At least we got confirmation that you don’t know and are assuming We don’t have a spending % problem. We have what it’s getting spent on problem. Pages ago, it was covered that Thr allocated money was for runways and making the airports prettier. So we get steakhouses in Terminal A but no working radar.If I had numbers on actual dollars budgeted for FAA infrastructure, I'd post them, but I don't. But directionally, the fact that discretionary spending has been cut roughly in half over 60 years is likely at least part of the explanation and yes, I have zero idea what's been spent on FAA radar and communications infrastructure over this time, although it's almost certainly not the zero you implied above since the infrastructure bill, as per the link, below, from the DOT, which states that airports were scheduled to receive $25B out of the $673B (new spending) in the bill, so surely some of that has gone to radar/communications upgrades.
https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/cvki-zubk
OT: Newark airport
- Thread starter tom1944
- Start date
I think that's about what I paid a few years ago, Newark to Somerset County. Very worth it on arrival over Uber.
If I had numbers on actual dollars budgeted for FAA infrastructure, I'd post them, but I don't. But directionally, the fact that discretionary spending has been cut roughly in half over 60 years is likely at least part of the explanation and yes, I have zero idea what's been spent on FAA radar and communications infrastructure over this time, although it's almost certainly not the zero you implied above since the infrastructure bill, as per the link, below, from the DOT, which states that airports were scheduled to receive $25B out of the $673B (new spending) in the bill, so surely some of that has gone to radar/communications upgrades.
https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/cvki-zubk
In 2024, the US federal government's discretionary spending totaled $1.8 trillion,
Newark to Fair Lawn -- if I'm not really early or late, I take the train. Past 8 pm then uber/lyft.
LaGuardia is actually closer to me than Newark but I never really consider using it (at least not until now). Two tolls, the Deegan/FDR and Triboro bridge combo makes it a painful trip.
We used to use LGA a lot when it was one of the JetBlue hubs when JetBlue was really good, cheap and offered live TV...But yes, what a PIA to get to. Same with JFK...
The key to LGA is fly first flight out or wait until lunchtime. Fly in later. Traffic not bad at those times.
Fourth Outage.
I don't even know how the joint stays open.
Maybe bring in military like 80s?
www.the-sun.com
I don't even know how the joint stays open.
Maybe bring in military like 80s?
Flights at major US airport to be slashed after 4th air traffic control outage
A FOURTH outage has been reported at the Newark International Airport, leading officials to urgently slash the number of flights to avoid congestion. Federal transportation leaders are demanding im…
www.the-sun.com
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Landed without issue this afternoon on flight from San Diego. After we departed San Diego, a Hawaiian Airlines flight had a bomb threat on board, and the plane was diverted off the runway and passengers deplaned and fake bom we arrested.Fourth Outage.
I don't even know how the joint stays open.
Maybe bring in military like 80s?
Flights at major US airport to be slashed after 4th air traffic control outage
A FOURTH outage has been reported at the Newark International Airport, leading officials to urgently slash the number of flights to avoid congestion. Federal transportation leaders are demanding im…
Starting to feel like a great excuse to skip my planned visit to NJ this year.
These outages have apparently been happening at airports across the country for awhile now. It was reported recently that Denver had one and it was longer than the ones plaguing Newark.Fourth Outage.
I don't even know how the joint stays open.
Maybe bring in military like 80s?
Flights at major US airport to be slashed after 4th air traffic control outage
A FOURTH outage has been reported at the Newark International Airport, leading officials to urgently slash the number of flights to avoid congestion. Federal transportation leaders are demanding im…
One has to wonder, have all these controllers been taking “trauma” leave over these occurrences or is this something new?
I know there are problems all over, and it seems like people are just row rowing their boats gently down the stream and accepting greater risk for disaster. With federal, state and local debt at historic levels, one has to wonder where the money went instead of keeping critical systems maintained? RU sports teams supposed to just hush and fly?
Having modded in a psych forum for over 15 yrs I've long said the "mental health" area is a farce - it makes people worse. 20 years ago there was a shift from having people learn to deal with stresses and growing in character, to assuming a fetal position in a feathered corner while turning into Jello.
"Trauma counseling" is not something you ever want people to get. A shock and/or upset can allow impressions to get under the intellect and conscience (bypass "critical factors" of reason). The mind can become captive. That calls for defocusing the mind in a certain way, and not refocusing on it, talking about it, talking about it, feeling about it, reliving it, painting pictures and writing poems about it etc. Counseling often does the opposite of what it should. It deepens the psychic funk.
