 2018 would continue through their retirement age in the 2050's.

We still talk about Reagan's mass-firing of ATC controllers, and that event was in *1981*. The impact is multi-generational and is still very visible.

Not necessarily. In the reparations lawsuit, there are only 1000ish individuals. Assuming all of them would have qualified, you are talking about around 2% of the current workforce. Not nothing. But the last admin grew the workforce by more numbers. And did not have this policy.

So, by all means, chase reparations. But don't think you've stumbled on the reason, either.

What makes you think this wasn’t indicative of how the agency was run?

The test was shut down because it was obvious and egregious: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-.... But the people who designed it didn’t resign.

Innuendo is a weak argument. Show evidence for your claims; it is not sufficient to demand other people somehow prove your feelings are wrong.

The evidence is shortages and safety incidents and that hiring scandal. Now we're able to use instinct and "innuendo" (as you call it) to find more rot

But what evidence is there that the shortage was caused by those 'DEI' policies? For example, in 2013 the FAA Academy was shut down for most of the year (April - December) due to the sequester. They had planned to hire more than 1300 controllers that year but hired fewer than 600.

Additionally, part of the changes that brought along the biographical questionnaire had another major change: they opened up positions to the general public--meaning a candidate didn't need to go through one of the college-affiliated programs anymore. However, that also meant that people had to find their way through the on-boarding process, which at least initially was not well developed and many candidates failed to complete the necessary steps to move the process along.

I'm arguing that DEI/"biographical" standards are indicative of greater rot. The one and only priority of the FAA should be the safe and efficient operation of our nation's airways.

That we would sacrifice any amount of safety/efficiency in pursuit of other goals is a major problem.

I also apply this thinking to other fed gov programs (eg NSF, DoD, etc)

Edit: in other words, how many lives should we sacrifice in our civilian air travel to achieve equity?

I don’t agree with you that safety was sacrificed in the name of diversity or equity.

We sacrificed those lives to save money. End of story.

Encouraging talented people from underrepresented or marginalised groups to apply, for example through DEI programs, will help find the best candidates to ensure safe and efficient operation.

But that’s not what they were doing. They gerrymandered a biographical test to achieve a particular racial balance.

What you’re describing is the motte of DEI. And that’s great. But it often turns into the bailey of “racial preferences or quotas.” Which is illegal.

You need to demonstrate a causal connection.

How do you not know that? Where did you go to high school?

While you conduct those studies the adults in the room will go get things done

I highly doubt adults use "instinct" as an accessory to the scientific method.

Not for the laboratory, but yes for running complex operations in the real world. E.g. logistics, war, agriculture

What evidence have you that it was a present problem?

I think there are only about 10,000 active controllers (not in training)

Apologies, I do think I screwed the numbers. Rerunning, it seems the actual compute to about 5%? That has to keep the assumption that all in the reparations suite would have passed.

Yes! How long does it take to go from a brand new applicant to an ATC controller that can successfully run ops in the DC airspace? What about that person's supervisor?

I'm pretty sure what's more topical is Trump telling all ATC controllers to leave, immediately. Rather than a shitty test that was used for a few years and then phased out.

This is disengenious. They received the same deferred resignation email that every other federal employee got. They weren't told to 'leave immediately' nor was anyone else, they were offered an option to leave or stay on for 9 months, with pay. I'm getting frustrated at 'my people' seemingly just making things up on this topic.

Edit: Also linking another comment where ATC was literally told they're not in the offer... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42899944

They didn't make anything up. What they said is 100% accurate and lines up with what you said, you just have additional context they didn't have. Your fight should be with the reporting outlets because that is how they are reporting it.

> Trump telling all ATC controllers to leave, immediately

this is not 100% accurate by any definition of the word accurate. It is an interpretation of a letter, and a wrong one in my opinion.

Believe me I'm quite pissed at the media for finally making both sides of the US political spectrum equally uninterested in facts

If I get an email from my superior telling me to either pledge loyalty or resign I'm going to read the very obvious writing on the wall here. You would have to be a massive idiot to not see it.

And the ATC was told they're not included in the offer after the emails were already sent out. Like you trying to reframe it and add more context makes it more stupid, not less.

>pledge loyalty or resign

This is made up. It's a layoff letter like we see at big corps any other week. "We're reorganizing, here's an offer, take it or not, your job might get cut in 9 months."

Well, it's not made up. I think it's fair to interpret it that way. The word 'loyal' literally appears in the text.

"Enhanced standards of conduct: The federal workforce should be comprised of employees who are reliable, loyal, trustworthy, and who strive for excellence in their daily work. Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward. Employees who engage in unlawful behavior or other misconduct will be prioritized for appropriate investigation and discipline, including termination."

It is a budget problem.

https://thehill.com/regulation/transportation/4617992-buttig...

The fact that it was done in the first place is widely known and would discourage many from even considering a career in ATC. The negative effects are still in play.

The same for military recruitment.

Have you asked any? I mean has anyone literally told you this?

Because people here in the field are saying what discourages others from applying is low pay and high stress. Yet you seem to think it’s an outdated hiring practice, so who told you that?

No, not directly. but I've been reading news items about how military recruitment is falling well short of goals, and how traditional pools from which recruits are drawn are now ignoring recruitment offers.

We also had 20 years of pointless wars that were started with lies and cost several trillion dollars. And we saw the people who fought in those wars were discarded into the gutter. They actually ruined a lot of lives.

