The Federal Aviation Administration says flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility.
If ATCs strike right now, what could they even do? They can’t possibly bring on enough scabs to do the job. If they tried, it’d be a disaster and ensure US air travel dies.
Hey, Air Traffic Controllers! You have immense power right now!
Thing is, it’s been technically possible to automate 95% of the ATC job for decades now. Obviously, you want a human to step in for that last 5% when things get tough.
But that’s a problem all on its own. If the human steps in for that 5% of times when things get tough, they have to have the training to deal with a tough situation. They hone those skills through practice with the other 95% of the time. What you actually want is to have the human take over 25% of it, and cover a broad range of different situations in that 25%.
Choosing when to give over control some of the time is the hard part. Much harder than just waiting until it’s too complicated.
It has not happened yet, and definitely did not happen in February as you stated
The reported deadline for switching the contract was in March. The fact we haven’t received any news about it likely means the efforts to replace Verizon with SpaceX failed
It’s specifically in regards to communication between towers/approach/center and their associated data sources. It doesn’t actually affect the day-to-day operations of ATC. “Modernize” is just a political buzzword being thrown out by politicians here. When ATC talks about the need to modernize, they’re referring to the technologies used. Two separate things being conflated by politicians looking for a cheap win
There are less than 3k Air Force ATC (AFSC code 1C1). I couldn’t find how many Navy Air Corps ATC there are, but since it’s a bit smaller than the Air Force, we can guess around 2k.
There are 13k civilian ATC, and that’s at anemic levels as it is. They can’t possibly replace these people.
Reality has a way of dealing with consequences on its own.
Something to note, some AF ACT operations can be contracted out. This means that even the AF doesn’t have enough even for its own operations, and that number probably reflects the available number of ‘wartime’ operators available.
Also, the military operates under a huge umbrella of tasks, where a 1C1 wouldn’t ‘just be’ ACT - that would be your ‘wartime’ job (specifically when you first enter), and you are ever becoming more generalized to handle a broader scope of tasks and responsibilities. If every 1C1 were used, you’d lose a lot of managers, support, training and etc to put people who are 1C1 who may not have done ATC work in years. Think First Sergeants and the like, they could do it - but you’d lose someone who has the knowledge of all 1C operations and go back to just doing ATC. That’s a heavy ask.
Every service has a large air component so even if they each only have 2k that’s 9000 atc right there. Even with a lean roster they can shutdown airports and keep important corridors open.
These aren’t smart people in charge. They don’t care if the military ATC get even more burned out since they can’t quit like civilians do.
Don’t assume trump and his ilk will do the intelligent thing, they will always do the capricious vengeful thing.
Don’t assume trump and his ilk will do the intelligent thing, they will always do the capricious vengeful thing.
As I’ve been trying to get at, that’s irrelevant. No, pulling military ATC does not work. 9k isn’t enough when 13k is already anemic. And what are the military air installations supposed to do without ATC?
Shutting down airports only highlights the problem. The airlines won’t survive that for long. Everything they could possibly try has natural consequences. It’s not a court imposing an order. It’s not congress finding its spine. It’s reality.
Edit: is there even a single military airport more complicated than Chicago Midway? Running a major hub may well be outside their training.
I don’t have numbers, but there are tons of tiny regional airports. The kind that have only a handful of flights a day. But they all still need ATC right. I bet you can halve the need by just shutting those down. A small number of people will have to drive further to catch a flight.
There are small, untowered airports, but they usually aren’t equipped for large jets, or for IFR landings (“instrument flight rules,” which is when the pilot relies on instrumentation instead of visually looking outside, such as during inclement weather.)
Small planes depending on VFR (visual flight rules) can probably plan flights to avoid towered airports. But the big commercial flights will be in trouble.
Jets can fly VFR as well, if needed, in towered airspace. There are a reason jets fly IFR nearly all the time, but if the choice is between the flight not happening, and landing VFR, they’ll choose the VFR landing any time weather permits. You’re just going to end up with a lot more delayed or diverted flights
The ones I am talking about have small jets or those turboprop planes for commercial service. And of course private small planes. I’ve seen a tower, but I guess it could be empty.
