The controller shortage

[NovemberEcho]

Most Navy/Marine bases still have PAR. AF wide I believe it’s down to like 5-7 bases that still have it. My base had PAR and ASR. Hated it. Seems people either loved doing them or loathed it. Was interesting when some F-35’s came to do PAR’s but weren’t certified for IMC yet and would suddenly climb over a cloud on final and you’re like wtf is happening?!

 

[Avalon781ML]

Disagree. The quality of trainees coming in during those old CTI days was not any better on average than the off the street hires. They were, however, mostly male, white, and already upper-middle class. People who could not shell out $30k+ for an associates degree that would not help them get any other job were simply shut out of the hiring process all together. If you shelled out for a CTI degree and then didn't get hired, well you knew the risks, a job was never guaranteed.

The problem is the two-fold: 1) the FAA knows nothing about human resources, and 2) no one wants to be an instructor because the pay is crap, the hours are long, and you have to live in Oklahoma.

This will help ease the flow at the academy, but I'll bet training success rate tanks. Especially if the FAA does not provide the syllabus for every CTI school.

Everything ended up working out for me but I take issue with your statement, “If you shelled out for a CTI degree and then didn’t get hired, well you knew the risks, a job was never guaranteed.” in part because at that time it WAS a requirement to enter the job.

The fact that the government went from from a set of requirements to almost zero requirements with an ample pool of people who had already invested their time and money into pursuing the job vs someone who had zero invested is frustrating at a minimum.

Furthermore, I’ve heard from my fellow classmates the exact opposite… that the street hires were largely sub par in comparison, attrition during training was extraordinarily high, and the retention of “off the street” hires was laughable. Perhaps my friends are lying to me… but I doubt it.

 

[Avalon781ML]

Hasn’t this lawsuit happened several times already? I know I’ve read about them before. The Bio-q that the lawsuit is about happened for one year in 2013 i think it was before getting revamped because something like 800 people out of 50k passed or something like that. Anyone who aged out due to that was allowed to reapply again with an age waiver.

And by the time a person who was passed over could reapply with the age waiver we were all settled in a different career making far more than we could make training at our first facility… the lawsuit won’t get anywhere but it is what it is… a government boondoggle.

 

[ERfly]

Most Navy/Marine bases still have PAR. AF wide I believe it’s down to like 5-7 bases that still have it. My base had PAR and ASR. Hated it. Seems people either loved doing them or loathed it. Was interesting when some F-35’s came to do PAR’s but weren’t certified for IMC yet and would suddenly climb over a cloud on final and you’re like wtf is happening?!

The MD-11 in our fleet still trains and is certified to do PAR approaches. She's the only jet in the fleet that is. I would assume this is because of the military charters she does.

It was still cool to see one in the sim...albeit with the instructor playing the controller. What I wouldn't have given to have been talked down by Sgt. Ben Puzo. "Trust your soul to God, Captain, because your ass belongs to me!"

(Major bonus points if anyone can get the movie reference for that one!)

 

[greg1016]

Everything ended up working out for me but I take issue with your statement, “If you shelled out for a CTI degree and then didn’t get hired, well you knew the risks, a job was never guaranteed.” in part because at that time it WAS a requirement to enter the job.

The fact that the government went from from a set of requirements to almost zero requirements with an ample pool of people who had already invested their time and money into pursuing the job vs someone who had zero invested is frustrating at a minimum.

Furthermore, I’ve heard from my fellow classmates the exact opposite… that the street hires were largely sub par in comparison, attrition during training was extraordinarily high, and the retention of “off the street” hires was laughable. Perhaps my friends are lying to me… but I doubt it.

I am truly glad everything worked out for you. I am one of those people with nothing invested going into this job. I am now 7 years from retirement. I was hired under one of the last "pubnats." If I had been looking at becoming a controller in 2009-14 when the only civilian announcements were CTI announcements I would have chosen another career. It is extremely privileged to financially be able to invest that kind of money in a degree that only prepares you for one job with essentially one employer and then that job is not a guarantee. I have made plenty of poor financial decisions in my day, but that would not have been one of them.

Your classmates' empirical data may be their experience, but the FAA and NATCA have the actual data, and your friends are wrong. Of my initial Academy class, 12 off the street hires, 1 guy quit the first week, he was replaced with a CTI grad after we finished basics. 1 guy ended up not passing the academy, of the 11 of us that graduated, all of the off the street hires went on to certify. The CTI guy's status is unknown. I can't remember his name or I'd look him up in the directory. He was not good in the academy and he went to Vaughn College which is probably the worst of the CTI schools that I have encountered. Empirically, I know more CTI grads that were, but are no longer employed by the FAA, than I do off the street hires who are no longer employed by the FAA.

 

[Rosstafari]

the FAA and NATCA have the actual data

Got a link?

They were notoriously tight lipped about training and retention rates for ages, so I stopped looking years ago.

 

[greg1016]

Got a link?

They were notoriously tight lipped about training and retention rates for ages, so I stopped looking years ago.

No, the FAA doesn't publish their failures, this is what the union put out to the membership during that era, which was a decade ago at this point.