Maybe that has something to do with why recruitment is down. But no, you're probably right it's DEI.

And yet, this utter nonsense doesn’t appear to be DEI nonsense, just incompetence.

I imagine this was the result of an inappropriate and inadvertently p-hacked analysis of a silly survey of existing employees, along with a large helping of unjustified assumptions.

This is the kind of thing that might be, gradually, mitigated by improved high school math education. We don’t need more calculus to fix this, and we also don’t need more Pandas or R or “data science” or statistics-taught-the-way-it-usually-is. I think students could use a serious education in what data and statistics means, how to ask the right questions, and how to identify cases where the wrong question was answered, even if the answer came from fancy math.

edit: I saw https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... — wow, apparently a good amount of actual bad intentions may have been involved. Although the people in charge may well have thought that their bad intentions were good intentions. Sigh. One of the worst parts of the current anti-DEI madness is that its proponents are not entirely wrong.

>And yet, this utter nonsense doesn’t appear to be DEI nonsense, just incompetence.

??? From the OP:

"This assessment was implemented in large part due to a push for diversity among ATCs by the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE)."

And from your link:

"In 2012 and 2013, the NBCFAE continued pushing this process, with members meeting with the DOT, FAA, Congressional Black Caucus, and others to push diversity among ATCs. "

I can't see how anyone would read those two sentences and conclude "this utter nonsense doesn’t appear to be DEI nonsense". Diversity, the D in DEI was specifically the reason why it was implemented.

Labor shortages don't exist. Every empty seat can be filled with attractive compensation until your unemployment rate hits zero. Labor competition has only one constraining factor, and it's name is money.

The correlation of compensation to educated workers probably explains why the US government is staffed by morons that treat the economy like a teething ring.

If they are understaff (namely giga honest, super solid competent people for air traffic ground control), you have to reduce air traffic as it is way too dangerous.

For this kind of staff, it is not just a matter of "training", it is way more demanding.

They won't cut traffic for the same reason they are understaffed: money. Raise pay until you have enough staff.

It's not always that simple, but sometimes it is. Not everyone could do it, but a lot of people could. You just have to pay them to attract them from more lucrative jobs (which includes training them to do it).

Instead they'll pay as little as they can, and occasionally pay to replace an aircraft.

> They won't cut traffic for the same reason they are understaffed: money. Raise pay until you have enough staff.

It's really not that simple.

It's a 3-year training process.

There's really nothing that's going to get you adequately staffed in the short term.

Sure, that could solve the problem medium term.

I think you’ve found the root issue. There is no short term fix. And our current governmental setup isn’t capable of handling medium to long term problems. It has been this way for quite a while, so this issue isn’t new.

Long-term political will isn’t there, so if the problem can’t be fixed quickly, it’s as if there is no possible solution.

This may be true, but it's not properly reflective of this particular situation. While it's true that it takes 2-3 years to fully certify, the initial academy (a few months long) still has limited spots.

ATC staffing problems did not just appear this week. The FAA is limited by Congress in how to deploy its budget towards recruitment.

Congress passed a bill earlier in 2024 authorizing the FAA to hire at the maximum capacity possible (https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/05/faa-will-soon-be-a...). Action is possible.

We've known since the initial post-COVID travel bump that the FAA was short on controllers - these could have been addressed potentially as early as late 2022.

Infact a 2-3 year timeframe is absolutely short enough to count as "short term". Thats within an election cycle.

ATC here (opinions are my own, not of the FAA, etc)

Pay is a huge part of it, so it really is that simple.

Qualified people are choosing not to even apply anymore because the pay is no longer competitive with other high-paying jobs that don't destroy you mentally and physically, or have a crazy hiring process like ATC does.

Frankly the pay should be comparable to commercial pilots in the current market. Or more.

Funding sadly is probably better handled as a tax on the people rather than the industry simply because ATCs protect more than just commercial crew and passengers, and more than just their home country.

Which pilots? Rookie controllers already get paid more per hour than most general aviation flight instructors, or first officers in regional airlines. Pay for captains at major airlines is quite good, but few pilots ever reach that level.

United Airlines alone has around 15,000 pilots, about the same number of FAA ATC.

So those pilots. Even their new pilots (First Officers) make more per hour than ATC.

(ATC here, opinions are my own and not that of the FAA.)

Median pay is higher than my pay, and it looks like equal to median dev pay. But why would I want the stress and lower flexibility? I hate my current job and still wouldn't be interested in ATC for the higher pay.

The sense of doing something useful? Maybe it gets lost, but I think that going home knowing that you were part of safely getting people and aircraft where then need to go would be fulfilling. Also very stressful though, knowing what the consequences of a mistake can be.

Developers can always fix their mistakes. Very, very few would even even possibly result in the loss of life. I'd think pay for controllers should be much higher, but like anything it is subject to economics. If people are willing to do it for $X, then that is what it will pay.

I would presume a lot of younger people are probably disqualified for ATC by current or past stimulant use.

Whereas a field like tech almost requires stimulant use now. Maybe good peak pay, but no job security there anymore though.

past stimulant use? from what I can tell atc doesn't have any requirements on that side unless it was problematic to the point where you needed rehab

I don't know for sure, or what the official policy is. There are people that took stimulants as kids (due to parents getting them an ADHD diagnosis) but have stopped by their early 20s. And that is probably way more common now than when I was a kid in the 80s, when not even the obviously hyperactive kids appeared to be getting any meds.

