Over 90% of U.S. airport towers are understaffed, data shows
191 comments
·February 1, 2025tomohawk
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.
rayiner
It’s so much worse than I had assumed. Look at the question about how many “Art/Dance credit” hours you took in college. The scoring is completely random. The most points for 0, but then second most points for 7-12 hours, but 0 or 1 points between 1-6 or 13+. It looks clearly designed by the FAA basically to have “secret codes” that could be given to favored applicants through affiliated advocacy groups.
n1b0m
It was dropped in 2018
perihelions
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.
taeric
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.
hwillis
It is a budget problem.
https://thehill.com/regulation/transportation/4617992-buttig...
ahmeneeroe-v2
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?
fzeroracer
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.
tuatoru
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.
ModernMech
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 Yet you seem to think it’s an outdated hiring practice, so who told you that?
talldayo
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.
amluto
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.
gruez
>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.
verzali
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?
Levitz
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.
hwillis
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.
BJones12
> 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.
tremon
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.
Levitz
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.
blackeyeblitzar
We need to look at data on near misses as well, to understand the trends better and prevent it from becoming potentially worse.
c-cube
Another (small) plane crashed in Philadelphia today. That's two in a couple days.
Levitz
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.
null
BenjiWiebe
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.
gruez
>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.
tayo42
Feel like I'm having deja vu in away. Didn't this exact problem blow up a couple years ago?
bobthepanda
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.
hwillis
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...
perihelions
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.”"
sylware
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.
jfengel
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.
onlyrealcuzzo
> 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.
RandomBacon
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 complicated hiring process like ATC does.
mbreese
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.
tczMUFlmoNk
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.
gavinhoward
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.
Ekaros
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?
null
pessimizer
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.
Twirrim
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...
throw0101a
> Raise pay until you have enough staff.
Federal workers have just been told to leave:
zamadatix
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.
dpkirchner
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.
rayiner
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-...
wahnfrieden
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
krapp
>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.
giantg2
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.
nradov
It is being modernized through the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). This will take decades and a huge amount of funding.
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.
SoftTalker
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?
hooo
Why does it have to take decades? That sounds insane
cogman10
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.
giantg2
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.
hwillis
It is a budget problem, not a hiring problem: https://thehill.com/regulation/transportation/4617992-buttig...
leeoniya
> 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.
jandrewrogers
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.
taeric
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.
robocat
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.
fzeroracer
Modernize the system how? Like do you have explicit steps on how to modernize it and what needs to be done?
giantg2
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 (or ATC's view) 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.
repiret
> 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.
BurningFrog
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.
null
gotoeleven
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?
brookst
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”?
brandonmenc
> 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.
tredre3
> 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.
beej71
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.
duxup
Couldn’t we just say a hypothetical of the opposite?
If we’re entering any hypothetical it seems like we could say anything.
blantonl
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.
duxup
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.
brookst
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.
duxup
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.
xeromal
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.
giantg2
'“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.
viraptor
Did you use the right word there? Nobody's born with that ability.
RandomBacon
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.)
robocat
> 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?
duxup
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.
leoqa
It seems like the biggest blocker for hiring is location selection.
bambax
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.
heraldgeezer
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.
Levitz
You are replying to a comment talking about how "having IT" is the exception rather than the rule. You'll be fine.
belter
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...
9283409232
People don't understand the complexity of anything and why it cost so much, including the moron trying to make cuts.
duxup
And it applies to just suddenly hiring a bunch of people.
There’s no magic solution.
null
42772827
A majority of people are not systems thinkers.
esalman
I mean there's an entire cult of people who think 5G causes Covid and RF changes your DNA.
blogabegonija
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....
belter
Well you could think that and still win a Nobel... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luc_Montagnier
doctorpangloss
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.
martythemaniak
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.
mrbombastic
I remember when we just used to call “mind viruses” ideas
ModernMech
No the word we used to have for mind virus was “cult”.
ImHereToVote
Memes are ideas that spread for the benefit of the meme.
rightbyte
> flagging and/or downvoting this idiotic comment will make it disappear from this site
You can enable 'Show dead' in settings.
brookst
[flagged]
linuxftw
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.
kylehotchkiss
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
esalman
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.
linuxftw
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.
Groxx
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.
buckle8017
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...
quest88
Thanks for the article, it provides no evidence of anything you said.
brookst
Thanks for saying that. I kept looking through the article and wondering where the evidence was.
buckle8017
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/
quest88
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.
russdill
What I get from this article is that becoming a flight controller is a very rigorous selective process.
cubano
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.
eCa
Would you say handling air traffic control is easier than setting up a LAMP server?
seattle_spring
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?
null
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.