ATC staff shortages: 11,000 flights cut from NYC and DCA in summer 2023
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I do appreciate this given the "option" to literally just let it run its course.
But realistically, this is not a true option. You have to cut flights. Too many lives are at risk.
> On August 5 [1981], following the PATCO workers' refusal to return to work, the Reagan administration fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, and banned them from federal service for life. In the wake of the strike and mass firings, the FAA was faced with the difficult task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired. Under normal conditions, it took three years to train new controllers. Until replacements could be trained, the vacant positions were temporarily filled with a mix of non-participating controllers, supervisors, staff personnel, some non-rated personnel, military controllers, and controllers transferred temporarily from other facilities. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...)
At least the Wikipedia article doesn't mention anything about cutting flights...
It does a bit further down.
It is hard to determine what is “useful” or “important”. In case of emergency or chaos, moving info around brings confusions.
> Air traffic controllers think on the fly more than you would assume. They look at their radar scopes and plan each target to work with others by working their speed, altitude, and path. Computers could probably work out these, but then how would they relay that information to pilots?
> Another thing to think about is the vast number of VFR aircraft who are not on a flight plan going A to B. ATC is able to communicate with them, learn their intentions "we saw something neat and would like to orbit here for 5 minutes", and help them see and avoid other aircraft.
> The fact that they are humans who you can talk to is tremendously helpful in emergencies as well. If I'm fighting a sick airplane I might not have the time or focus to find the nearest suitable airport, get weather information and important notices, and plan a descent. A controller watching over me sure can though.
Humans are flexible in a way computers can't be yet.
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> All aviation-related technology is tightly regulated and goes through an immense amount of testing and consideration before use.
> All of the obstacles we have around self-driving cars-- "whose fault is it if it crashes", "how do we know it's safe enough before letting it on the road", "do you still need a licensed driver", etc-- are 10x more problematic in the sky. It isn't necessarily harder to automate, but is harder to declare "officially safe enough".
It's not enough for an automated ATC to be somewhat good or decent. There is little margin for error when the consequences of such an error could be the death of hundreds of people and the loss of a multimillion dollar plane. ATC in real life is much more difficult than it appears to casual observers.
Essentially all of that can be changed to exchanging information digitally and automatically. In fact most of that information exists digitally. It's not a technical challenge to do that. There are many ways to make this happen. The challenge is entirely institutional because it would represent massive changes to an industry that resists all form of change for decades on end. And that's for good reason: safety. But it also means that a lot of very flaky technology keeps on getting used and that pilots are task saturated with a ridiculous amount of work during safety critical portions of flight. When they get behind on their tasks, dangerous situations happen. When they stop practicing, they lose the ability to stay on top of things. It's that hard. And their pilot license shortly after (currency is not optional).
If you'd design the procedures and communication from scratch using modern tools, you'd end up with a very different system than what we have today. The fun thing indeed is that with modern AI, what might happen instead is that we end up with AI assisted ATCs and pilots delegating the ritualistic exchange of information via VHF radios to AIs. They could just send each other digital messages instead that are then processed automatically and acknowledged manually when needed. But on the off chance of one of the pilots or atcs still being stuck in the nineteen sixties, it's going to be easier to pretend that everyone is and have AIs imitate human actors participating in this.
So, text to speech and speech to text on both ends combined with an AI that has enough contextual information to take simple decisions and control systems escalating to pilots and controllers only when needed to might be more doable than coming up with a new system. I'd say chat gpt 4 would be well up for a "pretend you are an ATC controller" type role playing session.
You can define rules how planes should and shouldn't fly, verifying that this is always possible would be a nightmare.
ATC getting overloaded with more traffic is a given either way. Loads of electrical drones will start showing up in the next decades. Some piloted, some autonomous. ATC will have to adjust to that. And keeping everything the same with more human controllers is not going to scale.
CPDLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller%E2%80%93pilot_data_...
Isn't approach one of those times where 1) you don't want the pilot distracted by more visual information (instead of audio), and 2) pilots listen to exchanges with other pilots to keep situational awareness?
Entirely possible we could find more things to move there with humans
Plus the period in question seems to be "the summer", which seems to be "May to September". So 5 months?
NYC = JFK + LGA + EWR
DCA = Washington Reagan
JFK averages about 42000 flights per month for that period [1] EWR around 24000 flights per month. [2] LGA - Google says around 5000 flights per month DCA - around 25000 flights per month. [3]
so that's 96k per month, or 480k for "the summer".
