5 ms·

If the goal is to improve safety firing people is almost always the wrong response. That juvenile preoccupation with punishment only serves to create a culture

by valine 4y ago

If the goal is to improve safety firing people is almost always the wrong response. That juvenile preoccupation with punishment only serves to create a culture where mistakes are hidden rather than understood.

pooloo 4y ago
It's also an extremely niche field, with a very high attrition rate in terms of training, and few people are truly capable of working in that industry. There will be retraining for certain, and a reduction in pay/rank. They certainly do not need to lose their job over a mishap, while an egregious one, it is still a trainable moment.
- hackernewds 4y ago
  This also seems counterintuitive to a blameless culture. If anything the ATC industry is in need of one.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  How do you retrain someone not to tell 2 planes they can use the same runway with repeated confirmations based on the fact that he thinks 3 miles is far enough away? At that point are we certain its not Alzheimer's?
  - xeromal 4y ago
    This sentence probably doesn't cover the entire situation.
  - kcg 4y ago
    While I 100% think the controller in this situation made a terrible judgement call and likely shouldn't be working planes anymore, it's worth noting that that there are very specific regulations on multiple planes using the same runway (called Same Runway Separation). Specifically, for these types of aircraft (SRS Category III), the departing plane needs to be at least 6000ft down the runway and airborne by the time the arriving plane crosses the runway threshold. Heck, for smaller general aviation aircraft, you can have a plane land when another has landed and is still on the runway, as long as they are 3000ft past the threshold. A different regulation (applicable only to radar environments, which AUS is) allows for a departure if an arriving aircraft is 2+ miles away from the runway, as long as there is at least 3 miles of separation within 1 min after takeoff. All that being said -- it is possible to execute a squeeze play like this if everything is perfect, but you need the departure to go IMMEDIATELY. Trying this in low visibility was extremely reckless and incompetent.
michaelmrose 4y ago
That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity. In the linked communication you can see that he knew both planes were incoming on the same runway and confirmed his brain dead plan repeatedly to both crews. Even telling SW that they could take off because Fedex was 3 miles out. At any reasonable speed this is virtually no time. At 165 it would be a little over 1 minute. Since the critical moment came around the 2 minute mark it seems likely that in addition to any other faults he also can't estimate distance. Even after it went south or shall we say southwest he was never capable of recovering in any timely fashion as evidenced by the Fedex crew taking over his job. As a result of his incompetence everyone would have died. The only meaningful fact he could have ascertained in order to correct his plan would have been to understand that planes go fast. At this juncture retraining him seems like a poor decision. He's a hazard.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity. Let's assume that you are right. I don't think I can be as confident about anything as you are. Especially not before an investigation, but let's pretend that you are right: the controller in question is an imbecile who need to be fired immediately. How is that not a process problem? How did an idiot get on frequency controlling traffic at a big airport? Shouldn't there be filters to prevent that? And if he is an idiot, which I don't believe but we are in a hypothetical, how many others there are?
  - lowkey_ 4y ago
    > How did an idiot get on frequency controlling traffic at a big airport? Shouldn't there be filters to prevent that? If you see r/ATC, he's been shuffled between locations and this isn't his first screw-up. He manages to stay employed through claiming discrimination under EEO when performance issues come up. There's even another past incident from another airport featuring him. Luckily, this may be the nail in the coffin that even US Critical Race Theory policies can't prevent, and it happened without any loss of life. From the responses of those who have worked ATC, lazy & incompetent would be more accurate than idiot. He sounds checked out, and isn't really thinking about his choices.
King-Aaron 4y ago
When we have major line-of-fire incidents on our sites that can very possibly result in loss of life, generally you do get the boot. And it is certainly not 'hidden', you get black listed and company-wide communications are sent as a result. People certainly do learn from these kinds of mistakes, but usually the person at the centre of it goes for a walk.
- krisoft 4y ago
  What industry would that be and how is your safety record?
  - King-Aaron 4y ago
    Mining, and what kind of inane line of questioning is that.
    - krisoft 4y ago
      > what kind of inane line of questioning is that A very pertinent one. The comment you responded to talked about how aviation achieves their stellar safety record. You told us that in your other industry (now we know it is mining) things are done differently. So it is fair to ask: How is that going for you? What are the results? Are you safer or less safe than aviation?
      - King-Aaron 4y ago
        Our operations are amongst the safest in the world for our sector, so yes, it is going well.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
martopix 4y ago
If only the rest of society understood this, we would be so much better off.
lowkey_ 4y ago
If you look at ATC employee responses, you're missing the context of the FAA: https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/comments/10u0zvl/disaster_averted_at_austin_airport_after_fedex/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/comments/10u0zvl/disaster_avert... They're notoriously awful for not firing people who repeatedly put lives at risk. Additionally, assuming you're American, would you apply this same logic to police officers? ATC is similar in that lives are at stake.
- valine 4y ago
  I would apply that logic to anyone responsible for honest mistakes. Mistakes are a valuable opportunity for learning, and learning doesn’t thrive in a culture of fear. The same system should definitely exist in law enforcement, to the extent that the mistakes are made in good faith. I would argue that a good percentage of the “mistakes” made by police in the US are malicious in nature, akin to ATC intentionally putting planes in danger. Our law enforcement culture in the US is so rotten that mistakes are neither punished nor understood. To your point that ATC is notoriously awful for not firing people, I would say their safety record speaks for itself. The impulse for punitive vengeance is what puts lives at risk, not ATC's safety culture.