I wasn’t suggesting it would be permanent. But it would reduce the need temporarily so that maybe the military atc could cover while they train new people. At least the government might see it that way. They don’t care much about the long term anyway.
It’d almost have to be the opposite. Military ATC aren’t used to dealing with the same kind of traffic levels as civilian ATC. Even Chicago Midway might be pushing it.
Because reality has stopped these people from implementing their plan already? That’s not how it works under authoritarians. The cruelty will be the point. Any airline who complains will get hit with fines or shuttered. They will shut down airports in democrat areas and keep the republican ones open.
They don’t give two shits about reality when they can just have their media lie about it.
They can try as much as they like. The airports are still getting shut down. Airlines will bleed money. There is no way out of that if ATC go on strike, illegal or not. You bargain with them or you fail.
And yeah, they do get stopped by reality all the time. They tried to fire a whole lot of people in the federal government. Then realized that a lot of those people absolutely must do certain jobs, like oversight of nuclear weapons stockpiles.
Just after the election, I argued with someone trying to make that same point about Project 2025. I argued that because of reality getting in the way, they couldn’t implement half of it. Guess where the Project 2025 Tracker has been stuck at for months? I actually didn’t expect to be so literally correct, but that’s what happened.
Yes, reality matters no matter how authoritarian the system is. Trump can no more do this than proclaim that Stephen Miller can jump off the Washington Monument and fly (no matter how much I might enjoy seeing that happen).
They let go most (a bit over 70%) of NRC Regulators. That is a very specialized job and requires very experienced people in them. One nuclear reactor has a major safety incident, well, there may have to be some shut downs for a while… which will cause an issue for power supply. Those data centers don’t power themselves.
Good Luck with that. The major airports that have the heaviest flights are in the states that create the most commerce and generate the most money. The Donor States.
I can’t comment on the number of military ATC, but I am familiar with civilian ATC operations. Military ATC cannot replace civilian ATC in many areas, especially not the sequence rates they do. The airspace is extremely complex near places like NYC. It requires months of training, with only the most experienced of ATC getting hired into those areas
They would need several military controllers to replace even a single center controller, and that’s after months of training
its also heavily (naturally)gatekeeped job, mainly because of the requirements of becoming one, plus the competitiveness to get the jobs, and first you have to get intoa program to become an atc.
More likely, a major airport gets logger jammed and that shuts down the whole US airport network.
But that’s the whole point. Yes, they can technically “fix” it this way or that way. Trump can also tell Stephen Miller that he can jump off the Washington Monument and fly. There would still be consequences due to reality, and those consequences will end the whole charade one way or another.
The threat of firing wouldn’t be enough to convince most of them to go back to work. Trump would threaten them with jail, which is actually a legal punishment as it’s illegal for ATC to go on strike
Technically since slavery is a legal punishment for crime in the US, he could simply enslave them and force them to work. I don’t see even Trump doing that for multiple obvious reasons
Edit: to be clear, I’m not saying this isn’t going to happen. Trump is a fucking moron who thinks of himself as the second coming of Reagan. So he will 100% happily fire all of the traffic controllers we have if they even breathe the word “strike”. I’m just outlining what a god-awful fucked up future we have in store for us.
Given everything you know about America, do you really think it would be fantastic for the climate?
Because personally, I’m pretty sure people would just end up driving instead of flying, which is generally worse for the environment. Rich people would still be flying in private jets. We’d just see less commercial flights (and nearly zero general aviation), which would largely be replaced by people taking long road trips
It may still have a net positive on emissions if only barely, a flight to Disneyworld gets canceled and not replaced is generally good, same thing with non essential conferences and conventions. But it could also respin up road trip culture, IE packing into and going to Carlsbad Caverns instead of flying out to the Florida.
