Remember the ATCs never recovered from the staffing shortage when Reagan fired them for striking on working conditions. The conditions have not improved the hiring has never caught up. Rates of alcholalism from work induced stress is extremely high and they have been showing up for work while not getting paid.
Anyone who calls all public sector people lazy or entitled, remember ATCs are government workers do work extremely hard and most log extensive overtime. These are government workers and they are American Heros through and through
Wonder how that changed the perception and the desire to become an ATC. Did it have a measurable impact, with folks avoiding that line of work. Or, it hasn't really made much of a difference? The idea is if many are retiring but we're graduating or hiring just as many or more, that's not that bad.
It's wild ATC isn't funded by use fees instead of being appropriated by congress. Seems like a good opportunity to provide some mechanism so the government has to shit or get off the pot, because if the government won't do the job the airlines would surely be glad to pay for the service themselves.
A quick search shows that there are over 20,000 ATCs employed in the United States. (I'm not confident in the sources I found - anyone know where to get reliable stats for things like this?)
Is the number of retiring ATCs higher than normal? I assume it is, but the article doesn't mention the baseline. It's hard for me to understand the scale of the issue from this article alone.
If we take the lower number of 15, than that is nearly 5.5k a year. Even if we round it down, that'd be 25% a year if your number is right and this situation continued. Of course it can't continue very long, because there won't be that many old enough to have the choice, presumably. But it's a crazy rate.
Typical ATC career is 25-30 years, so naively you'd expect ~1.8 retirements per day. Maybe a little more if you assume the OP is talking only about working/weekdays, maybe a little less as the maximum age for trainees has been raised over time.
Remember, the pain this is causing everyone means less to the people in power than does the benefits of this shutdown (to them). We can argue about what those benefits are all day long, but they wouldn't be refusing to have discussions with the Dems if there were not some benefit, be it political power they can wield, or whatever.
The problem is that it's existential for both Democrats and Republicans. Given the current makeup of the federal government, Republicans basically have all the power and have been able to leverage that into spending the last 10 months doing whatever they want. The exception to that power is the Democrats' ability to filibuster in the Senate and shut down the government by not agreeing to whatever the Republicans put forward.
The actual demands I think are essentially irrelevant. If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government. If Democrats don't get any concessions, they're essentially irrelevant for the next 14 months and that only changes if they win either the House or Senate in 2026. Given that, it's not obvious how this ends.
It's interesting how the effects of filter bubbles are playing out here. Everyone believes that they have the upper hand and the majority of the American people are on their side, because computerized personalization shows them only opinions from people who agree with them. As a result, they think that the negative popular opinion for the shutdown will fall primarily on the other party, and so it is rational for them to continue the shutdown until the other party blinks. Of course, the other party has the same information distortion in the opposite direction, so they also believe that if they just keep going, the American public will blame their opponents.
In reality, the public is pretty close to split down the middle, and both parties are getting blamed, and the real message that people are taking away from this is that Congress is dysfunctional. It's a game of chicken where both parties think that the other side will blink, and so they just end up crashing.
I mean they wouldn't talk to democrats before the shutdown so it seems entirely reasonable for them not to talk to them afterwards.
I still find it (morbidly) hilarious that congress considers doing their job the "nuclear option". If they weren't hiding behind the filibuster and started legislating maybe their approval rating wouldn't be such trash.
And here we see a system that was already stretched to the breaking point BEFORE the shutdown, put under an incredible strain and failing. A more robust system can handle sudden shocks, but when you’ve spent years whittling away at it there’s no slack.
I don’t know US specifically but I know a bit about Canadian air traffic controllers. It’s a high stress but very well paying job with good pension etc. But I suspect there’s not a lot of opportunity to change to another job and get the same pay and benefits. So I guess I wonder what the end game is in resigning? Is it just people taking some pre-specified early retirement option, is it early career people that just are cutting their losses? Unless I’m missing something it seems like for someone mid career at least, waiting it out seems like the only real option.
Not really ATC specific, but at some point most people in most jobs can't deal with indefinitely not getting paid and will have to go do something else even if they don't have a good backup plan. Working retail, driving for Uber, etc, all have vastly better ROI at the moment than working ATC getting a $0 paycheck. In theory they'll get backpay and have better future earnings prospects than leaving for an uncertain career change. But that's probably not as comforting as it should be since it's uncertain when that will happen, or even if, since the government has unnecessarily gone out of its way to cast doubt on the promise of backpay.
I'm a heavy gamer. I like lots of strategy games. Sometimes I look at our country like a strategy game: where we are investing resources, infrastructure planning and investment, active problems or threats and how they are being prioritized and handled, managing citizen happiness, etc.