Maybe if they apply for ATC they just don't disclose that, but I imagine if they do, it will be scrutinized.

The set of active controllers isn't static: people come and people go. If you raise pay right now, current, skilled controllers will be more inclined to stay, while new controllers who've been training for the last 2.9 years join. Raising pay helps combat attrition, which increases the population.

If it is 3-year training process is it not the previous administration that is to blame? Surely they would have trained enough people. And it is not like huge amount of controllers were fired just now?

It's the last 3 or 4 administrations to blame at this point, and they were just offered early retirement deals.

This is the funniest thing of all: it's just a shitfest all around.

Here's an article about the air-controller shortage, from 2014: https://www.cnbc.com/2014/12/15/blame-the-faa-for-air-traffi...

Here's more! from 2008: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22917202

Here's a substack post from last year, talking about a legal case spanning back a decade and how, what do you know, DEI is actually involved in this whole fiasco to a tiny degree: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...

It's impossible, completely impossible to in good faith blame any one actor on this issue, this goes way too far back.

Blame is rarely as simple as “either A or B”.

And while controllers were not fired (we think), apparently most/all of them got an email saying they may be laid off at any time without notice, so they should accept buyouts and quit[1], which might impact absenteeism and commitment.

1. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-admin-emails-air-traffic-19...

You can't neglect something, then turn down fixes because they won't happen fast enough. Fast enough wasn't a concern during the period of neglect, so a sense of urgency is playacting. The optimal solution is to pay properly, and if temporary things have to be done (rewarding people for not retiring, paying a premium to develop/import some controllers quickly) then so be it.

What a "3-year training process" and the fact that accidents come at random does is create a grace period for profiteering. They would neither get a fast enough return on investments in staff, nor see fast enough losses from disasters resulting from staffing neglect, to see any problem with both not investing in staff and with finding savings in neglect.

Problems during the transition period between starting to do the right thing and when you will see the effects of that thing are good problems to have. They go away by themselves.

> Fast enough wasn't a concern during the period of neglect, so a sense of urgency is playacting.

I can’t agree with that at all. I would never treat a crisis as less urgent because other people in the past did not treat the contributory factors urgently enough.

Lack of urgency in the past is a sunk cost. It’s silly to evaluate urgency today on that basis.

ATC-wannabe here.

I can't be ATC anymore because I'm too old. I can't even start. That age limit needs to change.

And yes, more pay.

The hiring age limit is due to the mandatory retirement age (56).

I know. Still dumb.

we could use this kind of limit for the president too

So I think if the US gave out good secondary benefits, a green card and good pay for experienced candidates, the lead time would be far shorter.

Sure, you'd need to train such foreign candidates in US regulations, but that ought to be a far shorter route. And I'm sure the US could afford to get half of the ATCs from $FOREIGN_COUNTRY with such a proposition. (For countries where a desire to live in the US is common, that is).

While that is totally not done wrt that foreign country: 1. Money+employment conditions could alleviate the problem significantly; 2. something flamebaity.

Pay isn't enough, you also have to give the plausible impression that their job will still exist in a few years, and they won't be laid off on the whim of a shadow president.

They didn’t apply because of the guy who started last week? Or maybe it was the guy who ordered the FAA to discriminate against white people: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...

>Raise pay until you have enough staff.

That's never going to happen. Americans have reached the "drown it in a bathtub" phase of their contempt for government. All of the air traffic controllers will be replaced by ChatGPT agents before more are hired, much less paid a cent more. And if the planes crash, they crash.

The ones with the money and power to fix this fly private out of other airports and aren't as directly exposed to the risks of their profit-making

> Raise pay until you have enough staff.

Federal workers have just been told to leave:

* https://www.opm.gov/fork

I'm not sure how relevant that is to air traffic control. They don't work from home, they are heavily performance and standards based to even get a chance at joining, and there is no clear reason to assume to automatically exclude the air traffic control portion of the FAA from what's described in #3.

The US federal government is one of the largest employers in the world (or the largest, depending exactly how you decide to measure), what is relevant to one area isn't necessarily going to be relevant to every area.

Getting rid of the WFH is just the easy thing. They are planning to gut the federal workforce generally.

That may be less sledgehammer-like when it comes to people whose jobs are obviously critical. But everyone else is on the chopping block, including quite a few whose absence will be noticed when people die.

I'm not sure I'm any less concerned than you about other areas of government, I'm asking why we should think these cuts apply to the people working in airport towers instead of the kinds areas Trump usually focuses on.

> I'm not sure how relevant that is to air traffic control.

Well, they got the e-mail about resigning the day after the DC plane crash, so that probably didn't help morale.

FAA is leaderless, likely because he dared to give fine to Elin Musk. So yeah, it will affect things.

Also, looking how twitter ia shell of itself and looking at Musk knowing even less about goverment ... it will fail spectacularly.

And after that fail, they will blame women and non-whites hard.

I voted for Jill Stein, so don't mistake me here, but the head administrator resigned a full week prior to this memo (rather than wait a few weeks to presumably be replaced normally) and an acting administrator has been put in since the memo. How is it this is evidence the memo will affect things when the exact opposite order of operations has occurred around it?

If one wants to complain about the perceived impacts the current administration as a whole will be having... well sure, there's always room for that. I'm talking about why the memo linked above doesn't seem related to the conversation it's in reply to though.

