The Aerospace Industry Discussion Thread

[infernal666]

It's really not. There are sound human performance reasons to have mandatory retirement in this kind of line of work. Cognitive flexibility and response times degrade with advanced age. They could maybe move to a performance-based standard, where controllers are tested in high-stress simulations to make sure they're keeping up to the level expected.

The other reason for it is that the intense stress of the job comes with increased medical issues. They don't want to have could-have-retired-as-planned controllers instead dropping dead or disappearing on medical leave.

Maybe there should be a separate status for controllers too old or ill to actively operate, but still fully able to train and fulfill other support roles, to keep the experience available.

It wouldn't be such a high stress environment if they actually hired enough people so they aren't working working 12+ hour shifts, there is no damn reason in existence other than sheer lazy greed La Guardia doesn't have minimum a dozen people in that tower 24/7, having maybe 3 is insane.

 

[Quarthinos]

It wouldn't be such a high stress environment if they actually hired enough people so they aren't working working 12+ hour shifts, there is no damn reason in existence other than sheer lazy greed La Guardia doesn't have minimum a dozen people in that tower 24/7, having maybe 3 is insane.

I'm not disagreeing about the need for more staff, but how is greed part of the issue? ATC personnel are government employees, so who is being greedy?

 

[tigas]

Isar Aerospace trying to launch from Andoya Spaceport

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbZj8PxmUk

[edit: HOLD at T-2 seconds and ABORT on the first countdown. 15 minute launch window for tonight has elapsed, not going to space today]

 

[infernal666]

I'm not disagreeing about the need for more staff, but how is greed part of the issue? ATC personnel are government employees, so who is being greedy?

ATC funding is derived from the AATF, which is funded by excise taxes on tickets, which regularly gets gutted by a certain party at corporate behest, hence ATC has no money for upgrades/personnel, thus the greed.

 

[MilleniX]

It wouldn't be such a high stress environment if they actually hired enough people so they aren't working working 12+ hour shifts, there is no damn reason in existence other than sheer lazy greed La Guardia doesn't have minimum a dozen people in that tower 24/7, having maybe 3 is insane.

Even at full staffing, working busy positions would still be very high stress. For the 20-30 minutes at a time controllers might stay on console with normal relief available, they have to remain 100% attentive with multiple interactions per minute for the entire duration. The only direct way to mitigate that would be to simply reduce the flow of traffic through the system. More broadly, the flow could be smoothed and simplified by better procedure design.

Even with potential improvements, there's still fundamentally the problem that the system's users want to push as much traffic through it as they can, and it's ATC's job to facilitate that traffic.

 

[Robin-3]

We can all look at this accident and say "that was inevitable, we really need to invest in recruiting and training for ATC positions," but I'm afraid this isn't enough of a tragedy to make it happen. The Potomac collision wasn't.

I don't want to know what magnitude of tragedy will be severe enough to actually force meaningful change in this area, but I'm afraid we'll find out at some point.

 

[diabol1k]

Maybe there should be a separate status for controllers too old or ill to actively operate, but still fully able to train and fulfill other support roles, to keep the experience available.

There sort of is - at least some of them go work at non-FAA towers (there are 300-something in the US). A coworker’s partner is earning his ATC stripes, so to speak, at one of those non-FAA towers under the [unofficial] mentorship of a retired FAA controller. I think coworker’s partner is planning to apply for a position at an FAA tower through an alternative entry program.

 

[MilleniX]

There sort of is - at least some of them go work at non-FAA towers (there are 300-something in the US). A coworker’s partner is earning his ATC stripes, so to speak, at one of those non-FAA towers under the [unofficial] mentorship of a retired FAA controller. I think coworker’s partner is planning to apply for a position at an FAA tower through an alternative entry program.

Right, but I meant that they should still have positions available to them at the FAA, applying their recent high-end experience toward helping to develop their successors for those same positions.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

It's really not. There are sound human performance reasons to have mandatory retirement in this kind of line of work. Cognitive flexibility and response times degrade with advanced age. They could maybe move to a performance-based standard, where controllers are tested in high-stress simulations to make sure they're keeping up to the level expected.

Sure, there should be some kind of limit. The current mandatory retirement at 56 is bullshit doesn't have a sound scientific basis.

Real world examples: ATCs who had been fired en masse by Reagan and came back later were routinely given age waivers to get their 20 years of service - and it wasn't a problem. Phil Aune was an ATC until age 70! Sounds like his performance was excellent through the end of his career, even outperforming most younger ATCs.

By comparison, commercial airline pilots generally have a mandatory retirement age of 65. Of course, at age 65 a lot of them just switch to flying charters and keep on piloting.

Response time and cognitive flexibility are important - but so is experience.

A performance based standard makes far more sense. I would also think that there's some kind of performance based standard to qualify to be an ATC in the first place, not just "Hey, you're not 32 yet!"

 

[Chanur64]

Yep, people keep forgetting about Reagan mass-firing 85% of the ATC during his presidency, who were striking for better wages. They were deemed too essential to strike. Funny how that works. ATC staffing has literally never recovered from this.

Pretty sure performance review testing is mandatory already with ATC, but I agree that should be if it wasn't. The counterpoint is that ATC work ~308% more overtime today than they did in 2013, the majority of ATC now work multiple shifts and six days a week. That's not great especially when schedules & workloads are variable based on other co-employee absences, because the ATC overall are still only something around a 2/3rds or 3/4ths staffing level. Unplanned variable overtime shifts to fill in for missing coworkers is a recipe to kill cognitive performance and impair attention on anyone when it's added to standard overtime you've already done for most of the week.

 

[demultiplexer]

Yeah, performance reviews, periodic testing and retraining is a very large part of being an air traffic controller. In a lot of ways ATCs are similar to pilots - a pilot's workload is almost completely defined by ground handling, takeoff and landing and ATCs perform similar critical roles in those same phases of flight, under the same kind of safety culture and training regimen.