[HN Gopher] How to fix America's aviation system (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
How to fix America's aviation system (2023)
Author : camkego
Score : 129 points
Date : 2024-04-20 20:07 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wbur.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wbur.org)
| camkego wrote:
| The article says: "near misses are [...] up 25% in the past
| decade"
|
| For example, there was almost a collision between Southwest and
| Jetblue Thursday morning at Reagan Airport.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/18/us/washington-ronald-reagan-a...
|
| I wonder, it going to take actual collisions to spur the focus
| and attention to work on this issue of "so many close calls"?
| agsnu wrote:
| There was almost an even worse collision at Kennedy on
| Wednesday as well that only just came to light
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW6lAwLy_Os
| hggh wrote:
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40098469
| nimbius wrote:
| Its a simple answer I give professional drivers in the diesel
| engine shop I work at.
|
| Youre going too fast.
|
| Mashing different departments together to do things quicker,
| faster turnarounds at the gates, playing with flight times to
| game service hours...it all comes back to you in the worst way.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Reagans sacking the air
| controllers union isnt still haunting this country to this day.
| Those were professionals, and you decided the rates interfered
| with profits, so now you get a lot more near misses from a much
| more exhausted crew.
| dingnuts wrote:
| the data on airline safety over the last forty years does not
| bear out your argument at all. Air travel has gotten much
| cheaper and much safer since Reagan -- TFA and Boeing's
| problems notwithstanding.
|
| What you're describing sounds a lot like, to me, someone who
| loves unions and is mad about something that happened two
| generations ago, and it's looking for some bad effect to
| blame on it.
| meowster wrote:
| Air Traffic Controller here. A major problem is staffing,
| and that's still a problem because of Reagan's mass-firing.
|
| I don't care about unions one way or the other. I'm just a
| member of my union for the "job insurance", but now I'm
| thinking about quiting next January (we can only quit in
| January) because they showed themselves to be ineffective
| and not representative of my needs (pay).
| delfinom wrote:
| There was a near miss in JFK Friday between a Swiss Air that
| was cleared to takeoff, with 3 planes immediately after that
| cleared to cross the same runway by a second controller.
|
| Would have had a death toll rivaling 9/11 if it was on a foggy
| day with no visibility downstream for the Swiss Air to abort in
| its take off.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Would love to see low lead fuel phased out too while we're fixing
| the system.
| Plasmoid wrote:
| The FAA recently approved 100UL fuel
| tjohns wrote:
| That's actively happening. 94UL was approved a couple years
| ago, and some of the smaller airports in the SF Bay Area are
| already dispensing it.
|
| 100UL was the last major barrier (since high performance
| aircraft need 100 Octane fuel), and that was just approved last
| year. It should start being dispensed at smaller airports soon.
| There's a lot of pressure to get this in pumps as quickly as
| possible before the EPA bans 100LL.
|
| (Probably not fast enough to prevent San Carlos Airport in the
| bay area from closing - the county officially wants to close it
| due to leaded fuel, though it's an open secret that's just a
| convenient excuse so they can free the airport land + airspace
| up for real estate developers. The airport's already switched
| over entirely to 94UL pumps.)
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The reason America's aviation system is so broken is because the
| FAA's budget is primarily user fee/tax funded. Airlines want as
| low government fees and taxes as possible, so they heavily lobby
| against any sort of funding increase.
|
| Congress could fund technology updates and ATC training
| programs...then rapidly increase the number of controllers in the
| country, and then lower the maximum hours controllers can work in
| a shift/week, increase break times, etc.
|
| But that means raising fees and taxes and tariffs, and both
| wealthy travelers and corporate interests don't want that.
| Airline travel is predominantly done by people who make over
| $100k a year, and business travelers comprise 75% of profits.
|
| Oh, and it doesn't help that AOPA screams blue bloody murder any
| time anyone so much as suggests phasing out incredibly expensive,
| outdated technologies.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| There are about 45.000 flights a day [1] in the US or 16
| million a year, and that's just commercial, not including GA
| the 2010 dataset [2] is the newest I could find, it assumes
| 1/3rd for commercial, 1/3rd charters and the rest for GA,
| military and cargo, and I assume that this ratio has been
| roughly the same in the last decades.
|
| So, a surcharge of 100 dollars per flight to fund FAA
| controllers would lead to a whopping 1.6 billion dollars a year
| while only adding less than 50 cents in ticket costs per
| passenger (assuming an average of 200 people per flight).
| Further income could be made with a lower surcharge for cargo
| and charters (let's say 50 dollars), and a very small one
| (let's say 10 dollars) for GA - assuming the above roughly
| 1/3rd split, you'd have an additional 800 million dollars from
| charters and cargo, and 160 million from GA, leading to a total
| of about 2.6 billion dollars.
|
| Increase the fees to 200 dollars for commercial flights and
| you'd get 4.2 billion dollars - an about 20% increase of the
| FAA's current 19.8 billion dollars. That's a lot of money that
| even the most price-sensitive, high frequency fliers will not
| really feel. Assuming some rich executive flying twice a day
| for 250 working days a year, he'd pay 1000$ more in travel
| costs, a tiiiiny fraction of his expenses. A hobbyist pilot
| with his PPL needs a minimum of 24 hours and a checkride every
| two years, so ~12 flights per year, so their FAA surcharge cost
| would be around ~120 dollars a year - not very much compared to
| the cost of getting and maintaining a PPL.
