Those Epstein files must be really bad.
how billionaires and millionaires travel if all airport shut down?
Mad Max-esque convoys.
We’re proceding very quickly to the find out phase. Republicans can stop this any day by changing senate rules or even forcing chuck schumer to speak for 48 hours instead of allowing a silent fillibuster. Schumer wouldn’t last very long on a podium.
My guess is they don’t want a real fillibuster because people would just read the republican budget out loud.
America’s doing real great right now.
No… no we are not.
Pretty sure the italics was the equivalent of /s.
Here we go. Now shit is getting real for the white collar people.
Anyone that says fire striking ATC’s like Reagan did in the 80s. The 90s was when cheap domestic and international flights really took off along with businesses going international going full bore. Compared to the 80s, the economy is far more dependent on air travel and that disruption to shipping activity is what would end the shutdown.
A lot more ATCs are needed today compared to the 80s and the military shifted to less in volume but more expensive (supposedly higher quality that makes up the difference in quantity) military. Military ATCs don’t have the numbers to replace regular ATCs
Could they even shift over the ATC from the military? I feel like the air base near me is even more active then ever these days.
They could as long as the US doesn’t get into a very major war that requires a huge amount of logistics for overseas equipment and personnel. Can’t do it for long because of how many military bases are overseas. Maybe you’re seeing traffic related to Venezuela and the hurricane. Regardless it’s just not enough people. The military doesn’t staff as much as they used to, don’t operate as much aircraft like they used too (though it’s all much more expensive even inflation adjusted).
I can see them shifting military ATC’s to airports and having airports restrict flights down a lot to favor flights carrying commercial cargo. If you’re flying somewhere and there’s enough cargo space expected for FedEx, USPS, UPS to pay to jam some cargo in there, good. If not, shit out of luck. FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, etc - their planes probably get scheduled with priority
unrelatedly, I think trump should take even more flights right now
No way am I flying in US airspace. This is just the latest in a series of major issues.
international airlines flights will mostly reroute around the USA, if they havnt done it already.
The primary result of this is primarily delayed or cancelled flights. Safety hasn’t been significantly affected, although controllers are human and susceptible to human factors such as stress or fatigue that they may feel more pressure to work through than normal
https://www.reddit.com/r/ATC/s/K9KxRNLr0k
Safety is absolutely being impacted.
Copying the comment so people don’t have to click through:
In the subreddit r/ATC, as response to the question “What does a short staffed day look like?”, TheWingalingDragon posted 17d ago:
It means instead of working 1 or 2 positions, you’re working 2 or 3 at a time, minimum.
You’re working them for 1.5-2 hours at a time, instead of working them for about 1 hour at a time.
When you do get a break, you’re going to get 10-15 minutes, instead of 30-45. That is assuming there is anyone that can even give you a break. If not, then you can expect to “take a break” by working the supervisor desk… because there is no management in the building at all. This is totally normal.
So very few breaks to go around and every minute you go over time on yours is significantly fucking your friends on position.
That means when it is time to eat, you’re probably going to spend your 10 minutes warming up/retrieving lunch and the other 5 minutes trying to get it all back to the console without making a huge mess so that you can try to eat it between transmissions for the next 1.5-2 hours.
The amount of planes you work won’t be lower, so you’ll just start denying things that you have no bandwidth for. Instead of having time to creatively vector, you’re just scanning furiously for points of friction and trying to stay afloat. It’s not efficient, but you don’t have time to make everything nice. You just need to get rid of planes as fast as you can without them hitting anything, and keep doing it for two hours without fucking up. You leave messes for your coworkers and you feel like shit when it takes you 7 minutes to brief it… but you take the tag out and hustle out to salvage more food.
Instead of anyone having an extra set of eyes to call upon and say “help me keep an eye on this” or “help me coordinate this dudes thing by calling those three people”… you have nobody… the other one or two people in there are just as balls deep in traffic and noodles as you are trying to stay afloat. When people ask for simple shit… it’s no longer simple cuz there is no time for more phone calls… and three lines are already ringing.
You pick them up, you say unable, you hang up. If they call back again, it is probably really important.
Everytime you come back from a break, you come back to a mess of airplanes and noodles everywhere. Somebody fucked with the thermostat again.
Literally everyone around you is talking about calling out sick instead of returning from their next break. Sometimes that happens, too… and you just say “feel better, man.”
Then your Manager calls from home and says that none of this qualifies as “ATC Alert” because low staffing isn’t a valid reason, but make sure that you get your computer based training done before you leave today.
You do the computer training, which was supposed to be given to you in person by management like four months ago, but now YOURE somehow the problem child that it didn’t get done. You click through the bullshit slides while you slurp your cold noodles during your supervisor desk “break”… Lo and behold, it is a CBT about staffing triggers and ATC Alerts. The slides say low staffing = atc alert… you shrug and go back to your noodles.
Then the midshift calls into the desk and says they are coming in two hours late so they can stay later in the morning to cover a sick hit on the day shift. So now you work until midnight, no option. You scribble most of all that onto a schedule sheet for tomorrow that already has like 7 pen and scratch edits to it. Your noodle bowl leaves a thin ring of yellow on it… nobody will know it was you. I’m not reprinting that stupid thing.
Then some dumbass points a laser at three planes in the practice area and you’re NEVER going to finish those noodles, you dumb bitch. You got like three binders to find and complete… and like four stupid ass phone calls to make.
A pilot calls and asks which of the three time slots would be best for tomorrow to avoid delays. You have no idea what he is talking about… he says he emailed all this to the management… you look around, nothing… panic. you lie and say that he can call back tomorrow beforehand, and they’ll give him an answer then… always a safe bet. He tells you they said that yesterday, and now he needs it NOW. You guess a random time, fuck it.