Air travel is worse than trains, better than driving. Knowing America, people would only end up driving more. I personally don’t think that’s a good thing
People fly because it’s the fastest means of travel. The fastest trains will never be as fast as flying but people are also never going to be able to drive as fast as high speed rail.
Even once there is demand, it’ll be an uphill fight against an entrenched opponent profiting from inefficient transportation, but I’m optimistic that eventually it’ll happen.
It has nothing to do with anyone imposing consequences. There simply is no way to hire people for this job to replace what’s already there. They can’t even backfill turnover from retiring ATCs. Reality takes care of this on its own.
this part is true, they cant just hire anyone, because its already competitive asf to even get the job, plus thier are ton of medical requirements, a multi year training program, plus they have to accepted into tha tprogram in the first place,.
and they cant hire just anyone too, because of how stringent the job requirements are, they have medical requirements, plus an extensive college program
In theory, that’s true. In practice, most people aren’t willing to risk jail time
Consider what happened with controllers under Reagan. Nearly all went on strike. Of those that went on strike, there were 2 groups: Those that crossed the line and went back to work when ordered, and those that held the line in solidarity
Those that crossed the line were allowed to keep their jobs. Those that didn’t were immediately fired and barred from ever working for the federal government again. That effectively meant their career was over. They could never work as an air traffic controller again. Jail is an even bigger threat than that
It’s more or less a literal prisoner dilemma, except we have a historical precedent for it. I think it’s incredibly shitty, but realistically I don’t see it working
This isn’t the same situation. ATCs just can’t be replaced this time. Reagan showed why that’s an incredibly bad idea, and the repercussions of doing it again would destroy the civil air transport system.
So yes, they can arrest them if they like or bar them from becoming ATCs again. The situation remains that air travel won’t exist anymore.
You can play semantic games all day, but that doesn’t change reality
The reality is that if they go on strike, it is legally a crime. A judge can find them guilty of illegal collective action, and they can be fined or put in jail. Not getting paid is a very valid complaint, but the law doesn’t have an exception for lack of payment
It’s a fucked up law, but that’s the law of the land. It is illegal for ATC to go on strike, and it’s still legally considered a strike regardless of whether or not they’re getting paid
Also, if we’re going to play semantic games: ATC is still getting paid. They got a paycheck last week. It was just for $0.00
I think you need to go refresh yourself on what a strike is and the conditions surrounding it.
Employees have never been paid while on strike. That’s part of the whole thing. It’s a standoff to see who will cave first; the employer with no money or the employees with no money.
Unions occasionally have some system to partially compensate striking workers for lost pay, precisely to tip that standoff in their direction. Maybe they confused that?
Not all unions have that, I believe, nor do all jobs have a union and I’d be surprised if ATCs in particular had one.
If ATCs strike right now, what could they even do? They can’t possibly bring on enough scabs to do the job. If they tried, it’d be a disaster and ensure US air travel dies.
Hey, Air Traffic Controllers! You have immense power right now!
I’d be willing to bet on trump speculating in the next few days that we should get AI to do their jobs.
While I’m sure you’re being facetious, if that ever happened that would be the last time I step into a plane.
Thing is, it’s been technically possible to automate 95% of the ATC job for decades now. Obviously, you want a human to step in for that last 5% when things get tough.
But that’s a problem all on its own. If the human steps in for that 5% of times when things get tough, they have to have the training to deal with a tough situation. They hone those skills through practice with the other 95% of the time. What you actually want is to have the human take over 25% of it, and cover a broad range of different situations in that 25%.
Choosing when to give over control some of the time is the hard part. Much harder than just waiting until it’s too complicated.
and AI are also like to make mistakes, randomly.
This already happened. Back in February, Musk/SpaceX got the contact to “modernize” ATC.
