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Worth noting that this mass firing is coming around for a second wave of hurt. They re-staffed most of the ATC force with military personnel who were around the

Worth noting that this mass firing is coming around for a second wave of hurt. They re-staffed most of the ATC force with military personnel who were around the same age, all at the same time. Now that block of people are hitting the ATC's mandatory retirement age (56) and last I checked they haven't had much success (arguably intentionally, but that's another story) in increasing their onboarding stream enough to compensate for the sudden loss. Current controllers are already working large (possibly unsafe) amounts of overtime and have limited ability to change locations or positions due to the shortage, which is only getting worse. At some point, they'll either need to find a way to accept more trainees, retain employees longer, or reduce services/throughput. EDIT: I may be out of date. Perhaps this second wave already came and went with little impact. My math says anyone hired in 1981 would be past retirement age by now. Not sure how they handled it.

dylan604 6y ago
where's the plucky upstart wanting to disrupt ATC with their AI trained system to automatically route airtraffic? The uber of ATC?
- stevehawk 6y ago
  move fast and break things can't possibly go wrong in the ATC world.
- bryondowd 6y ago
  Guessing this is humorous, but it does seem like a job that could one day benefit from being automated. The job is highly rules-based, and the rules are well documented requirements. The biggest two problems that immediately come to mind: 1) Current ATC communication with planes happens by human voice over radio. Wouldn't want to trust an AI's speech recognition over that medium, so you'd probably have to mandate some kind of pilot-ATC interface that all planes would need to carry. You'd get huge pushback from the community of small planes. Probably from commercial pilots as well, since they'd have to train on the new system, and it would likely add to their cognitive load, at least short term. 2) We've put a ton of effort into producing a good radar picture to let controllers know where planes are, but it's far from perfect and requires some intuition. Radar waves bend due to atmospheric conditions, and it's difficult/impossible to distinguish real targets from various forms of clutter. The heuristics we currently use are pretty amazing, but you still get things popping up on ATC's radar scope that aren't really there.
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    > Guessing this is humorous, but it does seem like a job that could one day benefit from being automated The tools ATCs use have evolved tremendously. Just three decades ago, not all major airports had ground radar for instance. Then there's ADS-B that's fully automated and does part of the job. The problem is that air traffic has increased a lot. Even if automation goes much further, ATCs are needed for supervision of operation, compliance and backup in case systems fail. The evolution mirrors that of the job of pilots. Flight engineers have been rendered obsolete long ago, maybe copilots will be eventually replaced by a remote operators for backup at some point. Each ATC will be able to handle more and more traffic, as they already have, but someone's gotta be keeping an eye on the system.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    > The job is highly rules-based, and the rules are well documented requirements. Yes, so is actually flying a plane. However, MCAS let us see how badly things can go wrong following rules that were not well defined/understood/studied. Contributing to that was the system's method of knowing its environment came from sensors. If/when those sensors malfunction then the system is useless. At the end of the day, even if 100% of all instruments and sensors were to stop working, a human can still use its back up sensors (eyes,ears,brain) to continue flying where the auto system pretty much is game over.
hbosch 6y ago
My brother in law is an ATC. Didn't go to school for it, but studied and went through the training and passed the sequential tests required to get a seat in the building. He enjoys the job a ton. Based on just observing him through the process, it seems like there's a combination of things that might keep younger people away from being an ATC. One might be the unfortunate politicization of government jobs at large, and especially how people like ATC's get affected during those pesky "government shutdowns". There's also, I think, the fact that being an ATC is more or less an "invisible job" to many people and especially college educated people. Also, the job itself can be stressful (but nothing like the horror story myths I've read about, apparently) and the exams to get in whittle down the herd pretty dramatically it sounds like.
- bryondowd 6y ago
  There's no shortage of applicants. They get tons of applicants every year, but the FAA academy can only accept a limited number to their 3-4 month training program. Then they wash out roughly 50% of the trainees with their final exam, which is a set of ATC scenarios on a simulator. Existing controllers have to take the same exam to become a trainer at the academy, and roughly 1/3 of them also fail, so one could argue that the standards are set far too high. The survivors go on to their first posting, where they spend another year or two training before they can actually control live traffic on their own, and more wash out in this stage if they fail to certify.
- verhey 6y ago
  I think it depends on your definition of "younger people" in this case. For the "off the street" hires like your brother in law, those postings require you to be under 31. That said, there isn't really a good path to ATC for those 18-22 either. The off the street bids require something along the lines of "4 years progressively responsible work experience" to even be eligible to start the process. The Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) schools exist, but have not provided much meaningful benefit to graduates since the FAA's changes to the hiring process in December 2013.
  - hindsightbias 6y ago
jbgreer 6y ago
One of my friends was a hired courtesy of Reagan's actions. He retired in the middle of last year (mandatory retirement). I know 2 other ATCs that retired in the last year. I bet you're right.