> How is it this is evidence the memo will affect things when the exact opposite order of operations has occurred around it?

The FAA workers received this memo the morning after the DC crash: I'm sure it wasn't great for morale.

The FAA administrator that got pushed out my Mush was one year into a five year term: I'm not sure why he had to go. (Though he was in charge when the FAA fined SpaceX $600k for safety violations: related?)

A whole bunch of ATC staff just left because the new contracts they got offered reduced pay.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91270064/a-bay-area-airport-near...

Or you modernize the system (not just tech but potentially the procedures). Kind of stupid to increase air traffic and traffic density over decades and just expect the old systems to scale.

It is being modernized through the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). This will take decades and a huge amount of funding.

https://www.faa.gov/nextgen

They accept public comments so all of the armchair aviation experts on HN should probably send them an email and explain how they can solve all the problems by connecting ChatGPT to a controller console.

Why does it have to take decades? That sounds insane

To modernize a running system, you have to duplicate everything so that you can someday do a switchover.

For commerce tech, you switch, see what breaks, switch back and adjust for next try. You may have lost some sales. But probably just inconvenienced people.

When doing travel systems, something breaking is likely a lot of deaths.

Have you read the various reports that are available right there on the web page?

A wide variety of decades-old aircraft, and even newer aircraft are often modernized versions of ancient aircraft models. All of them built and operated with the motto "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", because every change brings risk (and costs money).

There was also a lot of resistance to the idea that every aircraft should broadcast its position, heading, etc. because of privacy concerns. And as long as there are holdouts the tower can't rely on the information being available

Large infrastructure projects always take decades.

Look at the railroad development in EU for example. You have to invent a lot of tech (signaling, communication between trains, interoperability with old systems), build a lot of infrastructure, train a lot of people and roll it out at scale with the goal of zero accidents.

It is just impossible to do quickly.

Yeah, but some of the next generation upgrades have already been successfully tested at some facilities and it's just a problem of updating the rest. Sure it will take years, but it shouldn't take a decade after successful testing in the field.

So AI has come a long way since NextGen was conceptualized. Training an AI on the historical flight activity for an airport seems .... doable? Would it be better than human controllers? We know it would not be subject to fatigue or emotional stress, and the domain is so limited that hopefully hallucinations would not be a problem.

How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI?

> How realistic is it to have ATC performed by an AI?

Not very. For safety-critical systems, you probably want something deterministic, and doesn't break when faced with novel situations.

Solvers are probably a better solution than ML approaches, but they can't capture every possible constraint, such as airplane that can only make left-handed turns because of equipment failure.

> For safety-critical systems, you probably want something deterministic, and doesn't break when faced with novel situations.

Humans are not deterministic and can break for many reasons. It's not plausible that an AI could handle "route this aircraft for landing without any right turns" ?

> Humans are not deterministic and can break for many reasons.

Yes. Humans can also self-evaluate about their state, and have culpability. It not surprising that non-humans are held to a different standard.

I'm not sure this is something that is solved by tech. It sounds like they simply don't have enough staff, whether that a budget problem or hiring problem IDK. The article mentions they have a 50% reduction in new hires which either says it's hard to be competent, the job is too demanding, or both.

They had 1 tower with 1 operator and no redundancy at a fairly busy airport, which is definitely concerning.

> I'm not sure this is something that is solved by tech

in this case it seems like it could definitely have been solved by tech. both aircraft were traveling at predictable paths and opertating nominally.

In the leaked ATC recording, the display is showing a collision alert before the impact. It just doesn't have any capability to do anything about them, it has to rely on the air traffic controller to resolve the issue.

You could argue that helicopters, being very nimble craft, should have ADS-B receivers and provide display and sound their own collision warnings to their pilots. That's perfectly possible, I just don't think it's mandated

This is a nearly perfect problem for tech. We solve and automate very similar problems in other contexts at scale but FAA is extremely conservative about tech.

Your comment assumes the current system can be scaled indefinitely. But you also acknowledge that we can't currently fill the staffing. I also explicitly called out that the modernization might not be tech changes but procedure changes (realistically it would likely be procedure changes made possible through tech).

Doing something to distribute information differently could result in redundancy such that if the commercial craft have a 1-3 mile ADS-B view around them, they can check that ATC isn't giving them bad instructions and that others are following directions.

> Your comment assumes the current system can be scaled indefinitely.

Why couldn't it be? We need fewer ATC than we need pilots, by a long shot. The actual requested new hires for ATC is in the range of 2k (with 1k expected to stay on staff).

With roughly a 120k salary, and assuming all 2k stay on-board that's what, an additional $200mil needed to fully fund?

Meanwhile, the airline industry had a $30b net profit, so it doesn't look like this is even something that'd bankrupt the industry if we taxed them to cover the costs of ATC. It's a 1% tax that's needed.

Even with a super duper fancy modernized system, we'd still want towers staffed sufficiently. Having just 1 person there is a problem even if everything is super modernized. When an issue comes up that the system can't or isn't handling well that's 1 person to make all the calls. Hopefully 2 things aren't happening and hopefully they don't need or want a second opinion.

As for hiring competent people, the DC metro has 6.3 million people. I find it really hard to believe there's not 3 more in the area that could handle being an ATC operator.

And it's not like we don't already have 99% of the existing buildings, infrastructure, and computers already setup. It's literally just the personnel that's lacking.