|
| In the end, the whining is pointless (especially as I've shown
| the actual impact is negligible). Either the government
| subsidizes air traffic of all kinds (similar as it does for
| road and to a lesser extent rail traffic) and distributes the
| cost across all members of society, or it makes for a self-
| sufficient system, or a mix of both - but the status quo of
| keeping it on life support is no longer sustainable.
|
| Personally, I'd prefer a self-funding mechanism, alone because
| governments (not just in the US, it's just most pronounced
| there) seem to be completely incapable of actually governing,
| and preferring to cut costs even where it's actually life-
| critical.
|
| [1] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers
|
| [2] https://sos.noaa.gov/catalog/datasets/air-traffic/
|
| [3]
| https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2023-03/F...
| filleduchaos wrote:
| > Personally, I'd prefer a self-funding mechanism, alone
| because governments (not just in the US, it's just most
| pronounced there) seem to be completely incapable of actually
| governing, and preferring to cut costs even where it's
| actually life-critical.
|
| The FAA is in fact a part of the US government, which self-
| funds its operations via taxes, such as the surcharge you've
| just suggested (and if you ever look at your flight tickets
| past the airport codes and flight times, you might notice
| that passengers already pay several taxes that fund the
| Department of Transportation and airports themselves).
| mschuster91 wrote:
| With "self-funding" I mean a mechanism that does not depend
| _at all_ on broken politics to pass budgets.
| ufocia wrote:
| ..., but can lead to inefficiencies and capture.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > A hobbyist pilot with his PPL needs a minimum of 24 hours
| and a checkride every two years
|
| Citation needed on the first part. (The second part is also
| not a checkride, but rather a biennial flight review, for
| which a checkride will replace the need for, but a BFR will
| suffice.)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I went by the PPL(A) requirements in Europe [1, lower half
| of page 2] - and gotta correct myself, it's only 12 hours
| flight time (with 12 starts/lands, so at least 12 separate
| flights of at least an hour length) plus a 1h checkride in
| the 12 months prior to expiry (every 24 months).
|
| Since the PPL is ICAO regulated, it should be the same case
| in the US.
|
| [1] https://www.sachsen-
| anhalt.de/fileadmin/Bibliothek/Politik_u...
| sokoloff wrote:
| It is not the same in the US. The only currency
| requirements for Part 91 (private) aviation per the FARs
| are the landing currency requirements (only needed for
| carrying passengers), IFR currency [if intending to fly
| IFR], and the BFR.
|
| Landing and IFR currency:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/61.57
|
| BFR: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/61.56
| mschuster91 wrote:
| So per your second link, our laws match, only that
| instead of the checkride we have to do in Europe, you
| have 1h of "ground training" review with a qualified
| person?
| bombcar wrote:
| You have to have an instructor willing to gamble his
| ticket on you not crashing stupidly.
|
| Other than that, there's no minimum hour requirement.
| CivBase wrote:
| The FAA has plenty of problems, but they are far from the only
| aviation regulatory body. I work on avionics and we have to
| deal with many authorities from around the world. I think the
| problem runs deeper than any single organization.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| ,,Well, it's hard to think of a tougher or more important job
| than being an air traffic controller. Go ahead and try, it will
| take you a while.
|
| Every day, more than 2.5 million Americans fly in or out of US
| airports, along with, of course, many billions of dollars of
| cargo. At any one time, there are about 5,000 aircraft above the
| United States.
|
| On 9/11, for example, air traffic controllers guided every one of
| them to a safe landing in a little over an hour. Go ahead and try
| that.
|
| It's the kind of job where even a small mistake could lead
| instantly to the deaths of hundreds of people. Not surprisingly,
| the hiring standards for air traffic controllers were long among
| the most selective of all federal jobs.
|
| Applicants typically needed to complete military service or pass
| the FAA's Collegiate Training Initiative Program. After that,
| they sat for a specially-designed exam that tested for relevant
| job skills, skills like math ability and complex problem-solving.
|
| Only those with the highest scores made the cut. The system was
| designed to choose the best. And for decades, it worked.
|
| Then, during the Obama administration, activist bureaucrats
| decided that the pool of air traffic controllers wasn't diverse
| enough. They never explained why diversity ought to matter in air
| traffic control or why it was more important than traditional
| goals like competence and public safety.
|
| The FAA, without a vote, just scrapped the old hiring system and
| replaced it with a diversity-friendly version. Most people have
| no idea this happened.
|
| The FAA now requires many of its applicants to fill out what they
| call a biographical questionnaire before any other screening.
| Those who answer the questions in a way that diversity monitors
| don't like cannot be considered for hiring, not matter how much
| experience they have or how well they may do on the other
| portions of the testing.
|
| The biographical questionnaire is all important. So, what is in
| this biographical questionnaire? Well, we can answer that
| question because we've got a copy of it and we also got
| information about how it is scored. And it's shocking!
|
| For example, one question asked test-takers to name their worst
| grade in high school. The preferred answer for that is science.
| In other words, if you can't do science, the FAA is especially
| eager to hire you as an air traffic controller. You get 10 points
| for being bad at science, according to the scoring sheet.
|
| Another question asked about work history. According to the FAA,
| the best answer to that question is you haven't worked at all in
| the past three years. You get 10 points for not working.