The last 10-20 years feel like a massive lost opportunity to invest in some of these improvements and forward-thinking planning. In the last few years, it feels like catastrophic decision after decision.
I can't help but look at the state of America and feel like I'm looking at an inexperienced amateur player taking a relatively strong game position and slowly throwing it away. Crumbling infrastructure, weak citizen cohesion and education, intentional weakening of our own national and cyber security in more than one way, not to mention all the harm being done to our reputation and relationships with other countries.
It feels like we are in a weaker position then ever: militaristically, economically, scientifically, and so on. Meanwhile the threats of China and Russia and what could happen in the next few years are quite concerning.
I'm pretty pessimistic right now. I know the world and the US is not as simple as a strategy game, but tons of principles from strategy games well-understood by experienced players sure could help with more wise use of resources. Attention and time are also incredibly valuable resources that feel like they are being thrown away right now.
Getting into a major conflict could help unify The People and put focus on more important problems in the country, but as far as I'm concerned, I think all the other NATO countries would be the ones holding the war effort together. I'm just ranting at this point though.
I can't escape the impression that the person currently most responsible for these shortsighted decisions simply doesn't care what happens after he's gone.
> I'm a heavy gamer. I like lots of strategy games.
Politicians should have to play several hundred hours of 4X games (Civ 4/5/6/7, Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron) before they're allowed to run for office.
It's hard not to zoom out and look at the world as a game at times. If you do that, and go back way more than 10 years, it feels like every country is playing terribly.
Countries used to routinely go on domination quests for land and resources. They used to go find exotic lands and claim them as their own. They used to harvest resources and enslave the losers.
Now, not so much. If you watched it zoomed out as a game, you'd assume the powerful players all got bored with it and gave up.
Of course, realizing it's not a game but real people, you realize the world collectively is probably in a better place. But it also means powerful countries giving up power, which is weird to see happen.
Indeed, to go along with your analogy it does feel like we have chosen to go for a "All in rush", rather that try and compound marginal advantage. Sometimes that does work, but is can be a really chaotic where small perturbations can wildly swing the outcome.
To me the most wild thing about our current circumstance is the abstraction away from the real with financialization. Pretending that money basically has unlimited optionality and liquidity in the future without having to manage, maintain and develop the resources, capabilities, infrastructure, and environment for the long future not just the next few quarters.
Especially when it comes to investing for retirement. So much people are delegating their excess to grow the "market" which by in large is destroying the foundations for that very retirement by chasing maximal growth of money while destroying the underlying systems (healthcare, housing, social and environmental stability).
Maybe this is the best we can do due to adversarial constraints and the current system state. But that is a pretty depressing thought.
Americans today are incapable of envisioning a better future and incapable of envisioning a worse one! We as a society are now only able to focus on what problems exist now, and to demand that they are fixed tomorrow.
There are a lot of problems that can be solved over decades, but we can no longer even fathom such a thing, much less put together the will power to see such projects through.
> It feels like we are in a weaker position then ever: militaristically,
> economically, scientifically, and so on. Meanwhile the threats of China
> and Russia and what could happen in the next few years are quite concerning.
On the other hand, it's not only USA really.
Russia with their czarist structure of power and control hasn't really had an economy that's more sustainable than USSR ever pretended to have, and their government keeps digging the country further in the grave as we speak. Russia can be a nuisance to its neighbours by their size alone but as their failing offensive in Ukraine shows they don't really give much to worry about in their peer countries of similar size and position.
Europe is running around like a group of headless chicken pecking eachother with minimal ability to make decisions cohesively and in unison, and many larger European countries are trampling knee deep in the mud when you compare to their heydays.
China is indebted, lacking energy, yet wants to expand their projection of military power but having enough to do with their current neighbours and desperately needing to maintain trade relations around the world means that, at best, the ruling party can only think about it. Unlike some other peer nation states I think they just might ultimately be wise enough to understand their position themselves, too, despite the desire to posture hard.
Further, I can name many countries that are, in relative terms, doing similarly stupid things now that they didn't do before and few that have actually managed to preserve some common sense but they're either small enough to not matter a squat on the global stage or they aren't interested in global power in the first place.
Not that USA isn't actively destroying the very relations that did help them extend their power across the globe cheaply through allies, working to weaken the dollar, and in internal affairs shooting themselves in the foot at a rate that could make even Russia jealous, but USA is still pretty good in comparison to their competition. There's no serious contender for USA at the moment and won't be any time soon even if USA keeps hitting even lower and lower bars of statehood.
