FAA offering more incentives as air traffic controller shortage worsens

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... which is personality.

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

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

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

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

There's a wave of ATC retirements now because they were all hired at the same time when Reagan fired the ATCs. Bad policy can have long lasting effects.

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

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

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

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

>> a desirable position difficult for a new graduate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The limits are there to limit corruption.

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

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

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

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

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

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