yes many of them also play video games and they were specifically focused on this recruitment drive. it wasn't a side effect that just happens to correlate
To be clear, they began a recruitment ad campaign targeting gamers, and ended up meeting their hiring goal of 2,000+. It's not like they pulled 2,000 gamers off the street and stuck them in ATC towers.
> With only about 25 percent of controllers holding a traditional college degree, this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming. Feedback from controller exit interviews reinforces this, with several controllers pointing to gaming as an influence on their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.
there are similar campaigns in Canada for NavCanada hiring ATCs as well
their ads have been targeting busy waiter/waitress staff, as handling a bumping restaurant floor gives the multi-tasking skills needed, or so goes the thinking
Have played competitive fps games with a couple of ATC dudes for almost half of my life now.
They're all very sensible, level headed people who get justifiably upset when you do not do the procedurally and objectively correct (lowest risk, highest percentage) thing to win in a given situation and will calmly spell it all out every single time.
It seems like they probably just ran recruitment ads targeted to people with an interest in gaming, right? The article actually doesn't say anything about how they went about recruiting gamers.
Having flown in VATSIM towered air space and airports it is some of the best VR flight sim time I ever had.
Had someone on ground and tower at KPAO and several of us pilots were just flying the pattern and it was a blast. Not to mention one was a licensed pilot based out of there who gave me IRL tips for my lesson that week about the field which were really helpful.
I suspect popularity of sims like this is because of people who cannot be candidates for ATC roles - either have family or lifestyle restrictions that prevent them relocating or doing shift work, drug dependencies or medical issues, or criminal backgrounds.
Of the controllers I have chatted with while they stream on twitch this is the answer. Many people don't realize the controllers have medical tests as well.
According to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, people typically play video games about controlling traffic in the air? Or the quote was just completely butchered to be something completely else than what was said:
> "A lot of what they do playing games ... is what they do ... controlling traffic in the air," Duffy told CBS News
Indeed, that's the interesting part that remains missing. I don't think Farming Simulator 26 is going to be on their list, but that is an assumption; where is their ad targeting data?!
It shouldn't really matter. If you have the proclivity to sit on your bum for hours monitoring many parameters at a time and making decisions you're a much better fit to be trained up for ATC than someone picked at random.
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.
When I was working on my PPL, I used VATSIM which is a worldwide network where volunteer hobbyists actually act as virtual air traffic controllers, so you can practice traffic patterns, instructions, and just get more comfortable when you are operating real-life radio comms.
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.
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.
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.
I dunno. If I woke up on a battlefield the first thing I’d probably do is poke my head up to figure out what’s going on and doubtless, I’d be immediately killed.
Americas Army was the most intuitive game I ever played.
>I played this game! It was a buggy mess and really unintuitive compared to battlefield.
America's Army was actually a pretty respectable FPS at the time and had it's own niche in the gaming community. There was a huge hole in the market in the early 2000s for anything realistic modern warfare related; CounterStrike was pretty much it. Everything else was stuck in the WW2 fad (CoD 1/2, MoH, Red Orchestra, BF1942) or pure fantasy (Doom/Quake/Tribes/Halo etc.)
Seconding this. America's Army (AA) was very popular and well liked, especially because it was free IIRC. Medal of Honor:Allied Assault is another addition to the above list.
I wonder how much money and headache could've been saved over the years had the DoD simply paid Activision to low key disparage financing vehicles at 20% APR and "dating" strippers in its relevant game franchises.
I played A LOT of flight controller on my ipod / ipad back in the day, and habour master too, and you need to start from scratch when you have a collision, just like in real life!
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.
Idk about Yezhov, in Ukraine all men have to go fight so it's not like he made a naive decision at all, it was not his to make in the first place if that makes sense.
He was a volunteer but many men in Ukraine are conscripted. You technically have a choice but the options are joining involuntary duty, going to jail, or figuring out a way to flee the country.
