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  • I wanted to do this job since the late 90s. Too old now (not old, just too old for this or the military). Pity. I think they have an upper limit of 40 years old or something. Probably why they reached out to gamers. I am not sure what the psychological reasoning of their choosing gamers is though. In practice, yes, they are able to focus and think fast, but they also tend to have a short attention span when it isn't engaged continuously and under a certain amount of stress or perceived duress. While ATC is certainly stressful from what I have read, it is not at all high stimulus.
    by jambalaya8
  • From a very naïve perspective, why isn’t air traffic control a solved problem?

    Would love to be educated here, but it seems like there are just not that many moving pieces per airport (<10,000) and all of them are tagged with transponders, etc. And a human in the loop with respect to coordination might be the biggest source of risk.

    This all seems like queuing theory and collision avoidance, which are very well done by computers.

    by pclowes
  • Consider the ratio of air traffic controllers to the number of people moving through the airport. It's not a huge cost. There's often far more staff moving bags.

    It was a problem at very rural airports, and now some people man those remotely.

    by nitwit005
  • The collision in LGA in March revealed to me that not all objects are tracked.
    by isubkhankulov
  • "all of them are tagged with transponders" seems like a very dangerous assumption to base a system on.
    by notatoad
  • I remember in the 1980s, when there was an attempt to rewrite the US air traffic control system in Ada. A friend of mine, was on that project.

    It did not end well.

    It's a very hairy problem, and mistakes are very costly.

    On another note: Those video gamers are gonna have some pretty clunky video experiences.

    by ChrisMarshallNY
  • Uneducated guesses:

    My impression is that it's at least partially down to how brittle a fully automated system could be. You want as much of a "manual" backup as possible, and that only be achieved by doing things manually all the time to keep up practice. With the current system, even with enormous degradation (massive power outages, cyberattack, software flaw, etc.) it's possible to get planes out of the sky without much risk. If a fully automated system fails, it's an enormous disaster.

    The other problem is that the "worse is better" arrangement where ~everything is done via voice over radio makes automation difficult. Voice is simple, universal, and enormously flexible, but hard for computers to handle systematically. Some two-way protocol and associated pilot UI would be useful... but then you have to decide on that protocol and UI, every manufacturer has to implement it, every airline has to buy it, and every pilot has to be trained. Unless it's very, very clear what the optimal solution is and that the benefit outweighs the cost, that sort of coordination is difficult.

    (And remember, the ultimate result of such a change would be a rigid system that is difficult to change, more fragile, and does not save much money relative to the total cost of the airline industry.)

    by jml7c5
  • Weather conditions, ground/runway conditions, obstructions, mechanical issues. There are tons of edge cases with huge consequences for error. Same reason self driving is not a solved problem, but with dramatically less tolerance for error.
    by jimbo808
  • I'd suggest looking at Admiral Cloudberg's recent analysis of the Jan. 2025 airliner/military helicopter collision in Washington DC. It's a study in the difficulties of air traffic control in the 21st century and the reality of transponder usage, complicated by an overwhelmed airport and legislative indifference. Transponders aren't universally used, technology and people aren't perfect.

    This one is long; I suggest reading the first chapter, then skipping to chapter 7 for the important parts of the story.

    https://medium.com/@admiralcloudberg/reaping-the-whirlwind-i...

    by themadturk
  • Worked in this area for a couple of years. We have automated collision avoidance systems and have for years. But things can go off nominal fast and you don't want passenger aircraft making drastic maneuvers that fast. Because conditions can change so fast, queueing theory isn't that useful either. It's useful for more strategic as opposed to tactical air traffic control, what we call air traffic flow management. There's been a ton of research in this area for decades, for example at the National Center of Excellence in Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR) and at NASA's Aviation Systems division. I could say a lot more offline about why, in my humble opinion, progress has been unbelievably slow, but the short answer is that it's government plus modern day academia operating in an environment where funding is low and risk tolerance is lower.
    by kj4211cash
  • There is a ATC game from Japan: BOKUKAN (I am an Air Traffic Controller):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Traffic_Controller_(series...

    by ytch
  • Steam has screenshots and an English translatio of the publisher's description. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348390/I_am_an_Air_Traff...
    by ilyagr
  • Some interesting takes on Reddit Aviation

    https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1vlnlq9/faa_hires...

    by chasingthewind
  • seems like the beaten to death shit jokes like all reddit posts
    by jejdjfjf
  • Oh boy. So... I have some ties still to the FAA and its ATC staff despite living in Sweden and This article is just painting a picture I've seen time and time again when there are staffing woes.

