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| ▲ | the_mitsuhiko 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which, as a non informed person but someone who needs to travel by plane, sounds absolutely insane. Was it always possible to staff that with a single person or is that a result of understaffing? | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As an informed person (PPL flying single engine into smallish towered airports all the time), it is absolutely insane for an airport the size of LGA. Occasionally, you will encounter one guy doing tower and ground at very small class D airports or during not-so-busy shifts. | | |
| ▲ | ultrarunner 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | To play devil's advocate, ASEL into small deltas is significantly different than receiving full-stop IFRs late at night. This small mistake (and it is initially small, just catastrophic) is a system breakdown, not necessarily a staffing breakdown. Though staffing is definitely a wider issue in the NAS. Edit to add: looking at this incident closer it appears LGA was busy enough to make a single tower/ground controller an obviously bad plan. Still, systemically, there's enough low hanging fruit here, like ADSb in for the airport trucks or hold short line guard lights. I hope the takeaway isn't just "don't have controllers make mistakes". | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yea, if you listen to the ATC audio, you can hear that in addition to the normal high workload of handling both ground and tower, this guy had an emergency aircraft on a taxiway to deal with, too. A lot of holes in the swiss cheese lined up, but one of them clearly is ATC workload. |
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| ▲ | _moof an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Speaking very generally, it's not unusual at all. Tower and ground are combined all the time - at smaller airports. Should they be combined at LGA when both (crossing) runways are in use, and there's an incident on the field? (The fire trucks were on their way to investigate a smell on the flight deck of another airplane that had to abort takeoff twice.) I'd say hell no. | |
| ▲ | wk_end 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I fly out of a small-to-medium-sized airport in Canada and I've never seen it happen there. The idea of one person being responsible for both tower and ground in the busiest airspace in the US is absolute insanity. | | |
| ▲ | fakedang an hour ago | parent [-] | | Agreed, but isn't O'Hare the busiest airport in the US? Edit:- It's Atlanta. | | |
| ▲ | rkomorn an hour ago | parent [-] | | Busiest airspace and busiest airport are two different things, technically. The airspace that combines JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark, is the busiest airspace in the US. | | |
| ▲ | rhcom2 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It's a crazy airspace. Add to that Teterboro, 12 miles from NYC and Republic ~20 miles from NYC, along with all the heliports on the Hudson. | | |
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| ▲ | cameldrv 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That seems unusual to me. It’s common at smaller airports, but for a big one like LaGuardia I’d think tower and ground would be two different controllers, even lateish at night like this was. I know there has been a staffing problem for controllers in the NY area for some time. | |
| ▲ | banannaise an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's not unusual for airports to reduce staff at night, and the incident occurred at 23:36 local time. Even at a very large airport in a very busy traffic area, one controller can probably handle normal operations at this hour. The obvious problem is what happens when operations become abnormal. ATC shouldn't be staffed for normal operations, because then abnormal operations lead to catastrophe. Welcome to last night: the weather is bad, which causes a plane to abort two takeoffs, which causes that plane to need emergency services. This increases the controller's workload beyond his capacity, so he accidentally clears the emergency vehicle to cross in front of a landing airplane, and they can't see the airplane because the weather is bad, so they follow the instruction and promptly get hit with an airplane. When some bad weather can be the difference between "this is fine, one controller can handle it" and two dead pilots, you need to be staffed for bad weather. | |
| ▲ | johnbarron an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Reddit aviation groups are full of professional pilots, saying how terrified they of flying into La Guardia or JFK, recounting close calls, with one saying how he avoided those two for 10 years... | |
| ▲ | f1shy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It IS insane. Specially for LGA | |
| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | crooked-v 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's absolutely understaffing. | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | But think of the money they saved by not having to pay another air traffic controller! A controller's yearly salary is the cost of about 10 seconds of the Iran war, based on the recently-reported figure of $11.3B for six days. | | |
| ▲ | ultrarunner 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't think it's money. I think it's requirements and training pipeline restraints. The system is predicated on being able to throw bodies at the problem, but there is a distinct lack of qualified individuals to back that up. Personally, I didn't realize ATC as a possible career path until I was 36-- imagine my surprise when I found that I had already aged out. | | |
| ▲ | throwway120385 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Who would want to work that job once they find out what the day-to-day is like? I had an intern who looked at that out of the Air Force but he found out what you get paid and what the expectations are for the job and he figured he'd try his luck on something easier and better-paying like life-preserving medical devices. On a related note, why do you think nobody who you'd actually want teaching public school actually teaches public school in the US? |