The reason I commented is that I faced that choice myself. I was arrested, went to court, and was given a suspended sentence conditional on reporting for service, and then left the country.
Doing that had a major personal cost, but I wasn't willing to fight for a immoral regime. It wasn't Ukraine, and perhaps the calculation in Ukraine would have been different, but the point is that claiming one doesn't have a choice is an excuse, nothing more. What it's really saying is that one isn't willing to pay the price for making a difficult choice.
Is there some evidence that he made similar claims? Otherwise you’re making kind of a tasteless comparison with someone you presumably don’t know anything about
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
Video games can be any combination of those three. They don't even have to be fun in a traditional sense to be engaging. In any case, they're probably looking for transferrable skills, not gamifying ATC.
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).
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.
I think in both cases that while it's far from an equivalent experience, there are some attributes or skills that can transfer across. Not sure why anyone would be particularly keen to bet their life on just that, though.
That's cool, but sim racing enthusiasts typically have gaming peripherals like steering wheels, pedals, and gear shifters that bring them closer to the experience of a real race car driver. For FPS games, they might be realistic in terms of detail, but how would most video games capture the physical stamina needed to carry around equipment, or maybe even aiming and maintaining the sights, equipment, etc.
This is a government that employed a freelance billionaire to cull massive numbers of government staff on quasi-bigoted moral vibes, gutting critical services like food safety regulators (and then tired to re-hire, etc etc), and are now seeing massive widespread outbreaks of exactly the kinds of diseases those exact people were there to prevent.
It wasn't long back before they fired a bunch of ATC staff and in the very same week saw multiple fatal aircraft crashes.
Forgive me for thinking this administration are only capable of making absurd decisions, particularly in a story like this.
They obviously don't, so why bring it up? To srawman on purpose?
FPS games do teach some skills, how relevant they are for real combat is hard to say, but there is definitely some overlap when it comes to decision making. Just like in real combat, you must be decisive and proactive to win.
On a more practical level, the ideas of cover, sight lines and using corners to your advantage in CQB are all the same.
Yes, from what I understand, their heart rate is really high during competition, they are sweating a lot, and then their necks have to be strong.
I was curious about your point and it turns out that the gamer beat the F1 driver but they were both in a VUHL 05 which is a road-legal supercar. It seems like they were on a mountain road track too.
Yes, I'm pretty sure most people will realize that the difference between the stamina and physical prowess needed to go from driving virtual F1 races to driving real F1 is much less than the difference between the stamina and physical prowess you need to go from being a soldier in call of duty to being a real soldier.
You know, the former involves physical steering wheels, shifters, pedals, realistic vehicle models, etc.
Meanwhile the latter involves pressing a single button to reload a fire arm and clicking a mouse button to fire.
You have to be pretty dense to think that aiming with a mouse has any resemblance to aiming with sights or a scope or even just pulling the trigger. You know, real guns have recoil.
Meanwhile most high end steering wheels have force feedback that can "fight back".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But it feels like planes have a huge advantage in that they all have trackers constantly broadcasting their location to one another. Almost like they are working as a team compared to FSD systems which are limited to a small range of self collected info from vision/lidar.
Not that it can ever be fully automated but it seems like much easier problem to solve.
Doesn’t meaningfully change the answer. There are still tons of edge cases with catastrophic failure modes. The transponder won’t tell you about the alligator on the runway, a vehicle where it shouldn’t be, unexpected braking action, a mechanical problem, or a plane not doing what it was cleared to do. Tracking the planes is the easy part.
The thing is... not everything you need to track, not even all airplanes, will have transponders.
Sometimes the transponders will be faulty, sometimes you have to direct a broken aircraft safely to the ground with no transponder available.
And sometimes you are doing ATC for a zone that does not, in fact, require transponders (those are required only for the strictest controlled zones, not in general)
The reasons we haven't automated air traffic control are similar to the reasons why we still have pilots in the cockpit even though we technically don't need to some of the time.
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.)
