I just went down the rabbit hole of ATC hiring policy: you can't be hired before 18 (given the educational requirements, this is impossible in practice, anyways); but must be hired before you turn 30. You face mandatory retirement at 56. I wonder how that compares to other fields? I think that's probably comparable to tech?
"...The controllers who guide flights in and out of the New Jersey airport on April 28 “temporarily lost radar and communications with the aircraft under their control, unable to see, hear, or talk to them,” the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, their union, said in a statement...
...Staffing shortages followed the incident, which was so severe that some of the controllers involved “have taken time off to recover from the stress of multiple recent outages,” the Federal Aviation Administration said on Monday..."
The controllers themselves were exempt from the Trump administration's voluntary buyout of federal employees, and from their across-the-board hiring freeze.
But to actually hire a new controller requires so many special exemptions and waivers to cut through the hiring freeze, there's now a huge amount of friction and delay to onboard new people.
And many of the support staff needed to recruit, train, test and medically certify new controllers are now gone, so the capacity to onboard thousands of new controllers just doesn't exist right now.
And the overtime needed to pay experienced controllers to support noobs is now cancelled.
And that ancient Philadelphia TRACON that failed because a copper wire burnt out? Approximately 400 of the PASS and NATCA level one techs who keep the surveillance radars, radio links, NAVAIDs and facility power maintained, repaired and supported were purged on Valentine's Day.
A court eventually reinstated some of them, but the five-week delay before a court could countermand the inexplicable decisions of Trump and Musk set everything back.
While the reinstated 132 PASS techs are back, hiring remains frozen for all the support categories (mechanics, telecom, aero‑info) because the public‑safety waiver applies only to controllers and ATSS. The pipeline is dry.
The work order to fix the Philly TRACON was filed in December, but it couldn't get priority over the other five billion dollars of deferred maintenance and broken primary systems that are already hanging by a thread.
The FAA's own internal dashboard (leaked to Reuters) shows unscheduled equipment downtime at New York‑metro facilities is up 38% in March‑April versus the same period in 2024.
something that these right wing free marketeer's dont seem to understand, is the life they live in these modern times need the Rube Goldberg Machine that is government to keep it all going.
You start pulling out processes and the whole thing starts to collapse in on itself. including THEIR businesses and the processes and bureaucracy that they hated before are the indirect reason why they're now losing money hand over fist, or worse yet is the reason their 450,000 kg flying metal tube is about to crash and kill them and theirs.
this world is a big community, no one man, no matter how rich or powerful can count themselves out of or above that community.
Right wing free marketers live under the delusion that private enterprise is both capable and willing to provide public infrastructure, and moreover, are able to do it for less cost - overlooking the fact that public-private partnerships, PPPs, are wrought with failure.
It was under the last Administration that the critical change was made:
"The Newark TRACON, which was previously located at the New York TRACON in Westbury, New York, has been transferred to the Philadelphia TRACON. This change, which occurred in June 2024, was implemented to address staffing shortages and improve the efficiency of air traffic control in the busy New York area. "
Previously the TRACON and it's equipment were located close together and connected directly.
Now they're separated by a commercial data link. When that link breaks ATC breaks, this is because they literally moved the staff from EWR to PHL, so you can't even revert when this occurs. This is why NATCA opposes and opposed the move.
It's even a little worse since this type of failure had occurred before and some of the controllers who experienced it took leaves from their positions reducing staff availability even more. It was an absurd change that set of a chain reaction of consequences for the system as a whole.
> All I can find is hand-wavy claims that wiring shorted and took down some piece of critical hardware.
Which would most likely be communications equipment. In any case I think it's fair to say it's a structure issue and not an administrative one. Unless we think DOGE made some change at the center that caused this wire to burn out?
The ceaseless political drum beating for points around here chafes. The likelihood that any administration is perfectly good or perfectly evil is absolutely zero. Let's get to causes and not generalities?
> The ceaseless political drum beating for points around here chafes. ... Let's get to causes and not generalities?
Absolutely. Please let me know if you find out what that cause is! I think that’s more important than something like “It was under the last Administration that the critical change was made.”