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| ▲ | selectodude 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It’s not a money thing. It’s a shortage of people who are mentally able to do the job mixed with terrible hours and early forced retirements. ATC school has a failure rate of over 50 percent. | | |
| ▲ | wk_end 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's partially a money thing. ATC is under-compensated. They'd get more - and more talented - people interested if the money made up for the stress, hours, and early forced retirement. | |
| ▲ | arrowsmith an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why not both? If it paid better then more people would apply to ATC school. | | |
| ▲ | selectodude an hour ago | parent [-] | | ATC positions already have a very low chance of even getting a spot in ATC school. There are tons of applicants for every opening. |
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| ▲ | bilbo0s 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | wk_end 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | New York State is large. It has lots of airports [0] - although not all of those are towered, you're still dividing that 260 down by quite a lot. And I don't believe it's standard practice to fly some dude in Buffalo down to NYC to cover a shift. There's a huge staffing problem in ATC right now. That staffing problem mostly comes down to it being demanding work that's poorly compensated for the amount of skill and education and stress involved; there are high hiring standards, you can't work past 56, and you can't even get started if you're past 31. If you're interested in aviation, you can make far more money as a pilot and it's a much more pleasant job; why would anyone become an ATC? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_New_York_(... | | |
| ▲ | bilbo0s 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >you're still dividing that 260 down by quite a lot No you're not. In the state of New York, the most it could possibly be divided down is by 32. And that only in the case that ATC are distributed to towered facilities equally whether commercial or simple public-use. Which we both know they are not. And I'll do you a really big favor and not even mention the fact that there are wayyy more than 260 ATC in New York state. Again, I was just being friendly to your view. I strongly suspect that you are also aware that there are well over 1000. | | |
| ▲ | wk_end 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 260/32 is around 8. "A lot" is subjective but I think that fits the bill? LGA is open 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Of course this is an extreme over-simplification, but if LGA only had eight ATC at their disposal total it's easy to see - or at least, much easier to see than if your working number is 260 - how they might have only one guy available to work Tower/Ground on a night shift. Please bear in mind that there's more to ATC in an airspace like NYC's than just Tower/Ground, and that ATC need regular breaks. Maybe they had two people but no redundancy, so one guy was covering both tasks during a break? | | |
| ▲ | bilbo0s an hour ago | parent [-] | | >so one guy was covering both tasks during a break Which is exactly the practice that needs to stop. You and I both know there are far more than 8 ATC controllers that work LGA. Please don't try to assert that there was no way to even have a relief available. (As appears to be the case in this instance.) Whatever caused the lack of availability that night needs to be urgently addressed. Please don't try to tell me we would have needed to train more ATC controllers to provide even a single relief at that tower last night. We both know how many ATC work LGA so we both know that's not true. | | |
| ▲ | wk_end an hour ago | parent [-] | | As it's not SOP to have one guy working both tower and ground at an airport the size of LGA, I'm going to assert that the most likely scenario is that, yes, there was no way to even have a relief available. What caused the lack of availability is the well-documented understaffing. Everyone in aviation knows that ATC is understaffed right now, and the reasons for the understaffing are well-understood. To come in and instead say, "well, I'm a mathematician, I'm going to make some simplifying assumptions - the only simplifying assumptions permitted - and do some basic arithmetic to show that there were hundreds of controllers available, clearly the guys responsible for ATC at LaGuardia don't know as much about running an airport safely as me" is beyond silly. |
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| ▲ | kube-system 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Are you under the impression that air traffic controllers only work at towers in commercial airports? Your math is based on incorrect assumptions -- the well-documented ATC shortage actually exists. | | |
| ▲ | bilbo0s 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you know how many towered facilities there are in New York state? 32. Let's assume only 260 ATC for 32 towers. (Not true, but again, we're being friendly to the conspiracy nuts.) We'll further assume every tower is staffed equally. (Also not true, but again, friendly to the nuts.) 8 Controllers for each tower if those assumptions were true. Which they are not. Why is one controller on duty in a commercial airport? Not a public-use airport, a commercial airport? Please stop with the BS. | | |
| ▲ | kube-system 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | And for my next question: are you under the impression that air traffic controllers only work at towers? | | |
