I think one of the biggest problems is the government cutting and not investing in our infrastructure just to give hand outs to big businesses and the wealthy.
this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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I posted this on another thread, but thought it was worth sharing here as well.
Heads up this is about to get worse. Republicans recently voted to cut retirement funding for air traffic controllers. By cutting the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) for workers retiring before 62 (all Air Traffic Controllers are required to retire at 56 and are eligible to retire at 50), this is completely fucking over ATCs who continue working by changing their retirement math.
An open secret with ATCs is that they have numerous medical qualifications that they have to maintain to keep working. For example, if they see a doctor about sleep apnea, depression, alcoholism, etc they lose their medical qualification and are forced to take a medical retirement.
So what happens if you're an ATC in your 40s and the government says "hey you can keep working for the next 10 years and retire without this FERS supplement... Or you can tell your doctor that you snore at night and take an immediate medical retirement right now and get paid more in retirement"?
TLDR; We're about to have a shit load of Air Traffic Controllers taking medical retirements and these staffing problems are going to explode.
they'll probably (unwisely) have AI take over. because nothing bad ever happens with AI..
There's a reason Air Traffic runs on old ass systems built in the 80s. It's because that shit just works and there is zero room for error. Moving to AI would kill thousands of people.
That controller should have walked off and notified media no flights should be handled by Newark until they get their shit together.
This type of heroics can kill people.
Usually, it's a chain of errors/failures that leads to accidents, after the many years of dissecting and trying to prevent air disasters.
2002 Uberlingen collision is one such case where the reliance on a sole air traffic controller was part of that chain. And that was with one controller instead of the desired two. 50% headcount. Here it's 1 or 2 instead of 14-15? That's 7-14% headcount.
We know overworking people and understaffing introduce substantial risk to managing, assisting, and responding to flights. Even supposing this poor soul could adequately manage the workload by themselves, the introduction of a single problem could throw all of it off.
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Yeah. Or the ATC could just tell all incoming planes to divert to another airport because it is “not safe to land”.
It would cause chaos and keep everyone a bit safer.
If there is only one ATC at the helm, precisely ZERO flights should come or go.
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I categorically refuse to fly under Trump's FAA.
I really wish we had better trains in the USA.
The thing is it's not Trump. Or more precisely it's not only Trump. This shit started with Reagan. He decided to break the air traffic controller Union and in doing so he inexorably steered us down this path of chaos with our airplanes and airports. Trump is only the most recent president to throw gasoline on this particular fire. Biden did too so did Obama so did Bush.
The thing about Trump though is that he's setting up even more situations that are going to be exactly like this with all the other agencies he's trying to de-unionize.
Voting to make cuts to an already ailing ATC system makes no sense to me. Simply from a self-preservation aspect, I would think this is one service that all politicians and oligarchs would maintain. It doesn't matter if you fly private or commercial, everyone uses and needs ATC to fly safely.
At least with something like global warming/climate change, I can see people selfishly believing it won't effect them during their lifetime, but the 2nd and 3rd order effects of removing ATC can be immediate and fatal.
I only hope that a minimum number of bystanders are killed when poetic justice occurs.
It's because the people at the tip top who regulate ATC don't have any idea what's actually involved. The actual regulators are very experienced and valuable. The suits think 'It already works so why spend money on a system that already works.' It gives a financial opportunity to cut on capital expenditures and engage in stock buy backs.
Maybe elon convinced them that grok could do the job next year. The same as robotaxis are a thing since 2018.
It's probably going to take several fully loaded passenger jets or just two private jets colliding.
Whacko conspiracy time: they're also working on cutting down Amtrak's staffing and cutting funding for rail transit. Gas is expensive af and driving is uncomfortable and slow (not that Amtrak is any faster). What if the plan here is to just make interstate travel so painful that people stop travelling? I doubt it, though, I think this is just extra strong vanilla incompetence. I can't imagine what the point of that would be, for starters.
Think of it this way: You need to get out of a bad living situation, and you have $1000 that you can allocate to travel. If there's public transit to an airport, you can easily take a flight to anywhere in the country, or even to another country, well within that budget. If you can get on a bus, you can make it at least a few states away. If you can get on a train, likely to any state on it's network.
If none of those are available, you have to buy a car or take taxis. Buying a car means buying gas and insurance, plus having a license, and the cost of registration. That $1000 might get you about as far as a full tank of gas will last, the license plate is traceable, and you have a much higher chance of getting hurt in an accident.
Now consider that situation, and you are a pregnant woman in Mississippi, which has some of the most restrictive laws banning abortion. You live in an abusive household and want to leave, as well as end the pregnancy. With access to a bus and plane, you can get to anywhere in the US to have your abortion, likely with money to spare. If you only have a car and one tank of gas, you're not going to make it to any state that would allow that abortion.