So 11000 flights is around 2.3% reduction.
I'm no aviation expert, but this seems like "normal variation" to me. Linking this to ATC Staff Shortages seems like a bit of a stretch. (I mean sure.... if we need 3% more ATC staff....)
As a percentage of "all US flights" of course it's microscopic.
So 11 000 - is it a lot? Well I guess that depends on whether you're a headline writer or not.
[1] (https://jfkairport.net/statistics/) [2] https://ewrairport.net/statistics/ [3] https://www.mwaa.com/financial-statistics/reagan-air-traffic...
Linking this to ATC Staff Shortages seems like a bit of a stretch
> According to the FAA, the air traffic control center in New York is staffed at 54% compared to the national average of 81%. The agency is asking all major airlines ... to cut service to all New York City area airports by as much as 10% for the summer months. "This is another unprecedented situation," Pauline Frommer, editorial director for Frommer's guide book, said. "We've never seen the FAA asking the airlines to cut flights because they simply don't have enough air traffic controllers"
This pretty much excludes most international flights, and also regional flights. From my walk through the stats quite a bit of traffic is regional, and I'd expect some hefty proportion of flights into JFK at the very least is international.
Plus of course the "minor" airlines servicing the same location.
So 10% from this select group of airlines, is not out of line with an overall reduction of 2.5%.
(and of course "asking" is not necessarily "getting" :)
Airlines are a cut throat business when it comes to operating margins. So while to you it might not sound statistically significant to you but there are likely other reasons why it is a big deal.
Also, just thinking it through, how does it look for the heart of the countries financial center to be reducing flights. There certainly is a ripple effect to all businesses with a reduction of flights.
In other words if most planes are at say 85% capacity, then that 10% is easily absorbed. If anything it likely makes the airline more profitable. and of course if it does get up to 100% utilization, then fares go up anyway.
If anything the impact on the airline is positive, the impact on Joe Traveller might be negative (reduced schedule options ; possibly more expensive).
https://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/faa-aviation...
> All ATC applicants must be 30 or younger on the closing date of the application period to qualify for the position, according to the FAA. This is because the agency has determined through extensive research that the older someone is, the harder is it for them to complete the rigorous training.
Having sat with a controller for an hour while they managed Midwest airspace (ARTCC ZAU) in my younger years, I am somewhat inclined to believe it.
EDIT: Pilots had mandated retirement at 60, which was bumped to 65 in 2007 due to pilot shortages, and there are discussions of pushing it to 67.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/senators-...
Try to get a job in the NBA or any other sports team in your '40s and see what happens.
Of course, this is extremely unlikely, and he might have a hard time getting in front of the right people to prove himself.
Pro sports doesn't have age limitations that I'm aware of; it's all entirely performance-related. People who can't perform don't get new contracts, regardless of their age, and of course as people get older (and accumulate more sports injuries), they become less competitive.
I don't think they wait for you to get injured. Before signing you on, they surely require you to pass some physical examinations first. Old people are unlikely to pass those psychicals regardless of how good they are at basketball, since their bones and joints are relatively weaker and therefore more susceptible to injury. What's the point of hiring the world's greatest basketball player if he'll break a hip the first time he falls? If a player has an unusually high risk of being severely injured, then it doesn't make sense to sign them in the first place. Doing so would be tragic and exploitative.
Anyway, the oldest NBA player ever was 45, and there have only ever been 7 who played past 42. Michael Jordan retired at 40 years and 58 days, and that was notably old. A player at 50 who makes the cut is basically fantasy.
Regular 50-year-olds, sure. But if they find some genetic mutant who looks like he's 25 even though he's 60, and passes all the physical tests as well as a 25-year-old, age isn't going to be a factor.
Meanwhile, over in the aviation field, that same genetic mutant would be unable to become a pilot purely because of his age.
The military has some rough age bands as well: https://www.usa.gov/military-requirements
Maybe dial back the age restriction with strong workload automation around airspace situational awareness and routing?
> The relationship between age and job performance for Air Traffic Control Specialists (ATCSs) is an issue that has been revisited many times over the past few decades (Trites, 1961; Trites & Cobb, 1962; Cobb, 1968; VanDeventer & Baxter, 1984). Researchers have consistently found a negative relationship between controller age and performance across studies that have used different ATCS options (enroute, terminal), career stages (age at entry into training,current age on the job), and criterion measures (on-the-job ratings, academy performance) (Trites, 1961;Trites & Cobb, 1962; Cobb, 1968; VanDeventer & Baxter, 1984).