Pretty sure you’re referring to the Verizon contract to upgrade ATC communications backbone potentially being handed over to SpaceX
It has not happened yet, and definitely did not happen in February as you stated
The reported deadline for switching the contract was in March. The fact we haven’t received any news about it likely means the efforts to replace Verizon with SpaceX failed
It’s specifically in regards to communication between towers/approach/center and their associated data sources. It doesn’t actually affect the day-to-day operations of ATC. “Modernize” is just a political buzzword being thrown out by politicians here. When ATC talks about the need to modernize, they’re referring to the technologies used. Two separate things being conflated by politicians looking for a cheap win
Ah, gotcha. Appreciate the clarifications!
If they strike trump will probably do what reagan did and fire all 10,000+ ATC employees and replace them with military ATC.
There are less than 3k Air Force ATC (AFSC code 1C1). I couldn’t find how many Navy Air Corps ATC there are, but since it’s a bit smaller than the Air Force, we can guess around 2k.
There are 13k civilian ATC, and that’s at anemic levels as it is. They can’t possibly replace these people.
Reality has a way of dealing with consequences on its own.
Something to note, some AF ACT operations can be contracted out. This means that even the AF doesn’t have enough even for its own operations, and that number probably reflects the available number of ‘wartime’ operators available.
Also, the military operates under a huge umbrella of tasks, where a 1C1 wouldn’t ‘just be’ ACT - that would be your ‘wartime’ job (specifically when you first enter), and you are ever becoming more generalized to handle a broader scope of tasks and responsibilities. If every 1C1 were used, you’d lose a lot of managers, support, training and etc to put people who are 1C1 who may not have done ATC work in years. Think First Sergeants and the like, they could do it - but you’d lose someone who has the knowledge of all 1C operations and go back to just doing ATC. That’s a heavy ask.
So the outlook is even worse than you suggest.
Every service has a large air component so even if they each only have 2k that’s 9000 atc right there. Even with a lean roster they can shutdown airports and keep important corridors open.
These aren’t smart people in charge. They don’t care if the military ATC get even more burned out since they can’t quit like civilians do.
Don’t assume trump and his ilk will do the intelligent thing, they will always do the capricious vengeful thing.
As I’ve been trying to get at, that’s irrelevant. No, pulling military ATC does not work. 9k isn’t enough when 13k is already anemic. And what are the military air installations supposed to do without ATC?
Shutting down airports only highlights the problem. The airlines won’t survive that for long. Everything they could possibly try has natural consequences. It’s not a court imposing an order. It’s not congress finding its spine. It’s reality.
Edit: is there even a single military airport more complicated than Chicago Midway? Running a major hub may well be outside their training.
I don’t have numbers, but there are tons of tiny regional airports. The kind that have only a handful of flights a day. But they all still need ATC right. I bet you can halve the need by just shutting those down. A small number of people will have to drive further to catch a flight.
There are small, untowered airports, but they usually aren’t equipped for large jets, or for IFR landings (“instrument flight rules,” which is when the pilot relies on instrumentation instead of visually looking outside, such as during inclement weather.)
Small planes depending on VFR (visual flight rules) can probably plan flights to avoid towered airports. But the big commercial flights will be in trouble.
Jets can fly VFR as well, if needed, in towered airspace. There are a reason jets fly IFR nearly all the time, but if the choice is between the flight not happening, and landing VFR, they’ll choose the VFR landing any time weather permits. You’re just going to end up with a lot more delayed or diverted flights
The ones I am talking about have small jets or those turboprop planes for commercial service. And of course private small planes. I’ve seen a tower, but I guess it could be empty.
Those small airports play a critical role in the training of pilots. Without them, you strangle the pipeline for new pilots
I wasn’t suggesting it would be permanent. But it would reduce the need temporarily so that maybe the military atc could cover while they train new people. At least the government might see it that way. They don’t care much about the long term anyway.
It’d almost have to be the opposite. Military ATC aren’t used to dealing with the same kind of traffic levels as civilian ATC. Even Chicago Midway might be pushing it.
Because reality has stopped these people from implementing their plan already? That’s not how it works under authoritarians. The cruelty will be the point. Any airline who complains will get hit with fines or shuttered. They will shut down airports in democrat areas and keep the republican ones open.
They don’t give two shits about reality when they can just have their media lie about it.