| ▲ | bilbo0s 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not at all. But now that I know that you know a bit about ATC. Let's drop the pretense. We're both fully aware that there are right around 1250 ATC controllers in New York state. I further suspect that both of us know exactly how many work LGA. So there's no need to speak in generalities any longer. It's time to get serious about determining what happened in this instance. It appears, from the initial available information, that there was not even a relief on site. That practice needs to stop, and please don't try to tell me we don't have the available staff to bring it to an end. You and I both know that's horse manure. |
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| ▲ | CrossVR 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The problem is that you're comparing numbers from before Trump's presidency, but the understaffing of FAA ATCs goes all the way back to when the Reagan administration fired all ATCs to break up the union and forbade the FAA from rehiring any former union members. The FAA has been playing catch up with training enough ATCs to meet demand ever since, which isn't helped by a sequence of bad decisions made regarding ATC training schools. |
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| ▲ | buckle8017 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | jdlshore 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | This sounds like a right-wing conspiracy theory. Are you saying that, in order to hire more black people, the FAA deliberately created a test only black people could pass? Do you have any evidence of this assertion? | | |
| ▲ | jdlshore 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Note: SideburnsOfDoom looks into the claim below and says, “In summary, spending 5 minutes digging into it gives every impression of it being culture war nonsense.” | |
| ▲ | appreciatorBus 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Unfortunately, it is not a conspiracy theory, right wing or otherwise. Lots of people have written about it, here’s a few: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa... https://simpleflying.com/faa-air-traffic-controller-applican... https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/premium-the-faas-bizarr... https://www.newsweek.com/faa-reject-air-traffic-controllers-... https://highsierrapilots.club/faa-hiring-scandal/ | | |
| ▲ | jdlshore 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The only domain I recognize is Newsweek, and given the nature of astroturfing, I’m not going to trust domains I don’t recognize. All the Newsweek article says is that a lawsuit was filed. It doesn’t support GP’s claim that the FAA made “an impossible test, and gave black people the answers.” A lawsuit isn’t evidence of wrongdoing; it’s only evidence of an accusation of wrongdoing. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Worth noting that Newsweek went out of business over a decade ago and their domain and branding was bought by a cult and used to run an SEO business. | |
| ▲ | SideburnsOfDoom 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're correct to be suspicious. Looking at the front page of 2 of those domains ( tracingwoodgrains, blockedandreported ) they are ... ah .. not exactly impartial. Sample headlines: "How Wikipedia Whitewashes Mao - The Anatomy of Ideological Capture" and "The Politics of Misery - Why are young liberals so depressed". The simpleflying link reports merely that a lawsuit was filed. It gives the name of the person filing the lawsuit as this character: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Laxalt who is also ... not exactly impartial, seeing as he "was the Republican party nominee for governor of Nevada in the 2018 election". And as other searches suggest, no stranger to frivolous litigation or false claims. In summary, spending 5 minutes digging into it gives every impression of it being confected culture war nonsense. |
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| ▲ | cjrp 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't think this explains understaffing though. "The lawsuit doesn’t allege incompetent controllers were hired instead of CTI graduates. Instead, it states that the CTI graduates weren’t given the opportunity to demonstrate their competency." It sounds like they hired different people, rather than fewer. | | |
| ▲ | appreciatorBus 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not a pilot or a controller, just a nerd. My take from reading about it was that a large number of high performing potential ATC controllers who had followed the traditional pipeline were ditched. Ofc it's possible they hired exactly as many ppl as they would have otherwise, but in any job with a long lead time for training, a sudden change in the pipeline is going to cause ripples further on for years to come. Maybe the ppl they did hire had a higher attrition rate so that while they had the same # of ppl in the short term, in the long term, they faced shortages. Maybe some % of those they did hire required some % of extra supervision or training. Ofc not insurmountable or fatal, it just means extra pressure that will exert itself in some fashion for years to come after the initial disruption. I have no idea of last night's incident could be considered downstream of the testing change, I was just responding to the allegation that it was a conspiracy theory, however I also don't think it's implausible that it contributed to it in some indirect way. | | |
| ▲ | jmalicki 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Maybe the ppl they hired had a lower attrition rate! Maybe the people hired required less supervision and training than the CTI graduates would have! Maybe this had rippling effects on increasing their hiring pipeline as people of color were more likely to see opportunities here. Your comment presuming it was at best neutral, and any likely change was for the worse is exactly what racism looks like. | | |
| ▲ | buckle8017 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Except they had a much higher attrition rate because ATC is a terrible job. | | |
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