"I find it really hard to believe there's not 3 more in the area that couldn't handle being an ATC operator."

They might be capable, but why would they want to?

"Why couldn't it be?"

Things like coordination and communication in high traffic environments don't scale well. Finding efficiencies in the procedures and systems can eliminate potential miscommunication and missed handoffs.

"And it's not like we don't already have 99% of the existing buildings, infrastructure, and computers already setup. It's literally just the personnel that's lacking."

Actually only some airports have been upgraded while others are waiting. Do you think another person would have prevented this incident? From the recordings and facts so far, it doesn't seem like it.

It is a budget problem, not a hiring problem: https://thehill.com/regulation/transportation/4617992-buttig...

Modernizing a system while it is in use is high risk. Absurdly high risk. Might still be needed, but is not a cheap or quick thing.

The implication is some sort of greenfield change-everything-at-once idea?

There is no choice but to do the alternative: modify and modernise all our critical systems piecemeal over decades while they are running, covered by the business cliche "We are building the plane, while flying it."

We all naively desire (especially politicians) the software concept of the big rewrite, the version 2, project phoenix, Second-System Syndrome. With development experience we learn both the psychological pull of the concept and we learn why it is so hard to do successfully. It always seems so simple how to fix societal systems we have no experience with.

Successful systems slowly improve, slowly introduce and prove new ideas, slowly accrete changes: we accept the costs of vestigial path-dependent aspects and technical debt.

One of the incredible learning experiences of developing software systems is that it is a huge melting pot of different techniques that are iterated quickly (fast parallel evolution and proving) and the knowledge diffuses between people and teams and organisations. The waterfall model is rarely used! I believe we are now seeing those skills and techniques be applied to other system domains - especially high growth businesses.

This sounds like an agreement?

Modernize the system how? Like do you have explicit steps on how to modernize it and what needs to be done?

They're working on multiple technical upgrades already, and some airports have been upgraded. I think better information distribution is one thing. Large craft could have ADS-B tracking of a 1-3 mile bubble displayed to them. This would add a check to being blindly told what to do and blindly trusting that others are doing what they're told. You could change certain procedures such as the military having one pilot use NVG while the other not when flying in high traffic and high illumination airspace. No reason we can't add better sensors to planes when you think about all the collision detection we are adding in cars. I'm sure there are many other things that can be changed as well. Some of it's the pace. Stuff that's already been piloted and shown to be effective is still taking forever to roll out at the other airports.

> Large craft could have ADS-B tracking of a 1-3 mile bubble displayed to them. This would add a check to being blindly told what to do and blindly trusting that others are doing what they're told.

Already exists, it's called TCAS

That doesn't work with all transponders, right? Many private or military craft don't work with that system.

TCAS works with Mode-C (same as military Mode 3).

So why didn't it work?

TCAS shows nearby aircraft on a map. It generates a Traffic Alert (TA) to warn of nearby aircraft when certain parameters are met. If they get closer then it generates a Resolution Advisory (RA) which gives climb/descend instructions to avoid a collision. RAs are disabled below 1000 feet.

So there's already tracking on a map that's available to the pilots. During landing, pilots are looking outside and not glued to their instruments.

The real issue is trying to cram too much aircraft in such a small space and time.

I believe it’s turned off when below a certain altitude

This article has a good explanation of TCAS limits.

https://www.twz.com/news-features/heres-what-air-traffic-col...

Yeah, so similar to what I said, the transponder didn't work with that system as that article speculates the UH-60 didn't have it. My suggestion was that you could display what ATC has, hence the data distribution part of my comment. But I guess we could just accept what the article tells us that it would be too dangerous to display that info at lower altitudes and allow pilots to make the call and that we just have to live with these incidents then...

Seems like a job for computers, or at least heavily aided by computers.

Though this crash was probably just the helicopter flying the wrong altitude.

> as it is way too dangerous.

What led you to that belief? Air travel is one of the safest ways to get from here to there, and it’s widely enough used that clearly not very many people think it is too dangerous to use.

If they are properly staffed then you'd have fewer plane crashes. If you have fewer plane crashes, you'd have fewer bad things to blame DEI on. People dying is bad, but the Woke Mind Virus is the greatest threat to Western Civilization ever, so it's a worthwhile sacrifice. We should therefore fire more ATCs.

Now, here's the funny part - flagging and/or downvoting this idiotic comment will make it disappear from this site, but it'll still be government policy.

I remember when we just used to call “mind viruses” ideas

Memes are ideas that spread for the benefit of the meme.

No the word we used to have for mind virus was “cult”.

> flagging and/or downvoting this idiotic comment will make it disappear from this site

You can enable 'Show dead' in settings.

Seems like it can be at least mostly automated.

It only seems that way to people who know nothing about aviation.

Now generalise this to education, and healthcare, and logistics.

I don’t disagree with your implication, but let’s be honest that the incidence of totally novel, urgent, life-or-death situations is a lot lower in education than air traffic control. At least outside the US.

Just replace them with an LLM and reap the reward!

You’re probably right. I’m sure we can at least mostly automate way our judges too. /s

Not every field needs automation.

with mandatory minimum sentencing, judges have in many cases already been automated

seems like a bad idea

Listen to some ATC communications (lots of websites and YouTube videos out there), and try to get a sense of how complicated it is.

You really think you are the first person smart enough to come up with this idea? If this worked, it would have been automated many many years ago. We probably would not even need pilots.