|
| Apparently, unemployed people make the best air traffic
| controllers. This is demented, by the way, but it's real. So do
| applicants who played a lot of sports in high school. They're
| rewarded too.
|
| By contrast, applicants who say they know a great deal about air
| traffic control get only five points. Trained pilots get two
| points.
|
| Once again, applicants who haven't worked at all, who have been
| unemployed for the past three years, get 10 points. Pilots, 2
| points. This is insane. And it's dangerous. It's also
| indefensible.
|
| We asked the FAA's top spokesman why applicants for an air
| traffic control job would get more points for playing high school
| sports than for flying planes or knowing a lot about air traffic
| control.
|
| His response, "I'm trying to find that out as well." Well, not
| actually trying very hard, it turns out. We still haven't heard
| back with a real explanation and, of course, we won't because
| there isn't one, other than shut up, diversity.
|
| But we won't shut up. This is too important. Lives are at stake."
|
| https://vdare.com/posts/faa-lowers-standards-for-air-traffic...
| jajko wrote:
| Man, if that wouldn't be fox news with that... extremely
| dangerous simpleton carlson, I would take what they/you say. As
| it stands, its just raw political propaganda cherry-picking
| anything not aligned to trump, if there is any truth at all.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Feel free to disprove anything stated here, if you can get
| past the friend/enemy distinction, or even the cheap ad-
| hominems.
| d_k_f wrote:
| https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-
| scandal-... seems to have a mostly unpolitical interpretation
| of the situation based on the case files of a related class
| action lawsuit. And no matter what you think of Fox and
| Tucker Carlson - it doesn't sound good.
| d_k_f wrote:
| The biographical assessment has been retired in 2018, by the
| way: https://www.faa.gov/faq/faa-getting-rid-air-traffic-
| skills-b...
|
| _EDIT: The next point might not be true. According
| tohttps://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-
| scandal-... the introduction of the BA "blindsided and
| outraged" CTI schools (the pre-training mentioned below). END
| OF EDIT_
|
| Additionally, it was only ever required for the general, open-
| for-all applicant pool (dubbed "off the street"). If you had
| certain qualifications or participated in a pre-training
| initiative, you were exempt (https://123atc.com/biographical-
| assessment). No idea what the distribution between "off the
| street" and other air controllers looks like, though.
| smgit wrote:
| Go read the McDonaldization of Society. This is now a 30-40
| year old trend. Its not possible to compare skill requirements
| of 2001 to today, thanks to tech and automation. We are moving
| from info automation to decision automation. So Human roles
| within the system move from being active to passive to non
| existent. Thats the trend line. Which means you don't need the
| same skill levels. Its more apt to compare things to running a
| very busy McDonalds. And some McDonald operations are much
| busier than the loads any ATC handles. Don't wait for the
| fucking managers and politicians to tell you that. They are
| fucking panderers who don't control anything about where the
| ship is heading.
| methuselah_in wrote:
| Let engineering team work as engineering team
| threatripper wrote:
| We can't have this, think of alternate solutions.
| cpursley wrote:
| And get some engineers on the executive boards.
| tacocataco wrote:
| Social engineers?
| CivBase wrote:
| Interesting idea. I'm going to need you to provide a cost-
| benefit analysis on this.
| drtgh wrote:
| Why? in the short term they will say "expensive", "low ROI",
| without analysing the long term gains when the bridge does
| not collapse, and those happy customers attract new customers
| to our company, to run away from those companies that have
| done such kind of ROI analysis in an attempt to justify their
| lack of common sense.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _run away from those companies that have done such kind
| of ROI analysis...lack of common sense_
|
| Are we seriously arguing for management by gut feeling over
| numbers in a thread about air traffic control?
|
| ROI is a weighing of costs and benefits. It isn't
| inherently short or long term. I can use 19th century
| physics to prove no plane can fly. That doesn't mean we
| conclude physics is fucked, never do physics again.
| drtgh wrote:
| What gut feeling? the comment is arguing towards
| engineering, not towards homeopathy.
|
| If you have to analyze the weighing of costs and
| benefits, you are showing there is one point were you
| will consider safety too expensive, or some acceptable
| accidents (as long as it is not someone you love) in the
| long term.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you are showing there is one point were you will
| consider safety too expensive, or some acceptable
| accidents_
|
| Yes. This is engineering. You can't engineer to infinite
| safety without infinite cost.
| drtgh wrote:
| Life is cheap, we know, but it sounds more like the board
| will receive a bonus increase, not like engineering.
| ysofunny wrote:
| gotta get rid of it so we can have free UFO tech
| seatac76 wrote:
| How much of this due to flight controllers and aircraft crew
| being overworked. Looks like the FAA is starting to take action
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/19/us/faa-to-increase-time-off-b...
| meowster wrote:
| 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.)
|
| #####
|
| 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.
|
| #####
|
| 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 wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| ERAM 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 wrote:
| How 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?
| rokkitmensch wrote:
| Another excellent example of an incumbent union with no
| competition absolutely hosing the humans its mission should
| be to advocate for. Go labor!
| meowster wrote:
| The union has done great things in the past, but lately not
| so much.
| mch82 wrote:
| How 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 wrote:
| There is work being done on remote tower systems (RTS).
|
| https://www.faa.gov/airports/planning_capacity/non_federal/
| r...
| bombcar wrote:
| ATC 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 wrote:
| London famously has ATC centralized:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Area_Control_Centre
| two_handfuls wrote:
| There have been experiments with remote ATC, for small
| airports especially. Here is a video:
| https://youtu.be/Ii_Gz1WbBGA?feature=shared
|
| I wonder how they're doing today.
| ufocia wrote:
| > 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Link to the recent memo from FAA administrator Mike Whitaker,
| which includes links to a recent report on the risks introduced
| by controller fatigue, and other related documents.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/statement-faa-administrator-mik...
