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I think the FAA leadership is ultimately in the wrong for allowing their area of responsibility to deteriorate to the point where a controller and a pilot were

by ak217 3y ago

I think the FAA leadership is ultimately in the wrong for allowing their area of responsibility to deteriorate to the point where a controller and a pilot were put in this situation. They have a controller shortage that they are not doing enough to fix, and they have a troublesome airport with limited capacity to accommodate traffic, that they are being too bureaucratic about fixing. The controllers at SFO have used a number of tools to address the handicap, but the FAA recently put a lid on that by forbidding side-by-side IFR/VFR approaches while also failing to authorize custom precision landing procedures like SOIA. The request for ILS is entirely reasonable in this context, and the decision to hold the flight out of the sequence is also reasonable in the context, but to hold the flight with no updates for half an hour is not reasonable and to require it to divert is not reasonable either. The FAA should be held responsible for planning things better than this.

happytiger 3y ago
This is right on point. This issue is squarely on the FAA and they need to provide better guidance to controllers and pilot. Great comment.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Pilots and controllers who are already in short supply? That’s the problem, the individual actors are helpless in a system optimized against them. Certainly, the FAA is a contributing factor through wages and working conditions leading to controller shortages, but airlines can also do more to better accommodate pilots. This is a system headed to failure, with those responsible not making responsible choices and who won’t be held accountable when failure occurs (hundreds of passenger air transport deaths).
  - r00fus 3y ago
    The FAA (and specifically Transport Secretary Buttigieg) hold all the cards here. That they're not doing more to address the issues speaks volumes about the FAA's mission and abrogation of it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - MBCook 3y ago
      Do they? Congress holds the purse strings, and that seems to be a BIG part of the issue. There aren’t enough controllers (possibly budget). The ones who are are horribly overworked and it’s an ultra-high stress job. Between that and pay they can’t recruit more to ease the burden. But the existing ones are burning out, making things worse. Maybe better equipment could lessen the load, but that’s big money too. Is there a simple rule change that can fix this other than limiting the number of flights? I doubt it.
      - ryandrake 3y ago
        Congress holds the purse strings but FAA makes the rules. And their rules are strict, limiting both populations. There is an ATC shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough ATC. There is a pilot shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough pilots. We need to either reduce our demand of pilots and airline travel, thus reducing the load on ATC, or train more controllers and pilots. ATC has ridiculous age limits for onboarding and retiring staff, and there are a lot of things (aeromedical and otherwise) that can disqualify your from becoming a pilot. I think they can lighten up and still maintain aviation’s good safety record.
      - zo1 3y ago
        This is just another instance of the long set of Shittification and Shrinkflation happening everywhere, brought about by us holding our collective heads in the sand over the real rate of inflation. I'd bet it's a lot more than the official numbers.
        addicted 3y ago
        I mean, it’s not? There was inflation. And instead of increasing the budget the FAA’s budget was reduced. At a time when the U.S. Is seeing record air travel. You don’t need conspuracies around real and fake inflation numbers to see how that doesn’t add up.
ralph84 3y ago
No, Lufthansa should not be dispatching flights to arrive at SFO at the busiest time of night if their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing. This isn’t a foreign vs. domestic carrier thing. British Airways, Air India, EVA, etc. etc. all have pilots prepared to execute night visual approaches and do so every night at SFO.
- perihelions 3y ago
  - "their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing" Is this is a fair framing? My read of it is that Lufthansa's enforcing a minimal standard of safety—one that's higher than both other airliners' and the ATC's. They're not incapable of doing visual landings at night; rather, they have a policy banning it in non-emergency situations. It (naively) seems reasonable to me not to budge on this kind of thing. (Unless the inflexibility creates new forms of safety issues, in which case I have no idea). Also, I'm mindful there was a recent near-disaster at SFO with exactly the issue this Lufthansa policy mitigates: a non-ILS landing attempt at night, which attempted the wrong runway due to confusion over visual markers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14741605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14741605 ("SFO near miss might have triggered ‘greatest aviation disaster in history’", 414 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18071966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18071966 ("Abstract of the NTSB Report on Air Canada flight 759's taxiway overflight at SFO", 127 comments)
  - MBCook 3y ago
    I think that same sentence with “allowed” swapped for “prepared” is what the GP meant. It seems very clear from the transcript that the pilots are just working with a stupid rule, not that they are incapable of actually doing it. A pilot who could only land with the help of ILS couldn’t possibly be assigned to a transcontinental flight that lands in the evening right?
    - r053bud 3y ago
      A pilot who could only land with the help of ILS doesn’t get their commercial license.
gumby 3y ago
> they have a troublesome airport What is troublesome about SFO? I’m not a pilot (or in any way connected to flying except as a passenger) so airports are basically a black box to me.
- dfgasdgsd 3y ago
  The two runways that run in parallel are too close to each other to land side-by-side in bad weather (because they only allow using Visual aka VFR landings). "SFO operates on two sets of parallel runways. On fair weather days, SFO can accommodate approximately 60 arrivals per hour. During periods of low visibility, current FAA safety regulations allow aircraft to arrive side-by-side only if runways are at least 4,300 feet apart." https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/policies-regulations/weather-impact#:~:text=Runway%20constraints,at%20least%204%2C300%20feet%20apart https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/policies-reg....
- throwup238 3y ago
  There's a bunch of reasons but it's primarily the popularity of the airport combined with the runway layout and the noise abatement procedures all made worse by the Bay's weather. SFO has two pairs of parallel runways and the pairs are very close together, with the runways in the 28L/28R pair only 750 feet apart. That's really close for an A350 with a giant 200ft wingspan and the noise abatement prevents the use of a standard step down approach where the pilots have much better visibility.
  - blindriver 3y ago
    There is little to no actual noise abatement at sfo for residents living around there, especially during inclement weather.
    - throwup238 3y ago
      https://www.flysfo.com/about/community-noise/noise-office/making-sfo-quieter/noise-abatement-procedures https://www.flysfo.com/about/community-noise/noise-office/ma... But yeah it all goes out the window in poor weather.
AmVess 3y ago
FAA is completely asleep at the wheel in most areas it governs. Youtube is filled with ATC simply refusing to do their jobs, and under no circumstances should exchanges like this should be allowed to happen. There's an ATC shortage, but so what? There's an even larger shortage of safety which needs to be addressed, and FAA are doing nothing at all.
- Cacti 3y ago
  The FAA budget in 2016 was $15.8B. In 2023 dollars, this is equivalent to about $20B. The current budget is $18.6ish.
  - systemvoltage 3y ago
    Mostly going to inadequate and incompetent new hires. We're not selecting based on merit and competence. We make a big deal out of interview process in Software engineering. But when it comes to critical life/death situation jobs, we don't.
    - justin66 3y ago
      Your experience in software engineering gives you insight into what's happening vis a vis hiring of air traffic controllers?
    - jakub_g 3y ago
      > "inadequate and incompetent new hires" * *citation needed From what I've read last week [0], the main problem is that there's not enough (qualified) candidates being hired, and current ATC employees are routinely working 6d x 10h weeks. Stressed & overworked employees doesn't seem like a great solution to critical life/death situation either. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38587340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38587340
      - briandear 3y ago
        https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1924&context=gs_rp https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=192... “I found the diversity in hiring air traffic controllers increased after the termination of the AT-CTI. However applicants in underrepresented groups are more likely to be lost through attrition in the FAA Academy Air Traffic Controller Training Program.”
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
duxup 3y ago
If there were more controllers would that change anything? The volume of flights and their chaining flights wouldn’t seem to change in that case would it?
throwme_123 3y ago
[flagged]
glcihgnwe 3y ago
There are plenty of well-qualified applicants to be air traffic controllers, but they were born White or Asian and the Government is illegally reserving the jobs for favored ethnicities. https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/16/faa-should-rely-on-ability-not-race-in-hiring-air-traffic-controllers/ https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/16/faa-should-rely-on-ab...
- systemvoltage 3y ago
  How is it that it is unreasonable to expect meritocratic process when selecting people for life or death situations?