I don’t really see a problem with discrimination like this in this context as long as there is a well published scientific background of studies demonstrating why it makes sense, and there aren’t confounding variables (like a history of discrimination) that would skew the results. In this case it looks legitimate and well studied.
My only beef/complaint otherwise is that these papers should be front and center on the application page explaining why only 30 and unders are accepted.
In one of my jobs I was responsible for a tank of Acrolein which if it vented to atmosphere would kill 150,000 people in New a Orleans.
As a safety precaution.
Explosion was the desirable alternative because the products of combustion were far less harmful.
This is pretty true across all sorts of industries.
Like guess where a lot of product recalls come from. Or consider some of the reasons that structures fail.
This is the dumbest distinguishing point you could think of. Have you heard of hospitals?
https://undark.org/2020/06/24/mandatory-screening-older-phys...
The government can be sued for age discrimination in employment in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967.
Sure. But that's the benefit of wearing the crown.
The government also gets to run IQ tests[1] on many prospective employees, which would be illegal in the private sector due to the 4/5ths rule.
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"LeetCode" tests famous on HN are one example.
False.
> but can give work-related skill tests that are extremely similar IQ tests.
Legally, the conditions in which the private sector can give work-related skills tests that are extremely similar to IQ tests are when they fulfill the exact same requirements with regard to those tests that they would need to fill with regard to IQ tests to be able to legally give them; if they are functionally very similar, the circumstances in which they will satisfy those conditions will also be very similar.
The fact that the case establishing the rule on disparate impact discrimination involved (among other hiring practices) the use of IQ testing doesn’t mean that the disparate impact rule applies differently to IQ testing than to other “extremely similar” tests.
Except its not, see, e.g., the Supreme Court decision in Babb v. Wilkie (2020).
> Section 633 of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 permits federal employees to sue over any adverse personnel action that is influenced by age, even if age was not the determinating factor.
> This isn’t something that we just take their word for it.
If you want to hit the books, knock yourself out. I am perfectly content to take the FAA's word for it, and think you'd be wasting your time.
Why can't they give an entrance test?
They want to train you up in the money zone and then give you the boot before you decline past a certain point and cause a disaster.
Then a lot of new hiring afterwards.
On August 5, following the PATCO workers' refusal to return to work, the Reagan administration fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, and banned them from federal service for life. In the wake of the strike and mass firings, the FAA was faced with the difficult task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired. Under normal conditions, it took three years to train new controllers. Until replacements could be trained, the vacant positions were temporarily filled with a mix of non-participating controllers, supervisors, staff personnel, some non-rated personnel, military controllers, and controllers transferred temporarily from other facilities. PATCO was decertified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority on October 22, 1981. The decision was appealed but to no avail, and attempts to use the courts to reverse the firings proved fruitless.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...
You can fly VFR without services and you really only have to worry about yourself. There's no equivalent as an ATC. You're often working multiple frequencies on your own. Even if you don't typically do it on your own, if your coworkers gets sick now you are. I've had friends manage two tower frequencies as well as ground due to staffing issues.
Not to mention the fact that when you become a controller it's much like the military where you get assigned a place and you go there. You get preferences of course, but there's only so many suburban airport controllers needed - somebody needs to be in JFK tower and somebody needs to be in the middle of nowhere Montana and they're not flying in for their shift the way pilots can.
I'm inclined to trust the FAA's data that it's just not feasible to dump training resources into someone who statistically is either not going to make it or is going to quit if they don't get their preferred assignment and find out they need to move their family to Utah.
I assure you the mental picture you need to keep in your head as a controller is far more taxing than single pilot operation when you are primarily concerned with your own separation. A controller can be managing a 1 to 2 dozen aircraft, dealing with pop up IFR, flight following, traffic advisories, handoffs, etc. There's a reason you get a mandatory break after 2 hours.
The under 30 crowd has a lot more of those types than the over 30 crowd.
Journeymen were making $180K at Center back then. Way more than most First Officers.
Still, immigration is a needed tool to buy us time to find a solution. Right now, AI is the top contender regardless of how people feel about it
My point still stands, it's a source of new people. Like the irish and now latin Americans they fill am important role.
This article is describing operational failure which is encouraging but unfortunately instead of upgrades the chosen solution is limiting functionality until the world routes around the damage. There's still hope that AI can help somehow in the future but it's slim at best and we're likely going to need an alternative less regulated transportation system like point to point transportation via airborne drones.