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| I'm always surprised no one talks about the top of funnel for ATC
| controllers. As a pilot, ham radio operator, and operations
| enthusiast I considered it as a career change at 35 but it's an
| impossible field to switch into.
|
| In particular: Must be a U.S. citizen
| Must be age 30 or under on the closing date of the application
| period (with limited exceptions) Must have either three
| years of general work experience or four years of education
| leading to a bachelor's degree, or a combination of both
| Must relocate to Oklahoma City + a rural airport for multiple
| years. Salary is $135k/yr
|
| I suspect a lot of others get weeded out during the Hogan test
| (mmpi2) and no-history-of-ADHD-or-depression requirements. The
| extensive relocation periods don't bother me but one would have
| had to come straight out of school with the mission of doing ATC
| to even qualify.
|
| This hiring thread is worth a read:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1c1wmt2/i_am_an_air_t...
|
| Coming from startup land, it's so clear the lack of available and
| qualified controllers is directly down line of this thorny
| problem. It's the inverse corollary to growth fixes all problems.
| meowster wrote:
| The salary varies from 60k to a middle-of-nowhere tower to
| $150k in New York or California which is not enough to live on
| comfortably. Of course we are going to burn out and make
| mistakes when we have to drive an hour plus to and from the
| city six days a week because we can't afford to live any closer
| and staffing isn't better because people quit because of the
| pay.
|
| It's not a supply problem with staffing, it's a pay problem.
| Over 50,000 people apply every year, but people are quiting
| because quality of life sucks, and the biggest thing the FAA
| can do to change it, is to increase pay, and they aren't doing
| that.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| Given your username, I have to ask. Do you ever meow on
| guard?
|
| On a serious note, what are your views on privatization of
| ATC? The one airport in my region that I know is privatized
| has a horrible reputation among pilots and DPEs alike.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| Is there no union?
| selectodude wrote:
| There is but the last time they went on strike it didn't go
| well.
| mapt wrote:
| The last time the union asked for bathroom breaks Ronald
| Reagan shut down the nation's airspace for weeks and
| partially militarized that function in order to fire nearly
| all of the workforce.
|
| It is regarded as a historic, symbolic landmark act,
| shorthand for a turning point wherein the US collectively
| rejected unions.
| srackey wrote:
| Pretending they were just asking for bathroom breaks is
| total BS.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Coming from startup land, it's so clear the lack of available
| and qualified controllers is directly down line of this thorny
| problem.
|
| Am I wrong to feel personally that lowering the hiring
| standards for ATC controllers is a step in the wrong direction?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjoDn8zQgb8
|
| One of the top comments:
|
| > The controllers I know are PISSED about this because this was
| grossly ATC's fault.
|
| I'm personally terrified every-time I get on a plane. If you go
| to a restauraunt, your order coming out right and not making
| you sick depends on like, 3-4 systems/employees/supply
| chains/whatever. I'd say it's like 80% fine most of the time.
|
| How many supply chains does a plane go through? 80% fine most
| cuts it for like... mild tech production incidents, screwed up
| food orders
|
| How does it work out for airplanes/ATC?
| jessriedel wrote:
| Commercial air travel is the safest form of transportation in
| the history of the planet. If you're terrified every time you
| get on a plane, you shouldn't be using that intuition as a
| guide to policy.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Commercial air travel is the safest form of
| transportation in the history of the planet.
|
| Until it's not, right?
|
| Historically, it has been.
|
| If there was a 1/1,000,000,000 chance you were going to die
| on a plane ride, would you voluntarily choose to take it?
| Ok, what about 1/1,000,000?
| JoshGG wrote:
| Arnold Barnett, a statistician at the Massachusetts
| Institute of Technology who has studied airline safety,
| tells NPR that from 2018 to 2022, the chances of a
| passenger being killed on a flight anywhere in the world
| was 1 in 13.4 million. Between 1968 to 1977, the chance
| was 1 in 350,000.
|
| "Worldwide flying is extremely safe, but in the United
| States, it's extraordinarily so," Barnett said.
|
| In the U.S., there has not been a fatal plane crash
| involving a major American airline since February 2009,
| though there have been a handful of fatalities since
| then.
|
| Brickhouse, who has studied aviation safety for over 25
| years, often tells people that the biggest risk of any
| air journey tends to be driving to the airport.
|
| More than 40,000 people are killed on U.S. roads each
| year.
|
| "Aviation remains the safest mode of transportation," he
| says.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/03/12/1237262132/why-flying-
| safe-un....