by valine 4y ago

pooloo 4y ago

It's also an extremely niche field, with a very high attrition rate in terms of training, and few people are truly capable of working in that industry. There will be retraining for certain, and a reduction in pay/rank. They certainly do not need to lose their job over a mishap, while an egregious one, it is still a trainable moment.

hackernewds 4y ago
This also seems counterintuitive to a blameless culture. If anything the ATC industry is in need of one.
michaelmrose 4y ago
How do you retrain someone not to tell 2 planes they can use the same runway with repeated confirmations based on the fact that he thinks 3 miles is far enough away? At that point are we certain its not Alzheimer's?
- xeromal 4y ago
  This sentence probably doesn't cover the entire situation.
- kcg 4y ago
  While I 100% think the controller in this situation made a terrible judgement call and likely shouldn't be working planes anymore, it's worth noting that that there are very specific regulations on multiple planes using the same runway (called Same Runway Separation). Specifically, for these types of aircraft (SRS Category III), the departing plane needs to be at least 6000ft down the runway and airborne by the time the arriving plane crosses the runway threshold. Heck, for smaller general aviation aircraft, you can have a plane land when another has landed and is still on the runway, as long as they are 3000ft past the threshold. A different regulation (applicable only to radar environments, which AUS is) allows for a departure if an arriving aircraft is 2+ miles away from the runway, as long as there is at least 3 miles of separation within 1 min after takeoff. All that being said -- it is possible to execute a squeeze play like this if everything is perfect, but you need the departure to go IMMEDIATELY. Trying this in low visibility was extremely reckless and incompetent.

michaelmrose 4y ago

That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity. In the linked communication you can see that he knew both planes were incoming on the same runway and confirmed his brain dead plan repeatedly to both crews. Even telling SW that they could take off because Fedex was 3 miles out. At any reasonable speed this is virtually no time. At 165 it would be a little over 1 minute. Since the critical moment came around the 2 minute mark it seems likely that in addition to any other faults he also can't estimate distance. Even after it went south or shall we say southwest he was never capable of recovering in any timely fashion as evidenced by the Fedex crew taking over his job. As a result of his incompetence everyone would have died. The only meaningful fact he could have ascertained in order to correct his plan would have been to understand that planes go fast. At this juncture retraining him seems like a poor decision. He's a hazard.

krisoft 4y ago
> That is mature, rational, considered, and completely wrong. What's exposed here is not a failure of process or education, its the fact that controller is an incompetent idiot who never should have been acting in a life critical capacity. Let's assume that you are right. I don't think I can be as confident about anything as you are. Especially not before an investigation, but let's pretend that you are right: the controller in question is an imbecile who need to be fired immediately. How is that not a process problem? How did an idiot get on frequency controlling traffic at a big airport? Shouldn't there be filters to prevent that? And if he is an idiot, which I don't believe but we are in a hypothetical, how many others there are?
- lowkey_ 4y ago
  > How did an idiot get on frequency controlling traffic at a big airport? Shouldn't there be filters to prevent that? If you see r/ATC, he's been shuffled between locations and this isn't his first screw-up. He manages to stay employed through claiming discrimination under EEO when performance issues come up. There's even another past incident from another airport featuring him. Luckily, this may be the nail in the coffin that even US Critical Race Theory policies can't prevent, and it happened without any loss of life. From the responses of those who have worked ATC, lazy & incompetent would be more accurate than idiot. He sounds checked out, and isn't really thinking about his choices.

King-Aaron 4y ago

When we have major line-of-fire incidents on our sites that can very possibly result in loss of life, generally you do get the boot. And it is certainly not 'hidden', you get black listed and company-wide communications are sent as a result. People certainly do learn from these kinds of mistakes, but usually the person at the centre of it goes for a walk.

krisoft 4y ago
What industry would that be and how is your safety record?
- King-Aaron 4y ago
  Mining, and what kind of inane line of questioning is that.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > what kind of inane line of questioning is that A very pertinent one. The comment you responded to talked about how aviation achieves their stellar safety record. You told us that in your other industry (now we know it is mining) things are done differently. So it is fair to ask: How is that going for you? What are the results? Are you safer or less safe than aviation?
    - King-Aaron 4y ago
      Our operations are amongst the safest in the world for our sector, so yes, it is going well.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

martopix 4y ago

If only the rest of society understood this, we would be so much better off.

lowkey_ 4y ago

If you look at ATC employee responses, you're missing the context of the FAA: https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/comments/10u0zvl/disaster_averted_at_austin_airport_after_fedex/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/comments/10u0zvl/disaster_avert... They're notoriously awful for not firing people who repeatedly put lives at risk. Additionally, assuming you're American, would you apply this same logic to police officers? ATC is similar in that lives are at stake.

valine 4y ago
I would apply that logic to anyone responsible for honest mistakes. Mistakes are a valuable opportunity for learning, and learning doesn’t thrive in a culture of fear. The same system should definitely exist in law enforcement, to the extent that the mistakes are made in good faith. I would argue that a good percentage of the “mistakes” made by police in the US are malicious in nature, akin to ATC intentionally putting planes in danger. Our law enforcement culture in the US is so rotten that mistakes are neither punished nor understood. To your point that ATC is notoriously awful for not firing people, I would say their safety record speaks for itself. The impulse for punitive vengeance is what puts lives at risk, not ATC's safety culture.