They can try as much as they like. The airports are still getting shut down. Airlines will bleed money. There is no way out of that if ATC go on strike, illegal or not. You bargain with them or you fail.
And yeah, they do get stopped by reality all the time. They tried to fire a whole lot of people in the federal government. Then realized that a lot of those people absolutely must do certain jobs, like oversight of nuclear weapons stockpiles.
Just after the election, I argued with someone trying to make that same point about Project 2025. I argued that because of reality getting in the way, they couldn’t implement half of it. Guess where the Project 2025 Tracker has been stuck at for months? I actually didn’t expect to be so literally correct, but that’s what happened.
Yes, reality matters no matter how authoritarian the system is. Trump can no more do this than proclaim that Stephen Miller can jump off the Washington Monument and fly (no matter how much I might enjoy seeing that happen).
They let go most (a bit over 70%) of NRC Regulators. That is a very specialized job and requires very experienced people in them. One nuclear reactor has a major safety incident, well, there may have to be some shut downs for a while… which will cause an issue for power supply. Those data centers don’t power themselves.
We will just have to agree to disagree and see who’s right in a few months or years.
Good Luck with that. The major airports that have the heaviest flights are in the states that create the most commerce and generate the most money. The Donor States.
I can’t comment on the number of military ATC, but I am familiar with civilian ATC operations. Military ATC cannot replace civilian ATC in many areas, especially not the sequence rates they do. The airspace is extremely complex near places like NYC. It requires months of training, with only the most experienced of ATC getting hired into those areas
They would need several military controllers to replace even a single center controller, and that’s after months of training
then it would leave nothing for the military to use for thier own services.
its also heavily (naturally)gatekeeped job, mainly because of the requirements of becoming one, plus the competitiveness to get the jobs, and first you have to get intoa program to become an atc.
They’ll do it anyways and then people will die
More likely, a major airport gets logger jammed and that shuts down the whole US airport network.
But that’s the whole point. Yes, they can technically “fix” it this way or that way. Trump can also tell Stephen Miller that he can jump off the Washington Monument and fly. There would still be consequences due to reality, and those consequences will end the whole charade one way or another.
Until Fox/OANN/Newsmax get their story straight for how it’s caused by Democrats breeding gay frogs or whatever
The threat of firing wouldn’t be enough to convince most of them to go back to work. Trump would threaten them with jail, which is actually a legal punishment as it’s illegal for ATC to go on strike
Technically since slavery is a legal punishment for crime in the US, he could simply enslave them and force them to work. I don’t see even Trump doing that for multiple obvious reasons
Not really, no. Just ask those who got fired by Reagan.
That didn’t work out as well as Reagan thought it would. And has been fucking up our air travel situation for the last 40 years. To do it again would literally kill air travel in the country for the next 30 years. People would literally stop flying.
Edit: to be clear, I’m not saying this isn’t going to happen. Trump is a fucking moron who thinks of himself as the second coming of Reagan. So he will 100% happily fire all of the traffic controllers we have if they even breathe the word “strike”. I’m just outlining what a god-awful fucked up future we have in store for us.
From a climate perspective, that would be fantastic.
Given everything you know about America, do you really think it would be fantastic for the climate?
Because personally, I’m pretty sure people would just end up driving instead of flying, which is generally worse for the environment. Rich people would still be flying in private jets. We’d just see less commercial flights (and nearly zero general aviation), which would largely be replaced by people taking long road trips
If it were replaced with massive investment into public transport and new dedicated high speed rail between US cities, it’d be a huge net positive.
A man can dream, anyway.
It may still have a net positive on emissions if only barely, a flight to Disneyworld gets canceled and not replaced is generally good, same thing with non essential conferences and conventions. But it could also respin up road trip culture, IE packing into and going to Carlsbad Caverns instead of flying out to the Florida.
I say do it! Air travel is a huge waste and harmful to the environment. Maybe this will finally lead to better trains!
