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Air Traffic Controller here. That is going to screw up our schedules even worse. It also violates the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the FAA and the
by meowster 3y ago
Air Traffic Controller here.
That is going to screw up our schedules even worse. It also violates the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the FAA and the Air Traffic Controller's union.
The FAA released that without discussing it with the union beforehand.
The biggest complaint among Air Traffic Controllers is pay. Second is staffing.
Staffing is what is causing Controllers to work 6-day-workweeks and causing fatigue, not the time in-between shifts.
Most controllers are willing to put up with it if the pay is commensurate with what we're being told to do. But our effective pay is dwindling with inflation while pilots are getting raises and we are not. It's VERY demoralizing and causing people to quit, which makes staffing worse.
The easiest and best fix is to increase our pay.
(It's also demoralizing when a Controller f**s up so bad and so egregiously, that they aren't fired unless it makes the news. I can't give any examples without doxing myself.)
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Reading the article now, but no one likes Paul Rinaldi. He extended the CBA right before he left office which caught everyone by surprise because they said Biden is the "most labor friendly president" and no one tried to negotiate pay raises in the midst of bad inflation. On top of that, then Rinaldi gets a 250k/year "consulting" contract with the union.
Now the union is saying they are going to extend the contract again because they're afraid if Trump becomes President, we will get screwed, but we're already getting screwed and the Controllers wants to renegotiate the contract anyway.
Our union is not effective right now, and the FAA is fine with that. And since ATC is government, we cannot take any work action that others like pilots can which is why they're getting 40% raises and we are not.
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Opinions are my own, etc. We can get in trouble for talking to the media. Supposedly r/ATC is being censored which is why someone created r/ATC2 which is a little more unhinged, but still accurately reflects controllers' frustration on pay.
- Waterluvian 3y agoIf you don’t mind me asking while you’re here, how is the technology you’re working with? Do you feel you have all the technological advantage reasonably and safely possible for doing your job as comfortably as possible?
- meowster 3y agoThe technology is old, but it's solid. It's never crashed on us while working. I think the only time they reboot it is at night when traffic is low and they do an update, but it's seemless because there are two systems. They update one and switch us to it, then update the other. I work in an Air Route Traffic Control Center, not a tower. If you asked me that a couple of years ago, I would say being able to talk with the pilots, but now the airlines are starting to adopt CPDLC which allows us to send text commands (to climb, turn, etc) rather than relying on voice communication. Not everyone has it though.
- sparcpile 3y agoERAM is multichannel, which is why we do the failover between A-channel and B-channel during APL and OS CUTO. If I remember the SSMs right, we do the update on the B-channel first and once it has been approved by TechOps, A-channel is then updated. Everything is built to provide a fallback in cause of failure, including the OS updates when they come in.
- jancsika 3y agoHow are the interstitial ads handled in an OS such as this? Is the ad running time factored into the control system on the kernel level? Do the operators have a realtime safe button press to "skip ad" in high traffic situations?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- meowster 3y agoWhen privatization is in the news, we like to joke, "I have a Venmo username to send $20 for a practice approach, advise when ready to copy." Or, "Airlines123, ten miles from POINT, fly heading 360 until established on the localizer, cleared ILS Runway 1 approach. This approach brought to you by <advertiser>."
- rokkitmensch 3y agoAnother excellent example of an incumbent union with no competition absolutely hosing the humans its mission should be to advocate for. Go labor!
- meowster 3y agoThe union has done great things in the past, but lately not so much.
- mch82 3y agoHow much of the job relies on visual line of sight from the tower? Could any of the job be done remotely using information displays & high quality video feeds?
- sokoloff 3y agoThere is work being done on remote tower systems (RTS). https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/non_federal/remote_tower_systems https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/non_federal/r...
- bombcar 3y agoATC includes “Center” which manages planes once they’re out of the airport, and those can (and are) handled by controllers far removed from the area they’re controlling.
- jen20 3y agoLondon famously has ATC centralized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Area_Control_Centre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Area_Control_Centre
- two_handfuls 3y agoThere have been experiments with remote ATC, for small airports especially. Here is a video: https://youtu.be/Ii_Gz1WbBGA?feature=shared https://youtu.be/Ii_Gz1WbBGA?feature=shared I wonder how they’re doing today.
- ufocia 3y ago> Most controllers are willing to put up with it if the pay is commensurate with what we're being told to do. How does "putting up with it" maintain or improve safety? Sounds like at best it would be a collateral effect.