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Could you imagine. For three straight hours, having thousands of lives in your hands knowing full well one mistake could send hundreds of them to their deaths. Bruh. Air traffic controllers need to strike.
and apparently the stress level and PTSD without actual incidents is very high. can't imagine being responsible for that many lives and probably not getting paid nearly enough.
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They are federal employees. Federal employees can't go on strike. Shit is fucked up. The US hates it's labor force and that's by design.
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Here's a fantastic case for a union. There simply MUST be a minimum number of personnel looking after any given airspace for it to be considered safe, or the whole area gets shut down. It really is pure insanity, and no single person should be responsible for all flights at an airport. If something bad had happened who would get blamed? Who would live the rest of their life knowing they had been taken advantage of and put in a position where over a hundred lives were lost? It's simply unacceptable that one person should bear that responsibility.
Oh they had one. In 1981 they called a strike, and Reagan fired the 11 000 ATC who were on strike.
That is one of the reasons why labor protection are virtually inexistent in the US, as it's illegal for federal employees to strike. Wild...
The weird thing for me here is why does the president have power over the employment of random government employees. I'm used to employment having legal protections so that prople can't be fired just because.
The US doesn't care about their labor force.
because we’re a family company!!
Every generation of Americans decide they want their President to be a bit more like the king that they rebelled from.
This is what pisses me off the most they're slow walking back to King George III like nothing happened.
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If something bad had happened who would get blamed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision
"Devastated by the death of his wife and two children aboard flight 2937, Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect, held Peter Nielsen personally responsible for their deaths. He tracked down and stabbed Nielsen to death, in the presence of Nielsen's wife and three children, at his home in Kloten, near Zürich, on 24 February 2004. The Swiss police arrested Kaloyev at a local motel shortly afterward, and in 2005, he was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter. However, his sentence was later reduced after a Swiss judge ruled that he had acted with diminished responsibility."
By his logic, Nielsen's kids should now hunt him and kill him for killing their father.
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Here is the neat part. ATC controllers in training needed a huge bump in recruiting numbers 10 years ago. These jobs aren’t something you can pull people off the street to do. There can be zero mistakes, trainees need to be vetted and undergo tons of hours in training and education to be experienced enough to work unsupervised in the tower.
I reckon we are past the point of no return with the current system. Either we are going to see a reduction in operational airports or we are gonna see a lot more automated systems directing traffic.
Haven’t you been paying attention? AI will do it.
Yeah, that’s what they just said, Al from Newark did it all for a full 3 hours.
The man’s an absolute megamind.
Al AI huh can't tell them apart. Font failure.
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there is a reason they say 'safety regulations are written in blood'....
this won't change until there is a major disaster, and even then, there is no reason to think it will make any difference to this current dumpster fire of an administration....
(....not to disparage dumpster fires, as they at the very least provide heat and light)
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They should go on strike but be more organized, unlike the Reagan era
I don't know the full details, but I'm not sure how being more organized in the Reagan era would have helped. If the boss is willing to fire everyone, then a strike doesn't matter anymore.
I guess you could do more to try to prevent scabs from coming in? It's already incredibly difficult to train up the scabs in this particular niche, and they were willing to go that route, anyway.
They're understaffed as fuck. The scabs would be completely unqualified and people will die. Not a good look for those striking but at this point it sounds like every day without a crash is a miracle. I completely support a strike.
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Are there no politicians or billionaires in New Jersey that fly? Cuz this affects them too. Fix it assholes.
They probably have a chauffer drive them out of the city to a smaller airport while their personal assistant makes sure they get everything else done on the car on the way.
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Some of these flights are gonna end up on the Mentour Pilot Youtube Channel.
(Its a channel about aircraft incidents/accidents, very informative and worth watching if you have an obsession with aircrafts)
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Move fast and break things: air traffic controller trainee edition
There needs to be a nationwide, unionized air traffic controller “consultant” business formed for when the shit hits the fan. Pay these people what they deserve to fix the disasters that will be caused by their ill treatment.
You forget the last time ATCs tried to stand up for themselves, Regan fired the entire industry and made the air force pick up the pieces until replacements could be trained. They should be considered as invalueble to society as doctors, but just like teachers, their industry is turbo fucked by their own managment.
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Wasn't something similar already one of the reasons behid the crash of two airplanes over Switzerland back in the early 2000s? They had a single overworked controller who missed collision course. You'd think people learn from mistakes, but I guess not.
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Newark running a whole real busy airport like M. Bjoernstroem running his remote Swedish airport, wtf?
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