It's probably not done due to political reasons.

Most of the complication is probably accidental, due to history or human traditions.

From first principles, the problem is obviously straightforward to formulate (assign nonoverlapping regions of spacetime to aircraft containing their position and destination, that they can maneuver in and such that the travel time is approximately optimal).

Applying simplifying constraints to the form of the regions (e.g. a discrete set of departure slots and fixed takeoff/landing envelopes, a route that follows the optimal trajectory in latitude/longitude plus a discrete lateral offset, discrete set of altitudes that change only at route crossings), it should be possible to reduce to a discrete optimization problem solvable in linear time.

"assign nonoverlapping regions of spacetime to aircraft containing their position and destination, that they can maneuver in and such that the travel time is approximately optimal"

Very 'draw the rest of the owl'. If you handwave any harder, you'd need ATC to bring you down to Earth.

Yes. The same AI we watch hallucinate on our code making clearance decisions for vehicles full of human lives. How HN of you!

Those personnel numbers don't really make sense to me. Like, sure I believe O'Hare has 57 trained ATC staff, but Kalamazoo has 47 while La Guardia has 29, all at comparable percentages of trained staffing. Something is off...

It's good to see that both Chicago airports are at full staffing though (when counting staff in training ).

Kalamazoo is the result of consolidation. The graph incorrectly just lists them as "Kalamazoo Tower", but its also a TRACON facility.

They're handling multiple airports remotely. In 2016, this was planned to be Grand Rapids, Lansing, Muskegon, Flint, and Saginaw, though I'm not sure all of them were consolidated.

I believe just Flint, Saginaw, Lansing and Kalamazoo were consolidated when I last looked in 2022. For people who are unaware, Kalamazoo has one of the most substantial aviation programs in the country in town at WMU so centralizing there with a large staff is a great opportunity to cross train.

Ok? So we have tons of US citizens who want to be in high-skilled high-paying professions, bring more people into training programs and staff them? I assume people working high skilled high wage professions spend more on things like housing and food and other things -> economy boost. Where is the hangup?

Why would I be an ATC, the fourth most stressful job in the nation, when I could have better working conditions and/or pay in a number of other professions?

No degree required, relatively great pay, and some people thrive under that kind of stress

Well we look at it objectively (as a country whatever) and say, hey, here is a pain point with potential for engineering excellence. And then engineer our way to a place of superiority. Basically mandate that the cost of air travel/traffic (for EVERYTHING) is calibrated to be able to support the infrastructure it relies on? Top heavy corporate structures (aka cutting corners for profit) pretty much only ends one way and that's with people dying.

I have to imagine there are a lot of people who not only thrive at this career path but love it. Have you heard the famous one at JFK tower whose always cracking some joke but runs a very very tight ship?

The hangup is that the current administration is asking them to resign en masse, not hiring more.

> the current administration is asking them to resign en masse, not hiring more

While they did initially receive the resignation memo the Office of Personnel Management clarified that Air Traffic Controllers aren’t eligible for the resignation offer nor subject to the hiring freeze. [1]

1. https://apnews.com/article/jet-helicopter-crash-air-traffic-...

> Office of Personnel Management clarified that Air Traffic Controllers aren’t eligible

I'm curious to know if this OPM policy was there was there from the beginning, or whether it's a backtrack after the 'bad optics' after the Washington, DC, crash.

> or whether it's a backtrack after the 'bad optics' after the Washington, DC, crash.

Either way you have a plan that wasn’t well thought through or thoughtfully executed. Having said that, at least they’re not (ultimately) directly tempting understaffed critical workers to quit although one wonders which functions haven’t had a plane crash moment.

Avoiding politics completely, so the FAA has been systematically understaffed for decades because of this current administration?

The current admin no, but the current party yes. Politics cannot be ignored because this is the result of downstream effects from the Reagan era.

Firing everyone during the 1981 strike fucked up hiring for a decade. Rehiring a bunch of people all at once meant that they all would have the same general retirement timing (20-30 years). The bush era had some fucking around with the FAA as well.

COVID accelerated retirements and now Trump is demanding the fee that remain retire as well. So naturally the end result is a complete lack of staffing and a poor training pipeline for a job few people want to do.

> Avoiding politics completely, so the FAA has been systematically understaffed for decades because of this current administration?

The former FAA administrator was pushed out (by Musk) after one year of a five-year term. FAA employees were encouraged to resign (https://www.opm.gov/fork).

The current (or previous) administration is not to blame for the current situation, but the current administration is certainly causing a lot of uncertainly and chaos unnecessarily.

What kind of competent person would aspire to be FAA administrator when your career can be ruined by some butthurt CEO who just donated enough to a political campaign?

Are they? Or is Elon running around without a chaperone doing whatever he wants because the white house team is still getting moved in, unpacked, and shoving out as many EOs as humanly possible?

I find it almost completely mind boggling that with all the breathless new coverage on the "incredible shortage of qualified tower personnel", I have yet to hear even one mention of what I find to be the elephant in the room.

Uhhh...why not use AI to start controlling the airports and airplanes? Talk about an app that, to me at least, seems an almost trivial use of its abilities and I'm sure that an AI could be trained in a very short period of time that could outperform a roomful of overaged, distracted humans...right?

Yes of course there is no way I'm the first to think of this...but just the fact that here it is day 3 or so, and literally NOT ONE MENTION ANYWHERE in the media about the potential for AI to safely land and direct all these flying things.