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I don’t really understand this whole trauma leave situation
You’ve got firefighters and police, military in the lake, all risk in their lives on a daily basis, and although I’m sure that some of them do take brief periods of a break for trauma, it is not reported that it is nearly as widespread as the air traffic controllers
I understand these people have a stressful job, but they are paid extremely well for their services, and they signed up to deal with a lot of stress, albeit not at this level, and not to this extent due to the lack of upgrades with technology
I guess I’m just old-school and don’t get it, you suck it up and deal with it, cash paychecks, and move on
You often go in crazy directions and you know we do not often agree- but this can be very true with a number of counselors. Especially if dealing with any sort of PTSD.
I very close member of my family had what they call delayed PTSD from childhood memories that had been depressed and hidden for 30 years until the isolation of COVID. Anxiety and stress set in for this person and not enough activity to keep the mind focused on other things and the memories started to come back- tried counseling and this person wanted to try to get all these memories out into the open and it just made things so much worse. But, found one that went the right direction and worked on how to handle the "triggers" - as these surpressed memories could appear at any time- worked on recognizing the triggers and how to work through the episodes when they do come on. And this worked so much better,
So- it depends on who is doing the counseling but too many want to go about it the wrong way and it seems it is because they want you to continue to need them rather than find how to really help.
I was fine after 9/11 until I wasn't.
First person I spoke to was terrible and she was even local which made it worse.
Next one was from the Midwest, much better at her job.
I really think the bad ones don't really care if you get better but want you to just continue to come to them.
I think maybe her in her case she was overwhelmed, since she was local and possibly knew more involved, or she was just looking to get out and mailed it in.
My best "counselors" ended up being other guys who were there with me, the guy who owned the bar across the street from the firehouse and this forum (which I have mentioned before).
While not a paid FF, in my estimation, the majority of FFs don't feel comfortable talking about their "feelings" with other FFs out of fear of being labeled as "soft" or worse. Maybe it's different in the professional ranks, and with respect to 9/11, any reasonable person would expect and understand that there are a lot of different feelings and things to process for the ones that were there that day, and for those that lost their colleagues.
Flashbacks are suppressed emotions, artifacts etc actually intending to be released and burned-off. They stay suppressed because people react to them again and struggle with them - keeping them alive in a loop. You never want to resent a flashback as a way of defending against it.
When watching network TV you can often see that at a moment of heightened drama the network logo is flashed in a corner of the screen. They know people retain more impressions when tweaked-up emotionally and tightly focused.
If someone slaps a person's hand it will sting but will resolve on its own. If the person gets angry about the slap and resents the slapper, the door to impressions gets opened and bad feelings/memories will remain after the pain is gone. Then rethinking about them causes feelings to rise and they create more thoughts and so more feelings. That's a way people fall down into their own machinery. Just noticing that downward spiral and stepping back begins to break the psychic fibers and allowing reconstituted equilibrium in time.
There is an exercise former military teach, and it helps a person to see/experience suppressed or reemergent artifacts as if from an objective distance. Seeing old, painful memories become like reading fiction about someone else's life. Then they burn-off and resolve. Truth is there is no past or future but just a continuous sequence of nows. Now...now...now...now etc - that's how existence is in the moment.
Digging around in the past can be like rummaging through an old dead house. Finding release happens when the present is rediscovered outside the thinking/feeling vortex. When people find that then copes like drinking, drugs etc just fall away on their own without struggle because a new positive flow fills the silent scream driving the compulsions
I speculated about this potentially being a much broader problem much earlier in this thread, since there is aging radar and communications infrastructure enterprise-wide in the aviation world. There had been a major outage at JFK in 2018, but it didn't get nearly as much press as what's been going on in Newark and now we're starting to see other outages, like the one in Denver a few days ago. One more reason I'll be driving to Vero Beach instead of flying in a few weeks (I like driving more anyway and it gives me a chance to play some great disc golf courses).
This is not good and while every administration over the past 40+ years owns a part of this mess, the crows are coming home to roost now, which was likely inevitable at some point - meaning it's going to fall on the current Administration to fix this mess and while ATC's weren't cut earlier this year, some safety/infrastructure positions were cut, which will make this more difficult. However, Secy Duffy's announced plans to increase ATC staffing and to increase spending on FAA infrastructure are welcome news. But this will take time and people are impatient.
https://thefulcrum.us/governance-le...l,safety assistants, and administrative staff.
Great post. Isn't the proper idiom "chickens" coming home to roost? I hope I don't have to eat chicken over this question.
they are leaning hard on retaining people who want to retire, which only accumulates the problem for another day unless they are training more people then are aging out. Is the shortage a money thing, a training pipeline capacity issue, or a limited qualified/interested applicant pool thing? I’m sure it would also be nice to have more trained people than open positions. The crews are small to begin with. What do the highly trained ‘spares’ do for full time employment when not needed? Seems they have been wanting more ATC for a long time.