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Forget how many people are killed, because when you get
| to that point, then things have already gotten really
| bad. Look at the leading indicators first: how many near-
| misses and other incidents (like mechanical failures)
| have happened in the US over the last 25 years, and is
| the trend up or down?
|
| The incident with the 737 door falling off is a good
| example here: this would have been a fatal incident if
| this had been a full flight. Thankfully, the seat next to
| the door was empty that day, so no one got seriously
| hurt, but it could have been much worse.
|
| It's hard to tell for sure without a reliable source of
| unbiased data rather than various news stories, but it
| sure seems that the frequency of incidents (in the US) is
| rising lately, not falling, and that's not good, it's
| like the canary in the coal mine. Things need to be fixed
| _before_ planes start falling out of the sky with
| spectacularly fatal results because too many deep
| systemic problems have come together to destroy the
| safety record that existed before. Instead, too many
| people want to rest on past successes, saying "look!
| It's so safe compared to driving!" and do nothing.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| Crackheads jumping in front of buses has nothing to do
| with whether motor vehicle travel is safe. An
| intellectually honest comparison would be to compare the
| incidence of fatalities while being driven around in a
| recent model sedan by a professional driver
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Safety ratings for travel are based on passenger miles,
| so your example is moot.
| jessriedel wrote:
| This isn't the conundrum you think it is. My estimated
| statistical value of life (revealed preference) is ~$30M,
| so I would get on a flight with a 10^-9 risk without
| thinking twice, but would value the 10^-6 risk at about
| $30. That is, I would choose to fly in a plane that had
| an additional 10^-6 risk of death if it was $50 cheaper,
| but not if it was only $5 cheaper.
| nine_k wrote:
| The odds to die in a car ride are about 4000 higher than
| in an airplane flight [1]. Knowing that, would you
| willingly ride a car?
|
| [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/
| 15thhsh/...
| sokoloff wrote:
| You have about a 1 in 1 billion chance of dying for every
| 750 feet or so that you drive.
|
| I take risks far in excess of 1 in a billion every day.
| whythre wrote:
| The industry is currently very safe, so lowering hiring
| standards will not affect overall safety rates (much)? Is
| that the argument?
| jessriedel wrote:
| I mean exactly what I said: anyone who has this _fear_ ,
| which is untethered from reality, should not trust their
| intuition about what mechanisms are important for safety.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Your statistics are a tough pitch when we're hearing
| about chronic deficiencies like bolts missing from doors
| and whatnot. I don't have a fear of flying, but my
| intuition tells me the effects of Boeing mismanagement
| will take years to peter out and I don't think it's
| unreasonable I'm avoiding their newer planes even if it
| causes me some inconvenience.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You know about the missing bolts and whatnot because
| there is a process for uncovering them. Do you want to
| guess how many missing bolts auto mechanics leave out
| when they do car repairs? Nobody knows because nobody is
| keeping track.
| weweersdfsd wrote:
| It shouldn't take an incident like a panel detaching mid-
| flight to discover the missing bolts. The processes
| clearly aren't working very well at Boeing.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| You accused OP of letting his opinions be molded by
| "feels"/fears but you're doing the same thing just in the
| opposite direction.
|
| We know about the bolts because a door blew off a plane
| mid-flight, do I need to tell you how we know about MCAS?
|
| Air travel is the safest but thanks to the exact opposite
| mentality you are presenting.
|
| Science&technology is not a God and engineers are not the
| patron saints.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > We know about the bolts because a door blew off a plane
| mid-flight
|
| We know about the bolts because a door blew off a plane
| mid-flight _and there are reporting requirements when
| that happens_. Then there is an investigation.
|
| When a door falls off a car driving down the road, the
| driver picks it up and puts it in the trunk and has it
| reattached or replaced. Whether they even file an
| insurance claim depends on their deductible and either
| way nobody is doing a root cause analysis to prevent it
| from happening again.
| jessriedel wrote:
| I can't tell if you're arguing (a) that the old
| statistics aren't a reliable guide to the future because
| of recent events or (b) you can't/won't listen to the
| data because of strong emotions induced by the Boeing
| stories.
|
| If (a), then you're wrong. It's exactly because this has
| been going on at Boeing for years (and because planes are
| so outrageously same that they can get 10x more dangerous
| without it much affecting the assessment) that we can
| upper bound how much new risk there is at a quite small
| level.
|
| If (b), at least you're being honest.
| meowster wrote:
| I see and hear about the mistakes that my coworkers make that
| don't make the news, and I still have no problem flying.
| There are many layers of safety including the systems and
| pilots onboard the planes, and statistics still show it is
| still safer than driving.
|
| Lowering standards is definitely the wrong way to go.
| Increasing pay to attract and keep good controllers is the
| better route.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| You are going to the wrong places to eat if your food isn't
| even "fine" 20% of the time.
|
| How many supply chains does your gallon of milk go through?
| Are 20% of gallons of milk spoiled, rotten, undrinkable,
| causing illness?
|
| Nope.
|
| Your entire arguments flies in the face of a mountain of
| empirical evidence of the safety of modern scale systems.
| foobarian wrote:
| > Must be age 30 or under
|
| I wonder what legal exception allows this to be a requirement.
| This would never fly on a tech job posting.
| jxcl wrote:
| The federal government is not beholden to federal employment
| laws, ironically
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I assume it the same that also allows for age cut off for
| military. If I remember correctly, I enlisted young, got out
| and no plan to go back. 32 is the age cut off to enlisting.
| Prior service gets like a 2-3 year extension. What is
| surprising is that the cut off doesn't match the military's
| cut off.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Can sort of understand for military, totally don't
| understand for ATC.
|
| Do other countries with substantial densities of planes in
| the air have the same age prerequisite, and in the ones
| that don't are their planes colliding any worse than in the
| States?
| xcv123 wrote:
| "Why do air traffic controllers have to be under 31 years
| old? The reasoning behind this is that FAA safety
| regulations require controllers to stop working traffic
| at age 56, and to receive a federal pension, you need to
| have worked at least 25 years.
|
| By making the maximum starting age cutoff 30, all new
| hire controllers have the potential to do their 25 years
| and earn a pension prior to reaching retirement age.
|
| Pro Tip: The one publicly stated exception to the 30-year
| starting age cut off is for former military air traffic
| controllers. These candidates may apply even if they are
| older than 30."