* You are age 50 with 20 years of service
* You are any age with 25 years of service
Many other jobs have mandatory separation age, such as firefighters and law enforcement.
FBI for example has max age of 36 unless you have other experience.
I learned about the age limit right after I missed the cutoff. I'd been watching the TV show "Numb3rs", and thought I could do some good.
(Today, local housing costs preclude doing good, anyway. :) )
Devil's advocate: Prove it.
No need to distinguish between purpose of the flight. If it’s economically important, they will pay.
Same thing could be used here - not sure it's going to fix some of the fundamental issues of lack of staff and poor FAA management.
If mitigation methods hadn't totally gone out of the window they'd have stayed on.
Making a big deal about their retirement/exit, or at least connecting it to something wider and currently culturally relevant, is on-character in that context.
This was satirized very well in a film I just watched recently so maybe I'm biased https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5536736/
Lmao if I’ve learned anything about software developers…
Look at that midair in Europe (euro control) where one overnight controller was managing a giant chunk of airspace and was task saturated. Then afterwards all this scandal on how the contracting facility was cooking the books around staffing levels to look like things were on the up and up.
Oh c'mon, that's not what a strike for betting working conditions is and you know it.
I can easily see it as post COVID pains that training new ATC workers takes months to years.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/05/1025018833/looking-back-on-wh...
If you are warned if you don't go to work you'll be fired, and you don't go to work, then guess what? You will be fired.
That's true in basically any industry.
The actual circumstances of their firing are worth reading about: striking is legal for unions except for unions of government employees, for whom it is explicitly illegal. What makes the situation unusual is the extreme response by the Reagan administration.
An analogy is, "how did 9/11 affect you?". I was born in 83. I can talk about this for hours. Anyone born after (or even near it) just know that TSA is a fact of life with that time when "airplanes crashed into some towers". -And this is the next generation of ATC controllers.
Unions, labor relations, Regan, etc for those under 30 have no idea.
Younger people also know aviation history, even if they don’t have the visceral experiences of the past. Reagan’s mass firing of ATCs is also a landmark in his domestic policy; I would expect most high school graduates to be at least aware of it.
But sadly, I believe you're in the minority... a very small one, that is under 40 and have their viewpoint include Regan's actions.
It is always a question of pay to quality of life ratios. Now that there exist jobs that provide higher quality of life due to broadband internet, other jobs with lower quality of life have to increase pay to compete for quality candidates.
Sure such a number exists but it's probably not worth the conversation if it's astronomic.
In my case, there is no such number: either the requirements cannot be met remotely in which case the occupation is novel and uninteresting to me or the employer is unwilling to let me work remotely for equal pay in which case the lack of respect is mutual. Outside of exigent circumstances there simply is no such number for me.
My observation has been that remote work is often a perk of already good jobs with good pay. I don't see a lot of minimum wage remote work. A good chunk of remote workers don't strictly _need_ more money, and are unlikely to be enticed with a 10% raise.
I'm kind of in the same boat as you. I work remotely, and am not particularly interested in going back to the office. I probably do have a $x that would get me back in the office, but it would probably take something like a 50-100% total comp raise. I'm doubtful anyone wants to pay that, and even if they did I'd be concerned about job security at that level of pay.
Does anyone know why?
The FAA is saying that they're waiving the "use it or lose it" rule for this time/airports.
If airliners feel that can consolidate enough of their passengers into larger flights without losing out on future slot allocation rounds, then this is an overall win for them (especially if they can couch the move in terms of safety and cooperation with the FAA).
In a sense, part of the value of holding a slot is just denying it to your competitors (in addition to directly making revenue off of it). This waiver allows airliners to gain this portion of the value of the slots, without partaking in the risk of actually trying to generate revenue off it is (which is why exactly the use or lose it rule is usually in effect).
The airspace and airports with the available controllers can handle only so many operations, and the FAA will limit operations accordingly. The airlines can either let the FAA randomly deny flights, or they can say to the airlines, as they apparently did, "We can only handle so many operations. How do you want to do this?" In situations like this, airlines themselves can decide how they're going to change their operations. In NY, it's probably easier to use/lease larger aircraft. Yes Teteboro, TEB, could take some traffic if this were just airport operations limited, but I suspect it is an N90 issue, so offloading to TEB really isn't an option. With DCA, it's more likely the airport. Airlines like United can offload to Dulles, IAD. Additionally, the airlines could even work with each other to some degree to get through this. They do that in significant weather events, though this is a much bigger event than a snowstorm at someplace like O'Hare (ORD).