Newark, We Have Problem
When it comes to a fear of flying, most of our concerns are related to things that could go wrong in the air. But it turns out that the greatest flight risks may be taking place on the ground. Our air traffic problem is getting out of control. “Controllers last month lost radio and radar at a Philadelphia facility that guides planes to and from New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport, and another outage hit May 9. Regulators slowed the rate of aircraft arrivals at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to help ease the strain on controllers after a deadly collision in late January.” All this time we’ve been focused on Major Tom when the problem is that there aren’t enough people to man ground control. Recently, flights into Newark were delayed by as much as 7 hours because of a shortage of controllers. “As few as three people were on duty during the evening shift, short of the target of 14 controllers for most of those hours.” And filling the jobs quickly won’t be easy. Bloomberg (Gift Article): Newark Flight Chaos Shows the Crisis Rocking Air Traffic Control Jobs. “The pipeline of trainees needs to be robust because long hours, overwhelming stress, a mandatory retirement age of 56 and outdated equipment mean near constant attrition for one of the toughest jobs in America. While pay can easily exceed $200,000 a year for some positions, the starting salary is much more modest and new graduates often have little say over where they’ll be sent. It takes a certain type of person to seek out such an intense job, especially when alternatives such as trade union apprentice programs offer a similar salary path, more control over location and a much lower chance of a mistake ending in a deadly fireball.”
+ NYT (Gift Article): Newark’s Air Traffic Control Staffing Crisis Is Dire. It’s Also Not Unique. “Ninety-nine percent of the air traffic control facilities in the United States are operating below recommended staffing levels … Across the country, controller shortages have become untenable, with no quick fixes in sight. Training to become an air traffic controller is a lengthy, highly specialized process that requires certification specific to each facility and its surrounding airspace, meaning controllers cannot be automatically reassigned to the location where they are most needed.”
+ “The situation is, has been and continues to be unsafe. The amount of stress we are under is insurmountable.” WSJ (Gift Article): This Air-Traffic Controller Just Averted a Midair Collision. Now He’s Speaking Out. “Frustrated with the current work situation and his own close call, Stewart took stress-related trauma leave, a benefit available for controllers. ‘I don’t want to be responsible for killing 400 people.'”
+ Infrastructure Weak: And as David Graham explains in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Mess at Airports Is Part of a Larger Pattern. “Other physical infrastructure, including bridges, dams, power lines, and highways, are in a serious state of decay.” (If we don’t reverse course when it comes to spending on core infrastructure, we risk turning the whole country into a fly by night outfit.)