I'm more pessimistic than optimistic about the future but the reason is that it seems the world as a whole has enshittified themselves down to a level that would have seemed even theoretically impossible by the key players only a few decades ago.
Most of my early 30 year old friends are very pessimistic about the future. I am pessimistic but less so. I think (and hope) that the republic will still be standing. But what I see and expect is that Trump will spend his time doing performative actions. He is narcissistic and he conflates the deference he receives when flying around the world negotiating trade deals with deference to the US. The reality is that telling him he deserves the Nobel peace prize is easy pickings for politicians who don't want to tank their economies while they realign with Russia.
Ultimately I think where we end up after his second term is he leaves, he says he did a great job and his supporters believe him. But we have problems. And he has this fantastic blessing of controlling all 3 branches of government, which he is wasting by grabbing power and solving NONE of them. So really we just wasted 4 years. And where the world is right now it's probably the worst 4 years we could ever waste.
Didn't DOGE/Musk try this or at least talk about it? Like modernizing the whole system or something? I don't think the turn around time on such a conversion would be very quick. I'm not sure there are thousands of qualified controllers waiting in the wings private sector, though maybe I'm wrong about that.
at a certain point, rebooting ATC could become exceptionaly difficult, as the whole aviation comunity, flys.
And no, you cant train new AT controllers, they learn on the job, and what a job it is!
as part of our pilot training they took us into a controll tower, which is a radicaly modern, high tech, high security environment, and let us hang around, the senior hand started chatting with us, while directing air traffic, ground traffic, confering with coleages, talking on the phone, telling us a joke, all at once, and his timing was so good, that the joke was still funny......these are guys who can do other stuff
Depending how bad it gets you could end up in a situation where European controllers are needed to at least help get things stood up again but while the job is similar the systems won’t be.
That or you pay the ones who’ve resigned a shit load of money.
It astounds me how quickly they are breaking things that took decades or more to build.
Also, there are strict medical (including mental health) and age requirements in order to become and remain an ATC. You need to be under 31 to apply and must retire at age 56.
Curbing air traffic at major airports by 10% -- seems like this change alone would cause enough upheaval and disruption to everyday operations that it would offset any incremental relief from slightly lower traffic volume.
I heard a radio report that said something like 25,000-30,000 flights a day, so 10% would still be 2-3 thousand flights per day canceled. They said a majority of these would be the smaller legs from smaller airports to the larger hubs. The flights from hub to larger cities would be less impacted. However it breaks down, 2-3 thousand flights a day is a lot of flight crews not working, and similar cascading effects. So not only an inconvenience for travelers, but some people are going to take a financial hit because of this
If this keeps going, lots of knowledge will be lost. But at least by retiring they will start getting paid (I think) via 401k, Social Security or pensions.
In a way we have an idea what to expect. When Reagan fired the controllers in 1981/2, AFAIK there were no major incidents with air travel. But I think Military Controllers were brought in to cover the holes the firing left.
This time, I thought I saw Military Controllers are unable to cover or were told not to cover. so I guess we will see how this plays out with a set of crazy people in charge of the US.
I can't believe it takes this long. I would resign the very first day my paycheque doesn't arrive. There's one and only one reason I go to work every day.
I can't imagine you're getting a huge inflow of people in their 30s or above itching to spend years training for a job where you won't get paid for months at a time at the whims of fighting politicians.
If the Democrats are smart, they'll keep the shutdown going until Trump folds, keep it going until the midterms if they have to. It's the first thing they're doing that people like, they blame Trump for all the misery.
He's jumping in front of the bullet by trying to stop SNAP under a goofy theory that Democrats actually care if people go hungry. Many Republicans have this strange but deeply-held crazy belief that Democrats are motivated by ideology rather than the same money that they themselves are motivated by, so they always think threatening to cut the baby in half will work.
And he's busy building a ballroom. People are really loving flights getting cancelled and more expensive, hard to blame that on immigrant fent terrorist antifa; and if there's anything that middle-class people hate, it's minor inconvenience.
Dems don't have to say anything (in fact it's better if they don't say anything) or do anything. Just watch the poll numbers go up and the donations from health insurers go up. All rational people agree that Obamacare sucks. But the Republicans are fighting to make it worse.
Laws are irrelevant if they are not enforced. Laws are being very slowly or very selectively enforced these days, while some of the powers that be are flagrantly breaking laws.
> Will they get their salaries and some extra compensation for the tardiness?
Theoretically, yes. Just regular pay plus OT that they are owed. No bonus or extra compensation.
Also, most of these folks can fairly easily get low interest loans from banks or credit cards that will be due when they get back pay.
Part of this story is not being told, but I’m not sure what part.
Were these folks who were about to retire anyway?