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >The one publicly stated exception to the 30-year
| starting age cut off is for former military air traffic
| controllers.
|
| This makes me wonder: what portion of America's ATCs are
| former military ATCs? I'm guessing it's fairly
| substantial, and without this convenient source of
| recruits (because someone who spent time in the military
| doing ATC now has a very convenient pipeline into a
| civilian job), the FAA might be forced into making
| changes.
|
| It's similar for pilots: a lot of them are former
| military pilots, so they got all their training at
| government expense, and the industries that hire them
| don't have to pay for that. Pilots without a military (or
| police) background generally have to pay for their own
| training, which is extremely expensive, so not that many
| people do it, because these jobs don't pay _that_ well to
| begin with. Without the military giving free training to
| all these people, a lot of industries in America wouldn
| 't have such a cheap source of readily-trained labor and
| things would look very different.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| I don't know how many actually did it. But a lot of the
| ATC Navy I knew planned that after their service they
| would just go civilian side. So I imagine it is
| substantial. Although, there is no telling, at least
| anecdotally from my experience how many actually follow
| through, or did 10 years of ATC in the Navy and decided
| to say 'screw that.'
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Can sort of understand for military, totally don 't
| understand for ATC_
|
| Seems rather obvious. You'll be trained on the job for
| some time, and then be expected to have a career at ATC
| for a decade or so at least. They don't want 40+ or 50+
| year olds with slower responses and the gradual
| appearance of physical and medical issues starting to
| work there...
|
| It's not like it's a job about thinking in an office
| without major consequences of a responce delayed 30
| seconds...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > 32 is the age cut off to enlisting.
|
| For the audience at home: Marines 28, Army 35, Air/Space
| forces 39, Navy 41, Coast Guard 42.
|
| ref:https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/military-age-
| limits/
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Wow, 41 for the Navy. Just looked it up and they bumped
| it in 2022. Thats insane. Looking at the article it must
| have had a previous bump or my memory isn't recalling
| right. When I enlisted in 2012, the age limit was 32-ish
| with 35 for returning prior enlisted. I couldn't imagine
| being 40 and being almost 20 years older than other
| recruits. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-
| navy/2022/11/07/facing-d...
| mynameisnoone wrote:
| Also from startup land. I only have points 1 and 3. The salary
| is laughable unless you have no other option. I can make more
| or less a personality test seem however I want it to seem so
| they're about as useful as Rorschach tests and polygraphy. The
| no ADHD or depression requirements: well fuck me, I'll stick to
| failing at foolish things rather than bother with an
| antiquated, potentially dangerous, soon to be automated
| orchestration process rife with opportunities for human error,
| and instead take a train or ship. It's arguably safer and
| definitely greener.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >and instead take a train or ship. It's arguably safer and
| definitely greener.
|
| I'm pretty sure that cruise ships are definitely NOT greener
| than airplanes for intercontinental travel. (And trains are
| useless for such.)
|
| Some kind of ocean-going passenger ship optimized for per-
| passenger fuel economy probably could beat jumbo jets, but we
| don't have those kinds of ships. And they wouldn't be very
| nice: they wouldn't have swimming pools, spas, nice
| restaurants, etc., and instead would put people into 3-high
| bunk beds in shared dormitory rooms.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _The salary is laughable unless you have no other option._
|
| If it was just 100K would place one in the 77th percentile in
| the US.
|
| The 135K mentioned is 87 percentile.
|
| So hardly "laughable unless you have no other option".
|
| Maybe "laughable unless you can have a job in software
| engineering" or in some similar bubble.
|
| > _The no ADHD or depression requirements: well fuck me, I
| 'll stick to failing at foolish things rather than bother
| with an antiquated, potentially dangerous, soon to be
| automated orchestration process rife with opportunities for
| human error, and instead take a train or ship_
|
| Yeah, commercial flying isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
| Neither is ATC personnel.
|
| And good luck getting to Europe or Latin America with a ship
| from the US. At least you'll have enough time to learn new
| hobbies.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| also, and this is affecting a lot of other federal jobs or jobs
| requiring federal licensing like CDLs, you can't smoke weed.
|
| given how popular weed has become in legalized states, this is
| quickly becoming a major issue for all of these lines of work
| sneak wrote:
| Personally, I think safety-critical roles like ATC should be
| restricted to those who don't take recreational psychoactives
| of any kind, alcohol included. This includes in their off
| hours.
| ntumlin wrote:
| > recreational psychoactives of any kind
|
| I'd prefer my ATC has a cup of coffee if they want it.
|
| Aside from that, what does what happens in their off hours
| matter provided they're coming to work sober?
| sneak wrote:
| Many psychoactives have medium term effects on the brain.
| Regular marijuana consumption causes memory and attention
| deficits even when not stoned. That matters.
