Drunk and asleep on the job, ATC pushed to limit

With a controller's perspective, and if you could implement the changes, what would you do to rectify this?

Not asking in a "The FAA is here to help" tone, but a real solution seeking path.
 
caliginousface said:
With a controller's perspective, and if you could implement the changes, what would you do to rectify this?

Not asking in a "The FAA is here to help" tone, but a real solution seeking path.
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Staffing is the #1 issue and really the root of all the other problems. Plus increase the minimum time between shifts. Currently you can (and often do) work a 6-2 or 7-3 and then go back to work the 11-7 mid. Even in the Air Force we were required to have 12 hours between shifts.
 
NovemberEcho said:
Staffing is the #1 issue and really the root of all the other problems. Plus increase the minimum time between shifts. Currently you can (and often do) work a 6-2 or 7-3 and then go back to work the 11-7 mid. Even in the Air Force we were required to have 12 hours between shifts.
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If they already identified staffing as an issue, is the FAA actively just not meeting minimum staffing numbers, or is there just not enough people making it through training?

If you increase the minimum time between shifts, which makes absolute sense, you can end up with near 0 staffing at some of these facilities? The other day we hear ZLA had 2 people on duty, I can't imagine that was an easy shift to work.

So how to increase staffing? Increase pay? Reschedule weed?
 
I have friends who are controllers at SFO. They are being forced to work 6 day weeks, take less breaks, pull doubles etc.

They had tower evaluations by the FAA and they bluntly asked the controllers what they could do to make things better. The response unanimously by the staff was MORE STAFFING. The powers that be, point blank said not to mention staffing, but what else could they do. There is no solution in the pipeline to fix these issues. Controllers are pushed to the brink all across the country and we are reaching a fever pitch. I seriously think the next major accident on US soil is going to be ATC related.
 
caliginousface said:
If they already identified staffing as an issue, is the FAA actively just not meeting minimum staffing numbers, or is there just not enough people making it through training?
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The Academy is the main bottleneck, although the FAA just announced in the last week that people who attended CTI (college degree ATC training) they’ll be able to skip the academy now. As one higher up described it, when an ATC hiring bid goes out, 50k people apply, 20k aren’t eligible, 10k didn’t fill out the application right. Out of the 20k left, the Academy can take roughly 1500 a year. Of that 1500, 800 graduate. Of that 800, 4-500 certify. Meanwhile 1000 current controllers retired or quit or lost medical etc.
 
caliginousface said:
If they already identified staffing as an issue, is the FAA actively just not meeting minimum staffing numbers, or is there just not enough people making it through training?

If you increase the minimum time between shifts, which makes absolute sense, you can end up with near 0 staffing at some of these facilities? The other day we hear ZLA had 2 people on duty, I can't imagine that was an easy shift to work.

So how to increase staffing? Increase pay? Reschedule weed?
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Can't speak specifically to ATC. I can tell you that at the County 911 Center I worked (and generally in other areas as well) attrition and unfilled jobs became a way to make each year's proposed budget look better. OT went up exponentially, of course, and the County Executive and Legislators never wanted for an annual raise.

The "money saving" came by simply not filling open positions. I wonder if the same is true here🤷‍♂️
 
Bob Ridpath said:
Can't speak specifically to ATC. I can tell you that at the County 911 Center I worked (and generally in other areas as well) attrition and unfilled jobs became a way to make each year's proposed budget look better. OT went up exponentially, of course, and the County Executive and Legislators never wanted for an annual raise.

The "money saving" came by simply not filling open positions. I wonder if the same is true here🤷‍♂️
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I know people love to bag on the public sector, but this is literally what "run it like a business" looks like.

Literally, blame Ronald Regan.

Then burn the patriarchy, overthrow capitalism, and work together to build a unified socialist utopia.
 
The agency needs to hire more people, and stop getting away with blatantly lying about how bad the staffing really is. The higher ups routinely deny staffing triggers because they don’t want to admit that there are not enough controllers to safely run the operation. They’ll do almost anything to avoid having to cite staffing as an issue. Well, anything besides hire enough people.

Shifts are routinely heavily staffed with OT, which is a controller being scheduled on their day off. It’s not uncommon for a shift to have a negotiated fully staffed number of 10, with 8 controllers actually scheduled, with 4 of those being people on OT. When 3 of those people don’t come to work because theyre exhausted or have things in their life going on that can’t all be handled on one day off, you now have 5 controllers on duty for a shift that was supposed to have 10. The FAA will say that’s a sick leave issue, not a staffing issue. Which again, is not honestly addressing the problem.


I didn’t sign up to work 6 day weeks forever so some jackass in HQ that hasn’t talked to an airplane in 15 years can get a bonus for running a skeleton operation across the country. Nothing can be fixed until they actually recognize and admit that we need more people, and we needed them 5-6 years ago. It’s to a point now where the staffing is so bad that it is difficult to train new controllers because we can’t afford to pull someone off the operation to train.

There’s far too many middle managers and union people in the FAA that took a promotion or detail off the boards because they didn’t want to work traffic or work this schedule. Send all of those people back to the operation until those of us that have the nerve to demand 2 days off a week, can get it.
 
Thank God for Chair Homendy, at least someone with a bully pulpit “gets” it (on this and other things).

Sadly, nobody’s listening except for the choir, to continue that tortured analogy.
 
nabbyfan said:
The agency needs to hire more people, and stop getting away with blatantly lying about how bad the staffing really is. The higher ups routinely deny staffing triggers because they don’t want to admit that there are not enough controllers to safely run the operation. They’ll do almost anything to avoid having to cite staffing as an issue. Well, anything besides hire enough people.

Shifts are routinely heavily staffed with OT, which is a controller being scheduled on their day off. It’s not uncommon for a shift to have a negotiated fully staffed number of 10, with 8 controllers actually scheduled, with 4 of those being people on OT. When 3 of those people don’t come to work because theyre exhausted or have things in their life going on that can’t all be handled on one day off, you now have 5 controllers on duty for a shift that was supposed to have 10. The FAA will say that’s a sick leave issue, not a staffing issue. Which again, is not honestly addressing the problem.


I didn’t sign up to work 6 day weeks forever so some jackass in HQ that hasn’t talked to an airplane in 15 years can get a bonus for running a skeleton operation across the country. Nothing can be fixed until they actually recognize and admit that we need more people, and we needed them 5-6 years ago. It’s to a point now where the staffing is so bad that it is difficult to train new controllers because we can’t afford to pull someone off the operation to train.

There’s far too many middle managers and union people in the FAA that took a promotion or detail off the boards because they didn’t want to work traffic or work this schedule. Send all of those people back to the operation until those of us that have the nerve to demand 2 days off a week, can get it.
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This hits at a few solid points. I never thought I'd want to leave the boards but getting beat down on crap staffed shift work while a bunch of people sit in offices and "work from home" never missing a family moment AND getting paid more to do absolutely nothing is getting pretty old.
 
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Jokes aside though, I feel really bad for the controllers who continue to show up and do a good job. The crap you’re having to do wood be tough even for a couple months but you guys have been doing it for years. Hopefully it gets better soon (and before an accident).
 
From my perspective it’s managements problem that they created a decade plus ago… I graduated and for five years running I applied only to be turned down… even with having attended UND and scoring well on the aptitude test. I applied a few more times before I upgraded in 2016 and then I aged out.
I would consider making the switch now if not for the age problem and wouldn’t want to go backward financially. There are a whole heap of us UND/Riddle grads that never got called and found careers in other fields.
Therefore, in conclusion, I lay the blame solely at the folks that have been running the FAA for the last 18 years.
 
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