Were these folks who plan on getting hired back when the government reopens?
I’m not sure, but I don’t think the complete story is being told here (not necessarily with malice or intent).
>Are there any laws that protect labour in the US?
Air traffic controllers are famously a group of people who were just mass fired for striking. These days the laws in the US actually protect the airlines from them by making it illegal for them to strike.
[+] [-] xphos|4 months ago|reply
Anyone who calls all public sector people lazy or entitled, remember ATCs are government workers do work extremely hard and most log extensive overtime. These are government workers and they are American Heros through and through
[+] [-] drivingmenuts|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|3 months ago|reply
Wonder how that changed the perception and the desire to become an ATC. Did it have a measurable impact, with folks avoiding that line of work. Or, it hasn't really made much of a difference? The idea is if many are retiring but we're graduating or hiring just as many or more, that's not that bad.
[+] [-] mothballed|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] user68858788|3 months ago|reply
Is the number of retiring ATCs higher than normal? I assume it is, but the article doesn't mention the baseline. It's hard for me to understand the scale of the issue from this article alone.
[+] [-] vidarh|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] daemonologist|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] e40|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rainsford|4 months ago|reply
The actual demands I think are essentially irrelevant. If Republicans give up anything to the Democrats, the spell of the last 10 months is broken and Republicans can no longer unilaterally control the direction of government. If Democrats don't get any concessions, they're essentially irrelevant for the next 14 months and that only changes if they win either the House or Senate in 2026. Given that, it's not obvious how this ends.
[+] [-] tbrownaw|4 months ago|reply
(Note this works identically well regardless of which side of the aisle you read it as being about.)
[+] [-] nostrademons|4 months ago|reply
In reality, the public is pretty close to split down the middle, and both parties are getting blamed, and the real message that people are taking away from this is that Congress is dysfunctional. It's a game of chicken where both parties think that the other side will blink, and so they just end up crashing.
[+] [-] lesuorac|4 months ago|reply
I still find it (morbidly) hilarious that congress considers doing their job the "nuclear option". If they weren't hiding behind the filibuster and started legislating maybe their approval rating wouldn't be such trash.
[+] [-] AgentK20|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] andy99|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] rainsford|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] retrochameleon|3 months ago|reply
The last 10-20 years feel like a massive lost opportunity to invest in some of these improvements and forward-thinking planning. In the last few years, it feels like catastrophic decision after decision.
I can't help but look at the state of America and feel like I'm looking at an inexperienced amateur player taking a relatively strong game position and slowly throwing it away. Crumbling infrastructure, weak citizen cohesion and education, intentional weakening of our own national and cyber security in more than one way, not to mention all the harm being done to our reputation and relationships with other countries.
It feels like we are in a weaker position then ever: militaristically, economically, scientifically, and so on. Meanwhile the threats of China and Russia and what could happen in the next few years are quite concerning.
I'm pretty pessimistic right now. I know the world and the US is not as simple as a strategy game, but tons of principles from strategy games well-understood by experienced players sure could help with more wise use of resources. Attention and time are also incredibly valuable resources that feel like they are being thrown away right now.
Getting into a major conflict could help unify The People and put focus on more important problems in the country, but as far as I'm concerned, I think all the other NATO countries would be the ones holding the war effort together. I'm just ranting at this point though.
[+] [-] senderista|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101a|3 months ago|reply
Politicians should have to play several hundred hours of 4X games (Civ 4/5/6/7, Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron) before they're allowed to run for office.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X
If they can't beat some of these videos at the highest difficulty settings they should not be allowed to break things IRL.
[+] [-] silisili|3 months ago|reply
Countries used to routinely go on domination quests for land and resources. They used to go find exotic lands and claim them as their own. They used to harvest resources and enslave the losers.
Now, not so much. If you watched it zoomed out as a game, you'd assume the powerful players all got bored with it and gave up.
Of course, realizing it's not a game but real people, you realize the world collectively is probably in a better place. But it also means powerful countries giving up power, which is weird to see happen.
[+] [-] generativenoise|3 months ago|reply
To me the most wild thing about our current circumstance is the abstraction away from the real with financialization. Pretending that money basically has unlimited optionality and liquidity in the future without having to manage, maintain and develop the resources, capabilities, infrastructure, and environment for the long future not just the next few quarters.
Especially when it comes to investing for retirement. So much people are delegating their excess to grow the "market" which by in large is destroying the foundations for that very retirement by chasing maximal growth of money while destroying the underlying systems (healthcare, housing, social and environmental stability).
Maybe this is the best we can do due to adversarial constraints and the current system state. But that is a pretty depressing thought.