Would you say handling air traffic control is easier than setting up a LAMP server?

Maybe because it'd be unwise to put an algorithm in control of human safety when it can't even tell that 9.9 is larger than 9.11?

It seems like there are shortages in every field according to the media. Shortage in tech workers, shortage in doctors and nurses, shortage of air traffic controllers. Shortages all around.

Here's how to instantly cure shortages of ATCs: Each airline is responsible for staffing N ATCs per scheduled flight at a given airport, calculated on a yearly basis.

This is a bad idea. If implemented airlines will shut down services to small and less profitable airports and routes. It will only negatively affect passengers.

Airlines already shut down service to small and less profitable airports, nothing is preventing them from doing just that.

Of course, other Airlines are free to step in and schedule flights there. The average cost per seat might go up, but so will the number of ATCs.

The government already pays the airlines to keep services alive where it's not profitable. Airlines have even less incentives to take responsibility for ATC staffing.

We could just triple ATC training in the military and take leads from there. Airlines don’t have the correct incentives especially at airports which have light commercial and heavy educational traffic

So the solution is "infinite money" or "shut most of them down".

I agree that both will solve the staffing problem, but neither seem particularly practical.

It would probably have helped if they didn't turn away thousands of qualified white male candidates.

Instead of simply biasing their hiring based on race. The FAA brilliantly denied anybody who scored too low on their "compatibility" matrix, presumably as a legal dodge.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/faa-embroiled-in-lawsuit-a...

Thanks for the article, it provides no evidence of anything you said.

Thanks for saying that. I kept looking through the article and wondering where the evidence was.

It's the same thing as Jim Crow era voting tests.[0]

Here take the test yourself and tell me it's not rigged.

https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/

[0]https://allthatsinteresting.com/voting-literacy-test

I have no idea what your argument is at this point. You claimed one thing without any evidence, and now you're saying it's like something else. Please state your point with evidence.

What I get from this article is that becoming a flight controller is a very rigorous selective process.

Please just entertain a hypothetical: If it turns out that the FAA was hiring much more slowly than it needed to be because it was unable to reach its DEI goals, can we all agree that we should stop doing DEI for important things?

Sure, if you’ll also entertain a non-hypothetical that DEI does not mean hiring quotas where you refuse to fill open spots, it means proactively reaching out to find talent in non-traditional areas (e.g. doing a job fair at an urban vocational school in addition to the usual ones at mostly-white colleges).

And, if for some reason it turns out that the FAA was doing a terrible job of DEI and somehow was trying to meet quotas, can we agree that we should fix the implementation, not just throw up our hands and say “I guess these jobs are whites-only”?

> if you’ll also entertain a non-hypothetical that DEI does not mean hiring quotas where you refuse to fill open spots

I'm sure this is true about the FAA, I have no reason to doubt you, but quotas are a very real part of DEI in other sectors and slots do stay open until they find a suitable quota-fitting candidate.

I don't doubt that some quotas exist somewhere. I just don't know where and have never encountered them in any of my jobs and they're probably illegal.

Our DEI training at my current work is "always hire the most qualified person for the job". And that's what it was at my previous job, as well.

> DEI does not mean hiring quotas where you refuse to fill open spots, it means proactively reaching out to find talent in non-traditional areas

I've worked at companies that do exactly this with quotas of a minimum number of underrepresented candidates who must be interviewed before filling the position, even if the positions all end up going to white or asian men.

It can take a very long time to fill a position under those rules.

I don't think this is a bad policy in principle, but an unintended consequence is often understaffing in the short to medium term.

Couldn’t we just say a hypothetical of the opposite?

If we’re entering any hypothetical it seems like we could say anything.

The big question every one seems to be ignoring is whether air travel in the US should now be considered dangerous. If ATC is understaffed or filled with unqualified people, then how is any flight safe? Why would anyone get on a plane unless they really have to and have no other option?

Because air travel is ridiculously safe. The incident with the helicopter and the plane is making the rounds precisely because of how insanely improbable it is, and even then from what we know, chances are the error was in the helicopter, not the tower.

A plane and helicopter over DC came within 500' of each other over DC barely 24 hours before the crash. They avoided collision because they were over 1000' and the TCAS was still active: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huVFZ__q2rI

During the day the only thing that was keeping those collisions from happening under 1000' was pilots seeing each other. At night the only thing keeping it from happening was luck.

The error is in allowing flightpaths to be so close to each other in distance and time.

> A plane and helicopter over DC came within 500' ... They avoided collision because they were over 1000' and the TCAS was still active

That's not an example of why air travel is dangerous, that's an example of why air travel is safe.

The Aviation safety industry considers near-misses as an indicator of danger, and worth reviewing. A near-miss followed by a crash is maximally damning of the system.

There is a single failsafe which barely worked when the event was above 1000'. Under 1000' TCAS is automatically shut off. The flightpaths in the area of the airport are all significantly below 1000'. There are zero protections there except for the awareness of the pilots.

TCAS RAs are disabled below 1000 feet, TAs are still enabled

> They avoided collision because they were over 1000' and the TCAS was still active

No. The RPA4514 had the helicopter insight. Pilots are required to follow TCAS RA regardless of ATC instructions or if insight.

What makes you think they would have collided if TCAS hadn't alerted?

Please stop with the unnecessary platitudes. The GP is specifically asking about future safety in light of what's being discussed in the article. Continually harping on the past safety record as if it is an accurate forecast is a disservice to the parent's question.