There’s a few reasons. One they didn’t train anyone during Covid.
Two
FAA made the shortage of ATC's worse when in July of 2024 they moved TRACON to Philadelphia & some ATC employees decided to retire or quit rather then be transferred to Philadelphia.
They are taking leave under a federal act, which pertains to all federal employees , even your mail carrier. They also need medical documentation for the event proving trauma.
In this case, I believe most of the trauma leave is over a specific incident in april . They can’t just say ‘My job is stressful and I want PTO” as you seem to think it works that way .
I mean almost killing hundreds or thousands of people may not be traumatic for you because you’re old school
Almost? Facts matter. Very pedestrian post for a self-anointed legend.
Okay but this is not a new issue apparently and has happened at least twice since that event. So why are they suddenly taking trauma leave when they’ve dealt with it in the past and other controllers have apparently dealt with longer outages like more recently in Denver. Smells of a job action more than anything else. (I’ll retract this statement if anyone can show that other controllers have previously taken trauma leave over these outages)
This is a good question for a mental health professional. I am not one . The act was created for a reason. Maybe an expert can weigh in
Based on the casting for the movie Pushing Tin, I think 99% of the air traffic controllers are white.
I can't say trauma leave was asked for before at other airports like Denver, but the Newark ones aren't the only ATCs taking trauma leave because of Newark Airport problems.
>"Some controllers at the Philadelphia TRACON who work Newark arrivals and departures have taken time off to recover from the stress of multiple recent outages.<
"While previously the FAA’s entry tests favored candidates with years of rigorous aviation training in FAA-approved career technical schools, its new test measured intangible factors with little bearing on actual job performance.
These changes were intended to reduce the percentage of Caucasian candidates in the hiring pool. The FAA discriminated against ATC applicants in violation of federal civil-rights laws.
We filed suit in 2015, and have certified a class action of nearly 1,000 people who would be ATCs today."
I'm sure it was males also.
Thanks and lol, since I was in a hurry when I posted and I knew crows didn't sound quite right, so I did a quick search and got the link below, so figured it was a crow thing and went with it, but clearly it's chickens. Wonder if crow tastes like chicken...Great post. Isn't the proper idiom "chickens" coming home to roost? I hope I don't have to eat chicken over this question.
https://www.wintercrowroost.com/when-the-crows-come-home-to-roost/
You're posting a screed by the lawyers representing the plaintiffs in this suit, which is bound to be biased. Also, the biographical test for ATCs was dropped in 2018 (and in 2024 for the rest of the FAA), so even if it had been an issue in rejecting some meritorious applicants (not clear it was, as it was only a screening tool, not a final hiring tool), surely there has been time enough to bring on more ATCs since then by both the Trump and Biden administrations.
In addition, the rigorous testing requirements to become an ATC have not really changed, i.e., unqualified air traffic controllers were never hired to meet diversity goals. And while there was certainly some emphasis on increasing diversity in the FAA ranks, clearly those efforts didn't change much, as white men made up 59% of the FAA workforce in 2016, 57% of the workforce in 2020 and 55% of the workforce in 2023 Let's see what comes out as evidence in the lawsuit.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyeg61pnl5o
Quite simple.
Do we have a shortage?
If so, why were these 1000 plus qualified workers not hired?
I haven't seen evidence, yet, that 1000+ qualified workers were not hired - a lawsuit to that effect is nowhere near "proof," as you should know. But regardless, that biographical screening test, which those plaintiffs are blaming lack of hiring on, was dropped in 2018, so why wasn't the shortage of ATC's addressed since then?
Did you miss the part where I wrote they stopped training anyone because of Covid. So that sets you back how many years?
Training Pauses & Delays:
- Facility Closures: The FAA academy and on-the-job training at facilities were paused for extended periods due to the pandemic.
- Reduced Capacity: When training resumed, class sizes were often reduced to comply with social distancing guidelines.
- On-the-job Training Disruptions: On-the-job training for developmental controllers was significantly impacted, further delaying certification.
- Extended Certification Times: The training pauses and disruptions led to a considerable increase in the time it takes for new controllers to become certified.
- Reduced Hiring: Hiring targets were lowered during the pandemic, exacerbating the existing staffing challenges.
- Retirements: The pandemic occurred simultaneously with a wave of planned retirements of experienced controllers.
- Staffing Shortages: The combination of training disruptions and retirements has resulted in a significant shortage of air traffic controllers.
2 to maybe 3 years (was over for most by 2 years, after the huge omicron spike) so that still leaves 4-5 of 7 years since 2018...
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