Then the other mid shifter calls you and says they are not feeling well. Now the other swing shifter is staying two hours late, with you, and a supervisor is coming in at midnight to work the mid… which means the real controller is doing everything and has a supervisor there ruining his good time all night. Run of the mill stuff so far… not your first rodeo. You scribble all the new stuff into the schedules 9th edit… “fuckin’ gross, somebody got soup on this.”
You find a sticky note that literally just says “59B - 1930, 1800, 1830???” One of the three times on it is circled… a dick has been lovingly drawn on it by what appears to be multiple contributors or one person with multiple pens… it was underneath your uneaten noodles… You guessed the right time earlier, good shit! Things are looking up! You make a contribution to the dick drawing.
End of the night, one more go on desk/final… One of the pilots says “nice job” before they switch to tower. You can tell they meant it because he was the tail end of a FUCKIN SHOW and you haven’t had 30 seconds to bite and chew for the last 45 minutes straight while working the final position AND the supervisor desk.
You act like you don’t care, but it truly means the world that the pilot saw all that shit, probably expected the worst, and was pleasantly surprised to see all the little lights line up neatly and quickly… and a single, sincere, “nice job” is actually legit.
Supervisor walks in at 2359 and asks if you got the CBT done. He pats your head thrice, because you were a good boi today.
Then you go home at 0015 in the morning and microwave your leftover noodles for the third time that day. On the drive home, you pass by 15 weed dispensaries and wonder how nice it would be to just get home and kick your feet up to relax with a quick puff… but you stop and get some whiskey instead because that’s definitely better and won’t get me fired.
The next day you show up for work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed… stroll in…notice a lack of cars… cross your fucking fingers that somebody carpooled or some shit… you sit in your car for a minute or two and wonder if anyone saw you pull up… could still call out today… but you step into your dark tomb for the next 10 hours (probably) and ask one very simple question to a facless silhouette before you… their answer determines how the rest of your day is gonna go…
“How many did we lose?”
Now… I’m not a scientist or nothin’… but it seems reasonable to consider that people probably can’t keep that tempo for very long. It’s also just plain rude to subject people to that with such a high stakes job… What the general public might be genuinely concerned to learn about is that most ATC have operated under that sort of “flow” for the last 7+ years… just nonstop 6 day work weeks and “surprise” 10 hour days… and a lot of those places are within 1 or 2 bodies worth of the above story if they lost anyone suddenly.
Tweak the times, tweak the chow run of that day, and tweak the coping mechanism… but that basic formula is what a fuckload of controllers contend with randomly as little “fuck you” sprinkles throughout their regular working weeks. As the herd grows thinner, the occasions and severity only increase in intensity.
I’m sure they are fine with this. They probably want it. Don’t have to pay them. Plus more control over the people. I’m sure they will have coverage for their private jets and those of their friends.
There is really no mechanism for their private jets to have traffic coverage that wouldn’t be given to other air traffic
The American air traffic system has a rather egalitarian design that I’m a big fan of. By and large traffic is treated equally. I, in a small GA plane, can fly into nearly* any civilian airport just like a private jet or commercial airliner. Air traffic control is a public service provided for free to anyone that needs it. A good example of where socialism has worked well
*There are some minor exceptions, for example LAX requires prior authorization for unscheduled GA aircraft at the moment. That and ATC may make a GA aircraft wait for a while before sequencing, but that’s mostly a practicality issue, since they need to give a small plane a lot more time to land and space to avoid wake turbulence
See, does that go far enough?
If I’m letting someone out on my commute, a factor is how many people are in the vehicle. If it’s a bus, they automatically get courtesy as who am I to delay 50 people to save myself 10 seconds.
ATC should be the same with private jets - they only get a slot once all the bigger planes have landed
The American air traffic system has a rather egalitarian design
Disgusting. Unacceptable. They ought to work on that.
They already aren’t paying them.
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!
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
They can quit. They are not slaves.
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”
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.
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.
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.
then it would leave nothing for the military to use for thier own services.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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It has not happened yet, and definitely did not happen in February as you stated
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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
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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
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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.
To do it again would literally kill air travel in the country for the next 30 years. People would literally stop flying.
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.
Which caused domino effects that are still being felt. They can’t do that again. There simply isn’t anybody they can hire.
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 keep hearing/seeing people say “they can’t do that…” Then they do it with no repercussions.
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,.
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
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.
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.
Just wait till holiday season!
But the upshot is that commercial airlines heavily fund Republicans. So if they start having issues, they’ll start letting their Republican folks know about it.
My guess is the holidy season is when things start to ignite. That’s when stress on the system hits the maximum, and when people start to realize that people who can barely afford food and shelter can’t afford to do anything for the holidays. It will be hard to hide the recession at that point.
No. They’ll just get a bailout and we’ll go even further into debt.
Can you order them back to work and then not pay them?
they would have to use force, they can try otherwise, it will just push them to quit. certain countries like australia is looking for ATC if things get to worst/.
Yes, although ATC controllers have a lot of tools to not be working traffic
If a controller states they’re too fatigued to work traffic, they must be given other duties, if available. They’re given heavy legal protections to be able to say: I don’t feel safe working traffic today. Bit of a counter balance to the fact they’re basically slaves in regards to other worker protections
We even have a word for this: slavery.
Which is illegal in the US, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.
And since they made it illegal for ATC to strike…
In theory, I guess, but that can only go wrong with a highly technical job like ATC.
There’s a lot of things they could try on paper. All of them result in disaster. Not necessarily even planes hitting each other. Just one hub airport coming to loggerjams on the runway would be enough to have repercussions on the entire US airport network.
