An exclusive report by the New York Post claims that on Monday evening between 18:30 to 21:30, flights out of Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) were handled by just one air traffic controller and a trainee. The report quotes a New York-based controller describing the situation as “pure insanity.” It also noted that an FAA spokesperson said that there were at least three controllers scheduled for each hour on Monday night but did not clarify how many of them were fully certified personnel.
The New York Times reported something similar, adding that four people familiar with the situation said that the number of fully certified controllers on duty to manage Newark’s air traffic was sometimes one or two. These figures are shocking because the target number of controllers for Newark to manage traffic in those hours is around 14-15.
I categorically refuse to fly under Trump’s FAA.
I really wish we had better trains in the USA.
Voting to make cuts to an already ailing ATC system makes no sense to me. Simply from a self-preservation aspect, I would think this is one service that all politicians and oligarchs would maintain. It doesn’t matter if you fly private or commercial, everyone uses and needs ATC to fly safely.
At least with something like global warming/climate change, I can see people selfishly believing it won’t effect them during their lifetime, but the 2nd and 3rd order effects of removing ATC can be immediate and fatal.
I only hope that a minimum number of bystanders are killed when poetic justice occurs.
Maybe elon convinced them that grok could do the job next year. The same as robotaxis are a thing since 2018.
It’s because the people at the tip top who regulate ATC don’t have any idea what’s actually involved. The actual regulators are very experienced and valuable. The suits think ‘It already works so why spend money on a system that already works.’ It gives a financial opportunity to cut on capital expenditures and engage in stock buy backs.
It’s probably going to take several fully loaded passenger jets or just two private jets colliding.
Whacko conspiracy time: they’re also working on cutting down Amtrak’s staffing and cutting funding for rail transit. Gas is expensive af and driving is uncomfortable and slow (not that Amtrak is any faster). What if the plan here is to just make interstate travel so painful that people stop travelling? I doubt it, though, I think this is just extra strong vanilla incompetence. I can’t imagine what the point of that would be, for starters.
Think of it this way: You need to get out of a bad living situation, and you have $1000 that you can allocate to travel. If there’s public transit to an airport, you can easily take a flight to anywhere in the country, or even to another country, well within that budget. If you can get on a bus, you can make it at least a few states away. If you can get on a train, likely to any state on it’s network.
If none of those are available, you have to buy a car or take taxis. Buying a car means buying gas and insurance, plus having a license, and the cost of registration. That $1000 might get you about as far as a full tank of gas will last, the license plate is traceable, and you have a much higher chance of getting hurt in an accident.
Now consider that situation, and you are a pregnant woman in Mississippi, which has some of the most restrictive laws banning abortion. You live in an abusive household and do not want to leave, as well as end the pregnancy. With access to a bus and plane, you can get to anywhere in the US to have your abortion, likely with money to spare. If you only have a car and one tank of gas, you’re not going to make it to any state that would allow that abortion.
This kind of shit is part of how I square government-supplied mass transit with libertarian/anarchist views. Cars are the gateway to so much intrusive, authoritarian bullshit, it’s actually nuts how people see them as tools of freedom.
In my admittedly limited experience, rail is a hell of a lot faster getting into an urban area.
It depends a lot on where you are. In the west? 50% of Amtrak stations are out in a suburb or a field or some bullshit like that. In the east, you’re absolutely correct. We’ve basically spent 100 years dismantling, underfunding, and obstructing passenger rail to prioritize cars, and it, uh, shows.
I posted this on another thread, but thought it was worth sharing here as well.
Heads up this is about to get worse. Republicans recently voted to cut retirement funding for air traffic controllers. By cutting the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) for workers retiring before 62 (all Air Traffic Controllers are required to retire at 56 and are eligible to retire at 50), this is completely fucking over ATCs who continue working by changing their retirement math.
An open secret with ATCs is that they have numerous medical qualifications that they have to maintain to keep working. For example, if they see a doctor about sleep apnea, depression, alcoholism, etc they lose their medical qualification and are forced to take a medical retirement.
So what happens if you’re an ATC in your 40s and the government says “hey you can keep working for the next 10 years and retire without this FERS supplement… Or you can tell your doctor that you snore at night and take an immediate medical retirement right now and get paid more in retirement”?
TLDR; We’re about to have a shit load of Air Traffic Controllers taking medical retirements and these staffing problems are going to explode.
they’ll probably (unwisely) have AI take over. because nothing bad ever happens with AI…
There’s a reason Air Traffic runs on old ass systems built in the 80s. It’s because that shit just works and there is zero room for error. Moving to AI would kill thousands of people.