Granted, the question was hyperbolic, but you can address that hyperbole directly rather than just giving a canned generic response.

What is being discussed in the article has been happening for a decade. It's not something sudden or new, and as such, "harping" on the past safety record is an accurate forecast.

The people "optimizing" the industry by overworking air traffic controllers rely on this canned platitude being repeated ad nauseum. It makes people think that airplanes are magic and will continue to be safe even if ATCs never sleep and cheap contractors working for Boeing forget every screw on the airplane.

We need to look at data on near misses as well, to understand the trends better and prevent it from becoming potentially worse.

Another (small) plane crashed in Philadelphia today. That's two in a couple days.

Yes, non-commercial planes crash far, FAR more often than commercial flights, at the tune of about 200-300 fatalities a year, you can play with the data a bit here:

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...

The fact that the incident you talk about was reported at all was exceptional.

It was reported because of the prior incident in DC. Also this crash was more newsworthy because it was damaging to ground structures and there were bystanders on the ground who were injured.

TIL, thank you.

IIRC from another HN conversation, non commercial-airline flights crash pretty regularly. Maybe something like 1 ever couple of days?

Commercial airlines have different, far more strict regulations.

>whether air travel in the US should now be considered dangerous

Air travel is orders of magnitude safer than the alternatives. According to the first result on google:

"In 2022, the fatality rate for people traveling by air was .003 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. The death rate people in passenger cars and trucks on US highways was 0.57 per 100 million miles"

Even if the current administration's cuts made planes several times dangerous, it'd still be preferable than the alternative. The same applies to the recent panic about 737 MAX.

According to your own figures, if plane travel gets even just 200x less safe, it would become less safe than driving. I mention this not because I know how much less safe flying is going to become, but because you don’t either. 200x less safe may be relatively easy for us to achieve if flying fatalities are as low as I believe they are.

Moreover, I’m not sure if I give into the framing of your figures. According to google, a plane ride on average goes 500 miles, while an average car trip is 11 miles. I am not sure if I’m doing the math correctly, but I’m pretty sure an average plane ride is thus less safe than an average car trip.

Sure, you can argue that a road trip is less safe than the same flight distance as a plane — and I don’t think I would even disagree with making that the standard — but I think saying flying is safer across the board would require narrowing yourself to a more subjective definition for “safer” than your comment suggests.

Rich people got on airplanes in the 1930s despite the fact they crashed frequently because it was still better than spending weeks aboard a cruise liner.

Feel like I'm having deja vu in away. Didn't this exact problem blow up a couple years ago?

Air traffic controllers have basically been in shortage for the better part of two decades.

The current situation is also because a large clump of controllers were hired after the Reagan administration broke the ATC strike in 1981, and that giant clump of people is now reaching retirement age at the same time.

That group has already retired. The retirement age for ATC is 56, so a 55 year old still working today would have been 11 in 1981. Certainly they were not hired at that time.

Like I said, the problem has been ongoing for the better part of two decades, and they never quite finished backfilling all of those.

A couple years ago the transportation secretary tried to get funding to hire 2,000 more controllers. Congress said no

https://thehill.com/regulation/transportation/4617992-buttig...

why is this even something that the gov needs to worry about directly? why don't they just force airports / airlines to have to pay for these guys like in UK, Canada, or Germany?

All 3 of those countries have separate organizations employing the air traffic controllers. DFS is 100% owned by the government, NATS is formerly a public service and now half privately owned, and Nav Canada was established by the ANS act.

The FAA has a $5.20 tax per flight segment per passenger and a 7.5% ticket tax. The budget set by congress limits how much the FAA can spend on air traffic control, and the surplus (there is a surplus) goes into the AATF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport_and_Airway_Trust_Fund

This is a direct cost of American austerity.

There's been a lot of reporting in their vein over the last couple years—both on the ATC staffing shortage, and the large number close-calls at airports (which some observers link to ATC staffing). I.e.,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airl... ("Airline Close Calls Happen Far More Often Than Previously Known" (2023))

- "But the most acute challenge, The Times found, is that the nation’s air traffic control facilities are chronically understaffed. While the lack of controllers is no secret — the Biden administration is seeking funding to hire and train more — the shortages are more severe and are leading to more dangerous situations than previously known."

- "As of May, only three of the 313 air traffic facilities nationwide had enough controllers to meet targets set by the F.A.A. and the union representing controllers, The Times found. Many controllers are required to work six-day weeks and a schedule so fatiguing that multiple federal agencies have warned that it can impede controllers’ abilities to do their jobs properly."

...

- "“The staffing shortage is beyond unsustainable. It has now moved into a phase of JUST PLAIN DANGEROUS,” one controller wrote to the F.A.A. last year in a confidential safety report that The Times reviewed."

- "“Controllers are making mistakes left and right. Fatigue is extreme,” the report continued. “The margin for safety has eroded tenfold. Morale is rock bottom. I catch myself taking risks and shortcuts I normally would never take.”"

Why are they not being trained for free after passing aptitude tests? It sounded like people still needed to pay for their college to even get to the ATC specific training.

I'm not sure I understand your comment. ATC is paid - they receive on-the-job training. College degrees specializing in ATC are not required.

The far left air traffic controllers union has negotiated many ridiculous restrictions and absurdly high pay rates, causing a major problem in staffing.