Sutely, when there is a head of the FAA, that person occasionally takes a vacation or other time off. These plane crashes are totally unrelated to politics or staffing.
The FAA seems to disagree.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/air-traffic-cont...
> Staffing Was ‘Not Normal’ at Reagan Airport Tower, According to F.A.A. Report
> The report, reviewed by The New York Times, said that one controller was communicating with both helicopters and planes. Those jobs are typically assigned to two people, not one.
The pandemic also messed with training new ones for a while.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3935...
SEC. 502.
Introduced by Rep. Graves, Sam [R-MO-6], passed with veto-proof bipartisan support.
Dollars to donuts congresscritters wanted the ability to fly to/fro DCA vs Dulles to save themselves time.
> Today the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that it exceeded its goal of hiring 1,800 air traffic controllers in 2024, with a final total of 1,811 for Fiscal Year 2024. As the largest number of hires in nearly a decade, this marks important progress in the FAA’s work to reverse the decades-long air traffic controller staffing level decline.
Training controllers takes 2-4 years.
Are we just gonna go from one debunkable claim to another all evening?
If we’re doling out responsibility, hoping 10% of them resign probably won’t help. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-offers-incentiv...
No, we're not. A plane went down, it's an absolutely tragic event, doesnt matter what you believe politically. I specifically avoided pointing fingers by stating this event wasn't a political issue. Does it expose the fact that our air traffic control system needs more attention and funding? Yes - and hopefully that will become a priority of the current leadership. But did this event occur because one FAA head was recently fired, or because a new president just took office? No. It's actually quite offensive that people feel it is necessary to blame these deaths on a political enemy just to make some point.
> These plane crashes are totally unrelated to politics or staffing.
Which the FAA preliminary report says is untrue. The resignations thing will only make the understaffing worse.
Subsequently, you pointed fingers at the outgoing FAA head and the outgoing President.
There are few scenarios where throwing a 2M person organization into chaos doesn't have some impact on the employees. It is too early to assign conclusive blame; it is also too early to be conclusively absolving anyone.
Put another way, it seems like you are assuming that drawing a connection between politics and reality is an obvious first step, when it’s not, at least in this case.
Maybe collaborating on a solution to get it out of this mess is better than playing politics no matter what?
Here’s a write up from 2023 for example, they’re all over the internet from the last decade:
https://www.kreindler.com/articles/understaffed-and-undertra...
One article cited it’s been a concern since Bush was in office.
If the head of a company gets pushed out because the richest man in the world has a vendetta against that company (in this case the FAA was trying to fine SpaceX and upset Musk) that can cause strife within in the company, especially when that same person writes an email (fork in the road is language Musk used in very similar emails he's sent in the past) telling you that you should quit.
What does that have to do with anything? My boss takes vacations too, but if my team didn’t have a manager we would surely be worse off.
> These plane crashes are totally unrelated to politics or staffing.
Please provide a citation for this claim.
I'll revise my earlier statement. It has nothing to do with the staffing of the agency's head. Yes, if there were not enough traffic controllers, that's indeed a staffing problem. But if the former head of the agency let that go on, putting air safety at risk, then he deserved to be fired.
Those candidates still had to pass the training but they have had a much higher attrition rate. So despite increased hiring ATC continues to be understaffed.
https://viewfromthewing.com/diversity-in-the-skies-faas-cont...
Please provide a citation for this claim.
I can think of about 10 different ways that the information in your YouTube video could be 100% true and correct, and the FAA could still be at fault. You do not have enough evidence to claim what you're saying.
I did not make this claim. I’ll restate my position so we’re clear: I have no idea whether they’re connected.
> I'm advancing the null hypothesis, that they have nothing to do with each other.
This is still a claim which requires evidence.
> I also don't believe the Eagles winning the NFC Championship 2 days earlier has anything do with the crash -- are you expecting me to provide evidence for that as well?
In general, evidence is required for any claim, yes. But in this case, something like “The Philadelphia Eagles are a football team, without any responsibility over airline safety” is probably enough evidence.
> Below is the email that was sent to federal employees on January 28, 2025 presenting a deferred resignation offer. If you did not respond to that email and wish to accept the deferred resignation offer, you may do so by following these steps.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-administration-offeri...
> The White House expects up to 10% of federal employees to quit in September in a program meant to end work-from-home practices, senior administration officials told CBS News.
At the very least, extending resignation offers to 2M federal employees, including at the FAA, seems likely to exacerbate the problem going forwards.
They seem a tiny bit connected.
If they leave abruptly without planning for their absence? Yes, quite possibly.
If anything, this incident has been predicted and warned for years and years and years, and is an indictment of FAA and ATC policy over the last couple decades, accelerating over the last 2-8 years or so.
The reason we can assume there’s no connection between the new administration and this incident is… because there’s no reason to make that assumption, based on the reality of ATC policy, (lack of) changes in the problem domain, and longstanding known risks in the status quo.