dylan604 6y ago

where's the plucky upstart wanting to disrupt ATC with their AI trained system to automatically route airtraffic? The uber of ATC?

stevehawk 6y ago
move fast and break things can't possibly go wrong in the ATC world.
bryondowd 6y ago
Guessing this is humorous, but it does seem like a job that could one day benefit from being automated. The job is highly rules-based, and the rules are well documented requirements. The biggest two problems that immediately come to mind: 1) Current ATC communication with planes happens by human voice over radio. Wouldn't want to trust an AI's speech recognition over that medium, so you'd probably have to mandate some kind of pilot-ATC interface that all planes would need to carry. You'd get huge pushback from the community of small planes. Probably from commercial pilots as well, since they'd have to train on the new system, and it would likely add to their cognitive load, at least short term. 2) We've put a ton of effort into producing a good radar picture to let controllers know where planes are, but it's far from perfect and requires some intuition. Radar waves bend due to atmospheric conditions, and it's difficult/impossible to distinguish real targets from various forms of clutter. The heuristics we currently use are pretty amazing, but you still get things popping up on ATC's radar scope that aren't really there.
- himinlomax 6y ago
  > Guessing this is humorous, but it does seem like a job that could one day benefit from being automated The tools ATCs use have evolved tremendously. Just three decades ago, not all major airports had ground radar for instance. Then there's ADS-B that's fully automated and does part of the job. The problem is that air traffic has increased a lot. Even if automation goes much further, ATCs are needed for supervision of operation, compliance and backup in case systems fail. The evolution mirrors that of the job of pilots. Flight engineers have been rendered obsolete long ago, maybe copilots will be eventually replaced by a remote operators for backup at some point. Each ATC will be able to handle more and more traffic, as they already have, but someone's gotta be keeping an eye on the system.
- dylan604 6y ago
  > The job is highly rules-based, and the rules are well documented requirements. Yes, so is actually flying a plane. However, MCAS let us see how badly things can go wrong following rules that were not well defined/understood/studied. Contributing to that was the system's method of knowing its environment came from sensors. If/when those sensors malfunction then the system is useless. At the end of the day, even if 100% of all instruments and sensors were to stop working, a human can still use its back up sensors (eyes,ears,brain) to continue flying where the auto system pretty much is game over.

hbosch 6y ago

My brother in law is an ATC. Didn't go to school for it, but studied and went through the training and passed the sequential tests required to get a seat in the building. He enjoys the job a ton. Based on just observing him through the process, it seems like there's a combination of things that might keep younger people away from being an ATC. One might be the unfortunate politicization of government jobs at large, and especially how people like ATC's get affected during those pesky "government shutdowns". There's also, I think, the fact that being an ATC is more or less an "invisible job" to many people and especially college educated people. Also, the job itself can be stressful (but nothing like the horror story myths I've read about, apparently) and the exams to get in whittle down the herd pretty dramatically it sounds like.

bryondowd 6y ago
There's no shortage of applicants. They get tons of applicants every year, but the FAA academy can only accept a limited number to their 3-4 month training program. Then they wash out roughly 50% of the trainees with their final exam, which is a set of ATC scenarios on a simulator. Existing controllers have to take the same exam to become a trainer at the academy, and roughly 1/3 of them also fail, so one could argue that the standards are set far too high. The survivors go on to their first posting, where they spend another year or two training before they can actually control live traffic on their own, and more wash out in this stage if they fail to certify.
verhey 6y ago
I think it depends on your definition of "younger people" in this case. For the "off the street" hires like your brother in law, those postings require you to be under 31. That said, there isn't really a good path to ATC for those 18-22 either. The off the street bids require something along the lines of "4 years progressively responsible work experience" to even be eligible to start the process. The Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) schools exist, but have not provided much meaningful benefit to graduates since the FAA's changes to the hiring process in December 2013.
- hindsightbias 6y ago

jbgreer 6y ago

One of my friends was a hired courtesy of Reagan's actions. He retired in the middle of last year (mandatory retirement). I know 2 other ATCs that retired in the last year. I bet you're right.