Did we make America great yet?
there is a reason they say ‘safety regulations are written in blood’…
this won’t change until there is a major disaster, and even then, there is no reason to think it will make any difference to this current dumpster fire of an administration…
(…not to disparage dumpster fires, as they at the very least provide heat and light)
It takes like 2 years of specialized training to get operators in these comm towers.
Part of me is wondering if they’re purposely allowing a disaster to occur so they can push through some bullshit AI solution and layoff all existing human ATC
Private jets use mostly the same runways and traffic patterns, and they have enough political power to do whatever they want without prior justification. Occam’s and Hanlon’s razors both tell us it’s probably just greedy idiots. They might try some AI bullshit, but only as part of their tried-and-true method of “break things first and panic later when you realize they were load-bearing”
just what I want to hear from a drunk engineer : )
Could you imagine. For three straight hours, having thousands of lives in your hands knowing full well one mistake could send hundreds of them to their deaths. Bruh. Air traffic controllers need to strike.
How’d that work out last time?
How hard would it be to piss on Reagan’s grave?
They are federal employees. Federal employees can’t go on strike. Shit is fucked up. The US hates it’s labor force and that’s by design.
I keep seeing people say that… But what are they going to do? Fire them?! They have a fucking moral obligation to those flying under their watch, and if they are unable to do that for whatever reason, everything needs to stop until the issues are resolved. Not continuously hoping that crash won’t happen. It’s a matter of when not if.
All of your questions can literally be answered with history, as this type of stuff has already happened. Long story short, since others have typed it here as well, Reagan as president fired all 11k ATC workers and forced the Air Force to help pick up the slack while they looked for more workers. Some of those ATC workers got rehired, but it essentially prevents ATC from having any control of their careers.
forced the Air Force to help pick up the slack
Kindly, do you have a primary source for this? I would like to learn more.
and apparently the stress level and PTSD without actual incidents is very high. can’t imagine being responsible for that many lives and probably not getting paid nearly enough.
It’s less the pay and more the conditions. There isn’t really a wage that would justify making aomeone work like that.
Ya they signed up to help planes land safely. They didn’t sign up for incompetent leadership and stress. Too many people in America think, well they signed up for the job so bite the bullet. But no! If you’re job is made harder and more stressful because of poor working conditions, poor leadership, and poor compensation “You did but sign up for that shit!” you signed up because the alternative is worse. Additionally every corporation have decided together to race to the bottom so no matter where you work it’s wealthy ass hats making decisions. You didn’t sign up for that.
Sounds like he’s in a very strong bargaining position at least
They should go on strike but be more organized, unlike the Reagan era
Federal workers cannot strike, by law
I don’t know the full details, but I’m not sure how being more organized in the Reagan era would have helped. If the boss is willing to fire everyone, then a strike doesn’t matter anymore.
I guess you could do more to try to prevent scabs from coming in? It’s already incredibly difficult to train up the scabs in this particular niche, and they were willing to go that route, anyway.
They’re understaffed as fuck. The scabs would be completely unqualified and people will die. Not a good look for those striking but at this point it sounds like every day without a crash is a miracle. I completely support a strike.
They’re not slaves. If they’re getting fucked then they have every right to not work.
That controller should have walked off and notified media no flights should be handled by Newark until they get their shit together.
This type of heroics can kill people.
Yeah. Or the ATC could just tell all incoming planes to divert to another airport because it is “not safe to land”.
It would cause chaos and keep everyone a bit safer.
If there is only one ATC at the helm, precisely ZERO flights should come or go.
Usually, it’s a chain of errors/failures that leads to accidents, after the many years of dissecting and trying to prevent air disasters.
2002 Uberlingen collision is one such case where while the reliance on a sole air traffic controller was part of that chain. And that was with one controller instead of the desired two. 50% headcount. Here it’s 1 or 2 instead of 14-15? That’s 7-14% headcount.
We know overworking people and understaffing introduce substantial risk to managing, assisting, and responding to flights. Even supposing this poor soul could adequately manage the workload by themselves, the introduction of a single problem could throw all of it off.
so the blame is on the last traffic controller left?
I’m glad I’m not the only one who gets annoying comments from people who can’t read
This type of heroics can kill people.
So that line is not placing blame on the traffic controller holding the tower together?
I assume they are frustrated and they’re talking about how a good heroic outcome has sinister alternatives at every fork in the road. Different people react differently and the people who heroically soldier on are not simply saving the day, they are like an extension of dangerous policy. They’re never going to talk to the controller so it’s more general I think. Like “don’t be a hero, don’t be like this guy, if your bosses create a deadly environment then walk away”
Edit: I can be hypocritical and an asshole so if I say try assuming people are correct, might want to just ignore me.