by ak217 3y ago

happytiger 3y ago

This is right on point. This issue is squarely on the FAA and they need to provide better guidance to controllers and pilot. Great comment.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Pilots and controllers who are already in short supply? That’s the problem, the individual actors are helpless in a system optimized against them. Certainly, the FAA is a contributing factor through wages and working conditions leading to controller shortages, but airlines can also do more to better accommodate pilots. This is a system headed to failure, with those responsible not making responsible choices and who won’t be held accountable when failure occurs (hundreds of passenger air transport deaths).
- r00fus 3y ago
  The FAA (and specifically Transport Secretary Buttigieg) hold all the cards here. That they're not doing more to address the issues speaks volumes about the FAA's mission and abrogation of it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Do they? Congress holds the purse strings, and that seems to be a BIG part of the issue. There aren’t enough controllers (possibly budget). The ones who are are horribly overworked and it’s an ultra-high stress job. Between that and pay they can’t recruit more to ease the burden. But the existing ones are burning out, making things worse. Maybe better equipment could lessen the load, but that’s big money too. Is there a simple rule change that can fix this other than limiting the number of flights? I doubt it.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      Congress holds the purse strings but FAA makes the rules. And their rules are strict, limiting both populations. There is an ATC shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough ATC. There is a pilot shortage and FAA’s rules make it difficult to hire/train enough pilots. We need to either reduce our demand of pilots and airline travel, thus reducing the load on ATC, or train more controllers and pilots. ATC has ridiculous age limits for onboarding and retiring staff, and there are a lot of things (aeromedical and otherwise) that can disqualify your from becoming a pilot. I think they can lighten up and still maintain aviation’s good safety record.
    - zo1 3y ago
      This is just another instance of the long set of Shittification and Shrinkflation happening everywhere, brought about by us holding our collective heads in the sand over the real rate of inflation. I'd bet it's a lot more than the official numbers.
      - addicted 3y ago
        I mean, it’s not? There was inflation. And instead of increasing the budget the FAA’s budget was reduced. At a time when the U.S. Is seeing record air travel. You don’t need conspuracies around real and fake inflation numbers to see how that doesn’t add up.