|
| There is even an argument that caffeine should be
| restricted in such roles. I certainly wouldn't want ATC
| operating on too many energy drinks or coffee.
|
| If we are banning people who take antidepressants, we
| should also be banning people who take edibles on their
| day off.
|
| If we are going purely performance-based, then there
| should be a mandatory cognitive function test before the
| start of every shift, testing working memory, reaction
| times, coordination, etc. "sober" is a wide spectrum and
| encompasses "ate tons of edibles 48 hours ago and came to
| work on 3 hours of sleep and a five hour energy shot on
| the way in".
| coldtea wrote:
| > _given how popular weed has become in legalized states,
| this is quickly becoming a major issue for all of these lines
| of work_
|
| I'd rather my ATC is not smoking weed before arriving at the
| job (or worse, between breaks)...
|
| Lots of studies of how it impairs reaction times, executive
| function, and motor control
|
| (Of course the same goes for medicinally subscribeb anything
| that functions like that, including all kinds of pills)
| zamadatix wrote:
| Who said anything about being/getting high at the job site?
| ATCs can drink alcohol but they sure as hell can't get
| drunk during their break or before they drive in.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Who said anything about being /getting high at the job
| site?_
|
| Nobody said it, but their habbit of casual weed use
| hinted at it...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yet we do not apply the same standard to alcohol.
|
| The way the law and testing works now, you cannot have
| had any weed of any kind in the last three months.
| incomingpain wrote:
| I was an air traffic controller, emphasis on was. You
| absolutely dont want to be one.
| Suzuran wrote:
| I met a kindergarten teacher who left an ATC job for American
| public education because the pay was higher.
|
| Let that sink in.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Money isn't even the factor. It's just an impossible job
| not worth the stress/trauma associated.
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| They probably quit before getting certified - once you're
| certified you make $70k minimum and that's at a shitty
| little tower in the midwest
| petermcneeley wrote:
| There shouldnt even be pilots much less air traffic controllers.
| This is the same as the people that think subways need human
| drivers.
| meowster wrote:
| Air Traffic Controller here. Tour an ATC facility and talk with
| them. You'll see why it can't be completely automated.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Yes but 99% probably could be. Go to Vancouver sometime. All
| the subways are automated. But in rare cases they need to be
| driven remotely and every few years they need to be driven by
| a human.
| tnmom wrote:
| ATC is a unique thing - if you're interested, suggest
| listening to the https://www.opposingbases.com/ podcast.
| It's eye opening how much complexity they deal with, and
| how frequent the edge cases really are.
| nostrademons wrote:
| It's the same issue that self-driving cars have. 99% can be
| automated. The remaining 1% is a bitch, and life-
| threatening.
|
| I've heard piloting described as 99% moments of boredom,
| followed by 1% moments of sheer terror. If you actually
| could program a computer to anticipate all of the possible
| scenarios in that 1%, it'd be good to take the sheer terror
| out of the equation. But it's frightening _because_ those
| are the moments when something has gone wrong and normalcy
| no longer applies, and you need to apply collected
| knowledge, wisdom, and experience to save your life and the
| lives of your passengers.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| It is actually not like self driving at all. In the self
| driving case the nominal situation requires hard AI.
|
| In aircraft the nominal situation does not require hard
| AI, only the emergency situation. If aircraft did not
| have mechanical failures the nominal situation is really
| well defined.
|
| The ATC job is even more nominal since they are not
| actually dealing with the mechanics of the plane.
|
| I would guess that you could make a video game that
| covers 99.999% of all ATC jobs and you could undoubtly
| with enough effort also program an AI to cover this.
| nostrademons wrote:
| With self-driving cars the nominal situation does not
| require hard AI. I remember sitting in a TGIF back in
| 2012, when Waymo was still called Google Chauffeur, and
| they projected what the self-driving car sees as it
| drives down a road. It's just boxes of potential hazards,
| detected largely by LIDAR but backed up by cameras and
| traditional computer-vision approaches.
|
| The non-exceptional case for self-driving was a solved
| problem in 2012. My boss rode in a self-driving car at
| the time; they were available for beta testing by
| Googlers in Mountain View then. Heck, this is what L3
| self-driving is, and is offered on the market now by
| Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Kia, and others.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Take all that you think and say about self driving cars
| and apply it to an ATC. The ATC job is probably an order
| of magnitude more automatable.
|
| Again I think something that would resolve this question
| quite easily would be a game that covers the domain. You
| can actually get a game that covers ~98% of what cars
| have to deal with. This would be something like GTA V
| nostrademons wrote:
| You can get a game that covers 98% of ATCs have to deal
| with:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Control_(video_game)
|
| It's the missing 2% that's hard.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| This game looks very low budget and simplistic. Perhaps
| with higher budget one could get to 99.9% and then one
| would have a proper simulation of the jobs of ATCs. Then
| you hook in your AI prove that it can perform. Then you
| replace 99.9% of the human ATCs with this AI.
|
| simple as.
| drtgh wrote:
| When one read the acronym "AI", should be replaced with
| the synonym "statistics", which shows how contradictory
| about redundancy and accuracy can be the people who ate
| the marketing about these algorithms, and are thinking
| about to replace real trained intelligence, humans in
| this case, with it.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| I dont mean AI here as in NN or LLM I mean like the
| traditional AI like you would find in an RTS.