No, I like your take and while I still disagree on focusing on the most vulnerable person in the chain, at least the way you describe it makes sense as it includes the entire decision making chain.
Thanks for taking the time to explain.
No, it’s not.
So saying the person who stayed behind to be a hero could have killed people is a compliment to that person?
No. It’s saying that the person who stayed behind to do their job (like a hero would do) should have just walked out the door … because if there had been any plane crashes (that killed passengers) that person would have been blamed for them.
Funny how you can say it in a way that does sound like you are not blaming this person…
Give them a raise! Fire everybody who let and allowed this to happen.
Here’s a fantastic case for a union. There simply MUST be a minimum number of personnel looking after any given airspace for it to be considered safe, or the whole area gets shut down. It really is pure insanity, and no single person should be responsible for all flights at an airport. If something bad had happened who would get blamed? Who would live the rest of their life knowing they had been taken advantage of and put in a position where over a hundred lives were lost? It’s simply unacceptable that one person should bear that responsibility.
Oh they had one. In 1981 they called a strike, and Reagan fired the 11 000 ATC who were on strike.
That is one of the reasons why labor protection are virtually inexistent in the US, as it’s illegal for federal employees to strike. Wild…
The weird thing for me here is why does the president have power over the employment of random government employees. I’m used to employment having legal protections so that prople can’t be fired just because.
The President is the head of the executive branch. i.e the Chief Executive. i.e. CEO.
Not defending this, just an explanation. Usually it works ok, but not when we elect Republicans as we’ve seen again and again.
Every generation of Americans decide they want their President to be a bit more like the king that they rebelled from.
This is what pisses me off the most they’re slow walking back to King George III like nothing happened.
The US doesn’t care about their labor force.
because we’re a family company!!
Haven’t you ever heard of sMaLL gOvErNmEnT??
They do have a union
If something bad had happened who would get blamed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Überlingen_mid-air_collision
“Devastated by the death of his wife and two children aboard flight 2937, Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect, held Peter Nielsen personally responsible for their deaths. He tracked down and stabbed Nielsen to death, in the presence of Nielsen’s wife and three children, at his home in Kloten, near Zürich, on 24 February 2004. The Swiss police arrested Kaloyev at a local motel shortly afterward, and in 2005, he was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter. However, his sentence was later reduced after a Swiss judge ruled that he had acted with diminished responsibility.”
Don’t read that article any further. It only gets worse.
By his logic, Nielsen’s kids should now hunt him and kill him for killing their father.
What if he needs to take a dump?
Was he not wearing socks?
Not after the first hour or so.
Here is the neat part. ATC controllers in training needed a huge bump in recruiting numbers 10 years ago. These jobs aren’t something you can pull people off the street to do. There can be zero mistakes, trainees need to be vetted and undergo tons of hours in training and education to be experienced enough to work unsupervised in the tower.
I reckon we are past the point of no return with the current system. Either we are going to see a reduction in operational airports or we are gonna see a lot more automated systems directing traffic.
Another option: high speed trains
oh no sorry, it’s US
Or option 3: the whole airport system collapses.
Haven’t you been paying attention? AI will do it.
Yeah, that’s what they just said, Al from Newark did it all for a full 3 hours.
The man’s an absolute megamind.
Al AI huh can’t tell them apart. Font failure.
Put some respect on A1’s name
For high steaks work, trust A1.
No thanks we are a proud red blooded American nation and we use ketchup like real men.
Wasn’t something similar already one of the reasons behid the crash of two airplanes over Switzerland back in the early 2000s? They had a single overworked controller who missed collision course. You’d think people learn from mistakes, but I guess not.
I recall he was left watching someone else’s screen while they went out for a break. He did notice the collision course but unfortunately gave one aircraft a direction that was the opposite of the TCAS directive, then missed further radio comms, so the confused crew followed the ATC order and collided with the other aircraft. I think that air traffic controller got hunted down and killed by the husband of one of the victims too… a horribly tragic story for all concerned really.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Überlingen_mid-air_collision
One of them followed TCAS, according to procedure, the other one mistankenly thought they were supposed to follow ATC. So they both ended up going the same direction.
New Standard Operating Procedure that is clarified after the accident is that you always ignore ATC and follow the TCAS Resolution Advisory.
If ATC says anything, pilots are supposed to say “Unable, Resolution Advisory”