ralph84 3y ago

No, Lufthansa should not be dispatching flights to arrive at SFO at the busiest time of night if their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing. This isn’t a foreign vs. domestic carrier thing. British Airways, Air India, EVA, etc. etc. all have pilots prepared to execute night visual approaches and do so every night at SFO.

perihelions 3y ago
- "their pilots aren’t prepared to do the approaches everyone else is doing" Is this is a fair framing? My read of it is that Lufthansa's enforcing a minimal standard of safety—one that's higher than both other airliners' and the ATC's. They're not incapable of doing visual landings at night; rather, they have a policy banning it in non-emergency situations. It (naively) seems reasonable to me not to budge on this kind of thing. (Unless the inflexibility creates new forms of safety issues, in which case I have no idea). Also, I'm mindful there was a recent near-disaster at SFO with exactly the issue this Lufthansa policy mitigates: a non-ILS landing attempt at night, which attempted the wrong runway due to confusion over visual markers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14741605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14741605 ("SFO near miss might have triggered ‘greatest aviation disaster in history’", 414 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18071966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18071966 ("Abstract of the NTSB Report on Air Canada flight 759's taxiway overflight at SFO", 127 comments)
- MBCook 3y ago
  I think that same sentence with “allowed” swapped for “prepared” is what the GP meant. It seems very clear from the transcript that the pilots are just working with a stupid rule, not that they are incapable of actually doing it. A pilot who could only land with the help of ILS couldn’t possibly be assigned to a transcontinental flight that lands in the evening right?
  - r053bud 3y ago
    A pilot who could only land with the help of ILS doesn’t get their commercial license.

gumby 3y ago

> they have a troublesome airport What is troublesome about SFO? I’m not a pilot (or in any way connected to flying except as a passenger) so airports are basically a black box to me.

dfgasdgsd 3y ago
The two runways that run in parallel are too close to each other to land side-by-side in bad weather (because they only allow using Visual aka VFR landings). "SFO operates on two sets of parallel runways. On fair weather days, SFO can accommodate approximately 60 arrivals per hour. During periods of low visibility, current FAA safety regulations allow aircraft to arrive side-by-side only if runways are at least 4,300 feet apart." https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/policies-regulations/weather-impact#:~:text=Runway%20constraints,at%20least%204%2C300%20feet%20apart https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/policies-reg....
throwup238 3y ago
There's a bunch of reasons but it's primarily the popularity of the airport combined with the runway layout and the noise abatement procedures all made worse by the Bay's weather. SFO has two pairs of parallel runways and the pairs are very close together, with the runways in the 28L/28R pair only 750 feet apart. That's really close for an A350 with a giant 200ft wingspan and the noise abatement prevents the use of a standard step down approach where the pilots have much better visibility.
- blindriver 3y ago
  There is little to no actual noise abatement at sfo for residents living around there, especially during inclement weather.
  - throwup238 3y ago
    https://www.flysfo.com/about/community-noise/noise-office/making-sfo-quieter/noise-abatement-procedures https://www.flysfo.com/about/community-noise/noise-office/ma... But yeah it all goes out the window in poor weather.

AmVess 3y ago

FAA is completely asleep at the wheel in most areas it governs. Youtube is filled with ATC simply refusing to do their jobs, and under no circumstances should exchanges like this should be allowed to happen. There's an ATC shortage, but so what? There's an even larger shortage of safety which needs to be addressed, and FAA are doing nothing at all.

Cacti 3y ago
The FAA budget in 2016 was $15.8B. In 2023 dollars, this is equivalent to about $20B. The current budget is $18.6ish.
- systemvoltage 3y ago
  Mostly going to inadequate and incompetent new hires. We're not selecting based on merit and competence. We make a big deal out of interview process in Software engineering. But when it comes to critical life/death situation jobs, we don't.
  - justin66 3y ago
    Your experience in software engineering gives you insight into what's happening vis a vis hiring of air traffic controllers?
  - jakub_g 3y ago
    > "inadequate and incompetent new hires" * *citation needed From what I've read last week [0], the main problem is that there's not enough (qualified) candidates being hired, and current ATC employees are routinely working 6d x 10h weeks. Stressed & overworked employees doesn't seem like a great solution to critical life/death situation either. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38587340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38587340
    - briandear 3y ago
      https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1924&context=gs_rp https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=192... “I found the diversity in hiring air traffic controllers increased after the termination of the AT-CTI. However applicants in underrepresented groups are more likely to be lost through attrition in the FAA Academy Air Traffic Controller Training Program.”

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

duxup 3y ago

If there were more controllers would that change anything? The volume of flights and their chaining flights wouldn’t seem to change in that case would it?

throwme_123 3y ago

[flagged]

glcihgnwe 3y ago

There are plenty of well-qualified applicants to be air traffic controllers, but they were born White or Asian and the Government is illegally reserving the jobs for favored ethnicities. https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/16/faa-should-rely-on-ability-not-race-in-hiring-air-traffic-controllers/ https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/16/faa-should-rely-on-ab...

systemvoltage 3y ago
How is it that it is unreasonable to expect meritocratic process when selecting people for life or death situations?