Air travel is worse than trains, better than driving. Knowing America, people would only end up driving more. I personally don’t think that’s a good thing
People fly because it’s the fastest means of travel. The fastest trains will never be as fast as flying but people are also never going to be able to drive as fast as high speed rail.
You’d need to build high speed rail first
Won’t happen until there’s demand which won’t exist so long as flying is so accessible.
Even once there is demand, it’ll be an uphill fight against an entrenched opponent profiting from inefficient transportation, but I’m optimistic that eventually it’ll happen.
Which caused domino effects that are still being felt. They can’t do that again. There simply isn’t anybody they can hire.
I keep hearing/seeing people say “they can’t do that…” Then they do it with no repercussions.
It has nothing to do with anyone imposing consequences. There simply is no way to hire people for this job to replace what’s already there. They can’t even backfill turnover from retiring ATCs. Reality takes care of this on its own.
just have ai do it
this part is true, they cant just hire anyone, because its already competitive asf to even get the job, plus thier are ton of medical requirements, a multi year training program, plus they have to accepted into tha tprogram in the first place,.
and they cant hire just anyone too, because of how stringent the job requirements are, they have medical requirements, plus an extensive college program
I wonder how well that would work right now. You fire them all and then…. ask for volunteers? Since there’s no money to pay them with.
The federal government could easily say to the strikers: Get back to work now, or you go to jail
It is illegal for ATC to go on strike, and the punishment can include jail time. Likely most would capitulate
OK, they go to jail.
If they hold out, the government really has nothing they can do.
Solidarity. Solidarity. Solidarity.
In theory, that’s true. In practice, most people aren’t willing to risk jail time
Consider what happened with controllers under Reagan. Nearly all went on strike. Of those that went on strike, there were 2 groups: Those that crossed the line and went back to work when ordered, and those that held the line in solidarity
Those that crossed the line were allowed to keep their jobs. Those that didn’t were immediately fired and barred from ever working for the federal government again. That effectively meant their career was over. They could never work as an air traffic controller again. Jail is an even bigger threat than that
It’s more or less a literal prisoner dilemma, except we have a historical precedent for it. I think it’s incredibly shitty, but realistically I don’t see it working
This isn’t the same situation. ATCs just can’t be replaced this time. Reagan showed why that’s an incredibly bad idea, and the repercussions of doing it again would destroy the civil air transport system.
So yes, they can arrest them if they like or bar them from becoming ATCs again. The situation remains that air travel won’t exist anymore.
no…facepalm
Really? You think this is an unprecedented situation in labor history?
alright we will do it your way, tell the ATC workers to stand their ground and goto jail. we will see how many stand in “solidarity”
They can quit. They are not slaves.
Imo it will happen if things drag on.
It’s not a strike when they aren’t getting paid for labor hours
Yes it is. What?
It’s wage theft
Not legally but yes.
Howeveradditionally them striking is still striking.Not a strike when employer doesn’t pay. People need to eat and pay for living spaces
You can play semantic games all day, but that doesn’t change reality
The reality is that if they go on strike, it is legally a crime. A judge can find them guilty of illegal collective action, and they can be fined or put in jail. Not getting paid is a very valid complaint, but the law doesn’t have an exception for lack of payment
It’s a fucked up law, but that’s the law of the land. It is illegal for ATC to go on strike, and it’s still legally considered a strike regardless of whether or not they’re getting paid
Also, if we’re going to play semantic games: ATC is still getting paid. They got a paycheck last week. It was just for $0.00
Wait its a fucking CRIME??
I thought the “exception” was just for the protections workers get (no discrimination, etc.)
I think you need to go refresh yourself on what a strike is and the conditions surrounding it.
Employees have never been paid while on strike. That’s part of the whole thing. It’s a standoff to see who will cave first; the employer with no money or the employees with no money.
Unions occasionally have some system to partially compensate striking workers for lost pay, precisely to tip that standoff in their direction. Maybe they confused that?
Not all unions have that, I believe, nor do all jobs have a union and I’d be surprised if ATCs in particular had one.