An exclusive report by the New York Post claims that on Monday evening between 18:30 to 21:30, flights out of Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) were handled by just one air traffic controller and a trainee. The report quotes a New York-based controller describing the situation as “pure insanity.” It also noted that an FAA spokesperson said that there were at least three controllers scheduled for each hour on Monday night but did not clarify how many of them were fully certified personnel.
The New York Times reported something similar, adding that four people familiar with the situation said that the number of fully certified controllers on duty to manage Newark’s air traffic was sometimes one or two. These figures are shocking because the target number of controllers for Newark to manage traffic in those hours is around 14-15.
I posted this on another thread, but thought it was worth sharing here as well.
Heads up this is about to get worse. Republicans recently voted to cut retirement funding for air traffic controllers. By cutting the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) for workers retiring before 62 (all Air Traffic Controllers are required to retire at 56 and are eligible to retire at 50), this is completely fucking over ATCs who continue working by changing their retirement math.
An open secret with ATCs is that they have numerous medical qualifications that they have to maintain to keep working. For example, if they see a doctor about sleep apnea, depression, alcoholism, etc they lose their medical qualification and are forced to take a medical retirement.
So what happens if you’re an ATC in your 40s and the government says “hey you can keep working for the next 10 years and retire without this FERS supplement… Or you can tell your doctor that you snore at night and take an immediate medical retirement right now and get paid more in retirement”?
TLDR; We’re about to have a shit load of Air Traffic Controllers taking medical retirements and these staffing problems are going to explode.
they’ll probably (unwisely) have AI take over. because nothing bad ever happens with AI…
There’s a reason Air Traffic runs on old ass systems built in the 80s. It’s because that shit just works and there is zero room for error. Moving to AI would kill thousands of people.