Hacker News Reader

Comment by angoragoats | Hacker News Reader

> Sutely, when there is a head of the FAA, that person occasionally takes a vacation or other time off.

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.

View on HN

I'd agree, if there was no head of the agency for many months, confusion and lack of direction would drift down and be disruptive. But 8 days after he left? That's equivalent to a vacation, and, as you noted, people manage just fine.

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.

The problem with ATC is that they changed from a skills based assessment to a biographical one. This is no joke. They had an explicit goal of increasing ATC diversity so they passed over hundreds of people who took the previously traditional route and graduated from FAA Air Traffic University Programs.

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...

And that policy directly led to the deaths earlier this week. The ATC was clearly not a White male from the audio.

> I'll revise my earlier statement. It has nothing to do with the staffing of the agency's head.

Please provide a citation for this claim.

Me. I'm the citation. It is not the FAA chief's fault - nor is it because there was no FAA chief for 8 days - that a rogue military helicopter was flying above its well-defined airspace ceiling.

https://youtu.be/uFc6JFb2MqY

Then your claim lacks any supporting evidence, and that which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

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.

The burden of proof is on you, making the claim that the FAA chief and the crash are connected. What's your evidence? I'm advancing the null hypothesis, that they have nothing to do with each other. 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?

> The burden of proof is on you, making the claim that the FAA chief and the crash are connected. What's your evidence?

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.

If the CEO of a corporation is absent does all the mid and bottom level stuff just stop working? FAA may have been headless but the head never really had anything to do with the people getting stuff done.

If everyone in the company gets a “consider resigning” email, though? Probably some mayhem.

https://www.opm.gov/fork

> 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.

Yes, I understand that. ATC was woefully understaffed and overworked long before Trump was in office. It would be really hard to definitively tie Trump actions to a particular incident.

Yes, that’s tough, like tracking deaths back to coal plants. We know it happens, we just can’t really say which specific ones, so it’s “cost of doing business” instead of murder.

At the very least, extending resignation offers to 2M federal employees, including at the FAA, seems likely to exacerbate the problem going forwards.

You are trying to rhetorically connect these issues when they are unrelated. You can be appalled by the state of US ATC and appalled by the new administration without looking for a non existent reason to connect the two.

“We have a huge staffing problem. We are hoping 5-10% of our staff quit, it will save billions!”

They seem a tiny bit connected.

> If the CEO of a corporation is absent does all the mid and bottom level stuff just stop working?

If they leave abruptly without planning for their absence? Yes, quite possibly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com