[+] [-] jameskilton|3 months ago|reply
There are a lot of problems that can be solved over decades, but we can no longer even fathom such a thing, much less put together the will power to see such projects through.
[+] [-] yason|3 months ago|reply
On the other hand, it's not only USA really.
Russia with their czarist structure of power and control hasn't really had an economy that's more sustainable than USSR ever pretended to have, and their government keeps digging the country further in the grave as we speak. Russia can be a nuisance to its neighbours by their size alone but as their failing offensive in Ukraine shows they don't really give much to worry about in their peer countries of similar size and position.
Europe is running around like a group of headless chicken pecking eachother with minimal ability to make decisions cohesively and in unison, and many larger European countries are trampling knee deep in the mud when you compare to their heydays.
China is indebted, lacking energy, yet wants to expand their projection of military power but having enough to do with their current neighbours and desperately needing to maintain trade relations around the world means that, at best, the ruling party can only think about it. Unlike some other peer nation states I think they just might ultimately be wise enough to understand their position themselves, too, despite the desire to posture hard.
Further, I can name many countries that are, in relative terms, doing similarly stupid things now that they didn't do before and few that have actually managed to preserve some common sense but they're either small enough to not matter a squat on the global stage or they aren't interested in global power in the first place.
Not that USA isn't actively destroying the very relations that did help them extend their power across the globe cheaply through allies, working to weaken the dollar, and in internal affairs shooting themselves in the foot at a rate that could make even Russia jealous, but USA is still pretty good in comparison to their competition. There's no serious contender for USA at the moment and won't be any time soon even if USA keeps hitting even lower and lower bars of statehood.
I'm more pessimistic than optimistic about the future but the reason is that it seems the world as a whole has enshittified themselves down to a level that would have seemed even theoretically impossible by the key players only a few decades ago.
[+] [-] arkis22|3 months ago|reply
Ultimately I think where we end up after his second term is he leaves, he says he did a great job and his supporters believe him. But we have problems. And he has this fantastic blessing of controlling all 3 branches of government, which he is wasting by grabbing power and solving NONE of them. So really we just wasted 4 years. And where the world is right now it's probably the worst 4 years we could ever waste.
[+] [-] unknown|3 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] utopcell|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] phendrenad2|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] nullocator|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] metalman|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] noir_lord|4 months ago|reply
That or you pay the ones who’ve resigned a shit load of money.
It astounds me how quickly they are breaking things that took decades or more to build.
[+] [-] ryandrake|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] montroser|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bmitch3020|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jmclnx|3 months ago|reply
In a way we have an idea what to expect. When Reagan fired the controllers in 1981/2, AFAIK there were no major incidents with air travel. But I think Military Controllers were brought in to cover the holes the firing left.
This time, I thought I saw Military Controllers are unable to cover or were told not to cover. so I guess we will see how this plays out with a set of crazy people in charge of the US.
[+] [-] fortranfiend|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mvdtnz|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] neko_ranger|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Dusseldorf|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pinkmuffinere|3 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 months ago|reply
He's jumping in front of the bullet by trying to stop SNAP under a goofy theory that Democrats actually care if people go hungry. Many Republicans have this strange but deeply-held crazy belief that Democrats are motivated by ideology rather than the same money that they themselves are motivated by, so they always think threatening to cut the baby in half will work.
And he's busy building a ballroom. People are really loving flights getting cancelled and more expensive, hard to blame that on immigrant fent terrorist antifa; and if there's anything that middle-class people hate, it's minor inconvenience.
Dems don't have to say anything (in fact it's better if they don't say anything) or do anything. Just watch the poll numbers go up and the donations from health insurers go up. All rational people agree that Obamacare sucks. But the Republicans are fighting to make it worse.
[+] [-] forinti|4 months ago|reply
[+] [-] csa|4 months ago|reply
Laws are irrelevant if they are not enforced. Laws are being very slowly or very selectively enforced these days, while some of the powers that be are flagrantly breaking laws.
> Will they get their salaries and some extra compensation for the tardiness?
Theoretically, yes. Just regular pay plus OT that they are owed. No bonus or extra compensation.
Also, most of these folks can fairly easily get low interest loans from banks or credit cards that will be due when they get back pay.
Part of this story is not being told, but I’m not sure what part.
Were these folks who were about to retire anyway?
Were these folks who plan on getting hired back when the government reopens?
I’m not sure, but I don’t think the complete story is being told here (not necessarily with malice or intent).
[+] [-] viccis|4 months ago|reply
Air traffic controllers are famously a group of people who were just mass fired for striking. These days the laws in the US actually protect the airlines from them by making it illegal for them to strike.