    I'm gonna ignore the gamer hype because that's just recruitment that has happened even in other admins (Level Up campaign was the last one in 2022 or so)

    They got near to their quota in the training pipeline but it's not like training as most think about where someone can just study hard. Going to the Academy (there's only one in OKC and congress will almost always shut down ideas of opening another elsewhere) is not like a guarantee that someone intelligent or hardworking will pass like in uni. If historic stats are any indicator we will see a ton of washouts there (30%+) and then they need to qualify as a CPC (certified professional controller) in which time they may also wash out while training for their facility which the article didn't actually touch on. The bottleneck is still this process and until that 2000 converts to CPCs I'm not going to be raising hell or singing praises. Great that more are passing the ATSA and going to the academy, but that's step 0.

    Not like any of this is Duffy's fault but as we say here: comes with the title man. I really would like to see more staff get there so best of luck to all the candidates, given the amount of OT I've seen (not just from facilities that game it mind you) the FAA needs all the controllers it can get.

    by CorvusCrypto
  • Why are they "washing out"?
    by watwut
  • I had a coworker from the democratic republic of Congo who insisted that if he was back home he would do ok fighting because he played lots of first-person shooters. I mean he was 100% serious about this. We argued about it.

    He got a commitment from our employer to pay his undergrad tuition. But he disappeared one day, probably went home to fight and die. I search for him every now and then but I think he's gone.

    I think his naïveté is equal to this policy.

    by comrade1234
  • Hm, on one level I'm confused. War seems to be either very stressful, very boring (hurry up and wait) or shit my pants level of terrifying. Video games are usually designed to be none of those? well except slightly stressful because that can be fun
    by duttish
  • I wonder if that happened to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Yezhov as well, FPS games represent you as a Superman, there's a big gap between games and reality. That being said I want my air traffic controller to be good at cooking mama.
    by sellmesoap
  • https://futurism.com/sim-racing-virtual-motorsport-beat-form...
    by colordrops
  • The planes will just respawn after disappearing from the radar, right?
    by kevin_thibedeau
  • It’s just a recruitment campaign. It’s not like they’re putting people straight into a control tower because they like to play Microsoft Flight Simulator or something. They still go through a whole training process.
    by wat10000
  • The US Army did a bunch of recruiting to teenagers like this, successfully. Work for us, it's just like Call of Duty! They had their own branded FPS even.
    by imglorp
  • For anyone contemplating the same, go play paintball for half a day. You don't just get killed every other round like in Arma, the "death" it's somewhat painful, you get out of breath and start valuing any semblance of cover very much (and get killed from and unexpected direction anyway).
    by jojobas
  • The types of skills from FPS games and real fighting are much further apart than gaming and ATC. A closer analogy would be a coworker who knows Judo is needed for Greco-Roman wrestling. Very different sports with different rules, but the skills in building and navigating a mental map of the environment carry over.
    by jmpeax
  • When I got interested in flying I took to flight simulators and the VATSIM network[0], as I had seen mentioned multiple times that the radio work can be a difficult aspect of flying to pick up on when flying out of a towered/busy field. By the time I started, I was comfortable on the radio and pre-flight checks, and this seemed to gained quite a bit of favor from my CFI.

    I'm not saying it made me a well-versed pilot, but simulating these situations can do a lot to get one going.

    [0] https://vatsim.net/

    by scrapcode
  • I got my PPL a few years ago. VATSIM and flight sim were huge tools.

    I would, literally, fly my training flights a few times using full VATSIM and then show up IRL to do the same thing. It made a massive difference.

    My instructor even said it makes his job so much easier. He had to do nothing with me.

    I was able to cut my rental time over half. It paid for itself a dozen times over. Like literally it saved me $5k or so.

    I recently gifted my yoke and controls to my GF who is getting her commerical cert. She is so excited. She is already flying her training flights using it. It's so helpful.

    by chneu
  • ATCs are chronically understaffed in a way that endangers all of us, and the FAA has been under scrutiny for their hiring practices for over a decade https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39184451

    It's equally plausible to me that this is an example of "we need to try something and this is something" or just deflection from the prior criticism.

    by _--__--__
  • Put the AI to it. Clod can do a better job anyway /s
    by 27183
  • As trying things go, it doesn’t seem that crazy of an idea. I imagine air traffic control would even make for a pretty fun video game.
    by madrox