I"m not touching that with a ten foot 'anything'.......
Posted on 07/14/2008 2:50:17 AM PDT by Stoat
The FAA began its recruitment efforts in high schools and through online ads on MySpace and Craigslist because of a severe staffing shortage and lack of experience among workers at its air-control towers.
(edit)
By 2011, 59 percent of all controllers will have less than five years on the job.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Pushing Tin, ping
the more problems you hear about the workforce in the aviation industry and airlines in general, the fewer crashes there seem to be.(I just don’t get it)
I need to discuss air traffic controlling with my kids...
I seem to recall that at least one city in Belgium has removed all traffic lights and traffic-regulatory signage, saying that it is unnecessary.
Perhaps the EU has begun a stealth campaign to take over our skies as well?
(snicker)
Less flying amoung civil aviation people is one reason the accidents have gone down.
It seems to be the in-demand career of the moment.
I remember when there was a shortage of engineers, then nurses. A huge and frantic call was put out and legions of people entered those fields, filling them to the point that there was an overabundance in many markets. The problem was, nobody told the kids still in the pipeline and then by the time those millions graduated, many were disappointed to find that the job market was not quite as lucrative as they had been led to believe.
We nurses are still in demand....and the demand is expected to go up as the “boomers” retire. The joke amongst my peers is that they’ll get us all wheel chairs to work from as opposed to letting us retire!
They mentioned something like this at my daughter's college orientation this week. With a huge wave of boomers set to retire, this is most likely the case in many sectors.
While undoubtedly there will be huge losses of knowledge in some areas (certain manufacturing processes come to mind), in government, perhaps, this could provide an opportunity for smaller rolls by attrition (says the ever-optomist me). More than likely what it WILL do is provide tons of lucrative "consulting" gigs for "retired" boomers.
Yes, I’ve heard that....and I’ve also heard that straight-A students are having to wait two or more years before they can even get into RN programs now because there is such a huge backlog of applicants and not enough seats in the RN programs.
I’m only saying that if you’re among the ‘first wave’ of graduates who enters the workforce after these apoplectic calls is made for new workers in a given field then you’ll probably land a plum spot. If you’re a couple of years behind the first wave, you may not.
Also, the dynamics of different occupations varies dramatically, and I have a feeling that an aging airline fleet won’t require a huge number of extra controllers to look after them.....they tend to go to the airline graveyards in the desert :-)
private planes? But I mean the airlines, I can’t remember one with major loss of life since the one where the wiring went bad and caused the fire in flight, that had to be 3-4 years ago. It seems there used to be one every 1-2 years. Older planes, you’d expect more.
I just bought Flight Simulator X that includes the air traffic control simulation side. Maybe instead of flying around in the sim, I should be practicing for a new career.
High school kids pepped up on sugar should be able to handle NY airspace easily, right?
When I saw ‘FFA Kids’, I thought you meant Future Farmers of America, and wondered what they were in control of.
Then I realized it was FAA, not FFA.
I"m not touching that with a ten foot 'anything'.......
LOL! I needed that, but I think I need coffee more. Time to get it.
They only have themselves to blame. They will not hire anyone over 31 years old ( even though retirement age is 56 ). That excludes a lot of retired military controllers who may want the job.
http://jobs.faa.gov/asap_detail.asp?vac_id=106717
The FAA wrote the book on bureaucratic incompetence.
Yep, they will rather hire an 18 year old than someone with 20 years experience
The reason they hire young ATC is that they still rely on
them to separate air traffic rather then monitor a satellite
based system. They need them young to get years of work
before work and age takes their toll.
Here is a site that is interesting to listen to. It is live ATC feeds. Some of the real interesting stuff is in the captured recordings area:
Thanks,but I did it for 15 years.
My son,who works at the Atlanta Center,will back that up.
He flew with a regional in CRJ's for a couple of years and soon realized that airline pilots would never make the money they used to.He got picked up for training as a controller and changed careers about four years ago.His tales of bureaucratic idiocy seem to be getting worse. He told me that one day his supervisor was walking behind everyone's chairs and bending down at each station. When my son asked him what was going on he said he'd been tasked to make sure everyone was wearing socks!
His immediate supervisors,according to him,are examples of the Peter Principle,they've advanced to the level of their incompetence.They are more concerned about the dress code than they are about safety!
This job can be computer automated, outsourced, and even offshored so may be a bad bet for someone starting out. There will always be the need for onsite oversight but not much.
I have utmost respect for ATC. thanks for keeping planes sorted out.
I’ve been toldthe FAA is even worse today then when I wasa
controller.
I am a controller at the en route center in NY, 20 years experience.
The latest fad is only promoting extremely junior and incompetent people from “protected” classes into supervisory positions. The FAA has bids out for TEMPORARY 6 month supervisory details that require 5 years control experience. The bids for PERMANENT supervisory positions require just ONE year control experience. I am starting to feel like Charlton Heston pinned to his cell wall by a fire hose in “Planet of the Apes”.
It is almost impossible now to be washed out in training no matter how indolent or incompetent. Just file a grievance, an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint, or a hostile work environment charge and you get to start all over again. When I was hired 20 years ago there was a rigorous screening program for new hires which only a small percentage made it through. Now there is no screening process. A large number of trainees have recently come into my facility as a result of a social security number lottery for relatives of current FAA employees. None were screened for aptitude. There is a trainee in my area who was laboring under the false belief that Chicago is a state. Mark my words you are going to be reading about accidents and/or evasive action resulting in injuries more and more frequently.
No matter what you believe vectoring for arrival sequences in congested traffic areas, dealing with convective weather disruption of flight patterns, separating VFR from IFR traffic, and MANY other vital duties will NEVER be effectively automated.
It would be about as difficult as replacing the drivers of all the cars in manhattan with onboard computers.
Man, if only we could find 8 to 12 million hard working, family-oriented, Christian immigrants to help us fill these and many other positions in our ageing society!
I worked at the Tracon. Ben Sliney of United 93 fame was
one of my first line supervisors back then. I find it amazing that they have had two generations of controllers
and the problems are even worse. I should’n be surprised
since top staff was locked in a room together and would
not make a decision on (9/11). Then they tried to steal Ben’s glory after he made a decision that was widely hailed.
You must be getting close to retirement? Stay well!
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