|
| But the proof is always in the pudding. I highly suspect
| that someone could write an AI that could play "Flight
| Controls" and play it flawlessly. So what does this
| prove? Well it proves that 98% of the work of the ATC can
| be automated.
| thatsit wrote:
| > It is actually not like self driving at all. In the
| self driving case the nominal situation requires hard AI.
|
| I agree with that. One could easily automate aviation
| like subways. However, you need to push the humans out,
| at least the controllers, possibly the pilots. This is
| far from doable and that's why we end with the driving
| situation. In order to solve it, you need a lot of AI in
| order to deal with all the human-machine interactions.
|
| First step in this would be to install a high-bandwidth
| digital comms between ground and planes. Currently they
| use analog AM, which is a century old! CPDLP is from the
| 80s, so much like SMS in phones. Nobody should even dare
| to market it as new.
|
| Then again there simply isn't anyone or any organization
| that is seriously pushing new technologies on planes and
| on the ground simultaneously. The plane-ATC interface has
| not gotten any update for decades and there is nobody
| aiming for redoing it. ATC and airlines, together with
| their respective manufacturers and suppliers are trapped
| inside their silos, unable to see trees from the forest.
| MichaelMug wrote:
| The topic of automation always comes up when discussing ATC or
| aviation incidents. One says automation, another says it can't
| be done. And both parties end up talking past each other.
|
| Let's go back in time. Long ago pilots would give position
| updates. Now that is done with radar and transponders. This is
| a form of automation.
|
| There seems to be an uptick in ATC mistakes. Recently as this
| week where a tower cleared a takeoff and also cleared four
| aircraft to cross the same runway. So a form of automation I
| would like to see is something to communicate to everyone that
| a runway is not clear.
| ggernov wrote:
| Just stop hiring incompetent people in maintenance departments.
| Planes are falling out of the sky primarily because of bad
| maintenance and poorly developed procedures to conduct
| maintenance.
|
| Pilot standards also need to be increased. Everyone doesn't
| "deserve" to be a pilot. I don't care about their race or gender,
| I just care that they can pilot the plane in stressful conditions
| without error compared to pilot quality when we had the safest
| flight records.
| tnmom wrote:
| What incidents are you looking at that make you think pilot
| standards are too low? In the US?
| chasingthewind wrote:
| I'm hesitant to comment because while I'm an aviation fan I
| really know very little. I subscribe to VAS Aviation and
| Blancolirio where a lot of these incidents are reported and
| analyzed and one thing that continually strikes me is that the
| architecture of airport runways seems like an incredible arsenal
| of footguns.
|
| The way the runways intersect each other and parallel each other
| creating the need for complex and sometimes dangerous
| intersections seems like such an unfortunate and possibly
| unsolvable problem. Airports are forced by economic and
| logistical necessity into spaces that are really too small to
| solve these issues with better layout and that means the
| solutions "have" to be found in process or technology.
|
| I've encountered constraints like this so often in software but
| mercifully I've never worked on anything with life or death
| consequences.
| bombcar wrote:
| The parallel nature is caused by the realities of wind; you
| don't want to be doing crosswind activities unless forced to.
|
| Even airports with "unlimited" space have parallel runways and
| resulting taxiways.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Being a pilot: not that hard in reality.
|
| There are even uncontrolled airports with intersecting runways.
|
| Cars have a way harder time handling red lights than ATC does
| dealing with runway crossings, at least from a number of dead
| people point of view.
| financetechbro wrote:
| Listening to the radios is an eye opening experience. There was a
| case in NYC recently where one pilot was given clearance for
| takeoff and right after three different planes were given
| permission to cross the same runway, forcing the pilot to abort
| the takeoff. Pretty wild stuff
| piloto_ciego wrote:
| Aviation is fine. I was a pilot for for a living during my 20s.
| Aviation is extremely safe, it's a good model for safety
| (checklists, no fault error reporting, etc).
|
| The problem is the push to put more airplanes through the system,
| and the bottlenecks to the system. Every few weeks you see a
| video about some near miss in at EWR or LGA. We need to simply
| tolerate less efficiency or hire more people.
|
| Also, and this is a really controversial take, as an AI adjacent
| person now that I'm not in the cockpit, I think LLMs and AI are a
| natural solution to some of these problems... I see ATC getting
| automated before SICs are.
| BWStearns wrote:
| One thing that stands out to me is that most (all?) of the
| near-incidents people are worried about are aircraft are Part
| 135 ATP ops. GA will always be mildly dangerous, and
| increasingly they'll just not let you near a Class B in your
| clapped out 150, and that's fine. It's too expensive to
| retrofit the trainer fleet.
|
| But the big guys _all_ have working ADSB/other safety equipment
| and have operators that would be able to add new mandatory
| equipment in a reasonable time period. I wonder if they could
| pick up the pace in terms of safety tech adoption for 135s to
| relieve the bottlenecking.
| asne11 wrote:
| > the air traffic control system is not inherently governmental.
| Doing what Paul did for 30 years is not an inherently
| governmental activity. It's safety critical.
|
| That's absolute nonsense, I'm wondering what angle she's playing
| here. If it's safety critical, such as ambulances and functioning
| stoplights, that's what makes it governmental.
|
| > You can't make those kind of investments if you're a government
| agency, you have to pay for things up front, nor can you make the
| kind of incremental improvements that air traffic control needs.
|
| Sure you can. Look at healthcare.gov, or TSA.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-04-22 23:02 UTC)