It's not only a dangerous assumption, it's simply incorrect. Transponders on aircraft are not required in most of the US, including around Class D towered airports unless operating within a designated Mode C veil or at/above 10,000 feet MSL.
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.
It would be more interesting if they control for the games played. Eg Air traffic controllers that play Flight Sim, truck drivers that play GTA5 or teachers with Call of duty.
> The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from MIT as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.
I think what has already gone wrong with US Air Command having drone pilots for foreign wars based in shipping containers in Texas. Starts off as surreal/not morally challenging, and then it sinks in, these are real people. Also, I am not on the frontline with my comrades so am I a coward? Can I face my family tonight after this.
You are not on the front lines but USA does not have military service requirement and hasn’t been defending itself for well over half a century now.
The drone pilot is not on the front lines but they were never killing people to protect the country (as we haven’t had to defend the homeland for over half a century).
Most people join the modern day military so they can have a chance to kill people, not because the country is under any real threat. It is a jobs program.
What is left in embarrassment hat makes facing your family difficult, when your family is programmed to believe you’re saving them somehow?
I don't know why hiring gamers for ATC would be any different than hiring anyone else to do it. There's extensive training required, and I don't think it's something you can get a college degree for anyway. Maybe there's some advantage for gamers, but I don't see where it would be all that important.
> Duffy added that many current trainees started out as gamers. Only about 25% of controllers hold a traditional college degree, while former controllers note that gaming requires many of the same skills that air traffic controllers use on the job, such as thinking quickly, staying focused and managing multiple sources of information as they guide more than 80,000 flights to their destinations daily.
There is also a rigorous application process to get into the training program that only 10% of applicants pass:
> Among the criteria to become a controller are to hold U.S. citizenship, be under the age of 31 and pass the FAA air traffic pre-employment tests.
> Aspiring controllers must also pass an exam that the FAA says predicts candidates' "aptitude to be an air traffic controller." Within a week, they are notified if they have passed.
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
So if gamers on average tend to be younger, and do better on the aptitude test than the general population, I think it makes sense to target them with recruitment campaigns to attempt to increase the number of qualified applicants coming into the funnel. Presumably non-gamers are also still welcome to apply.
And if it doesn’t work out and gamers don’t end up getting accepted at a higher rate than anyone else, then it’s no great loss, either.
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
It sounds like they are weeded out before even being accepted.
The medical certificate weeds out many of them. Many video gamers are proud of their ADHD, and that is a no-no. If they've been depressed, have sleep disorders, etc. They would have to go through a difficult process to be issued a certificate if they eventually are able to. I doubt a casual, "sure, I could try it", applicant would spend the $6000+ to get the medical in that situation.
It was this quote: ” Aspiring controllers must also pass an exam that the FAA says predicts candidates' "aptitude to be an air traffic controller." Within a week, they are notified if they have passed”
Individuals must meet the following minimum qualifications in order to be eligible for an Air Traffic Controller position:
Be a United States citizen
Be under the age of 31
Pass a medical examination
Pass a security investigation
Pass the FAA air traffic pre-employment tests, including the Air Traffic Controller Specialists Skills Assessment Battery (ATSA)
Speak English clearly enough to be understood over communications equipment
Have one year of progressively responsible work experience, or a Bachelor's degree, or a combination of post-secondary education and work experience that totals one year
The medical requirements are furthermore:
Air Traffic Controller candidates must have the capacity to perform the essential functions of these positions without risk to themselves or others. Candidates must be physically and mentally fit and meet standards for vision, hearing, cardiovascular, neurological and psychiatric health.
(and there's a long list on the site for the specifics for each standard)... for example, the first one under eye:
Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable.
...
It goes on for the training requirements...
Entry-level applicants must complete required training courses and spend several months at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. Applicants are paid while in training. After graduating the academy, individuals are placed in locations across the country and must gain 2-3 years additional training, both classroom and on-the-job experience, before becoming a certified professional controller. This rigorous training includes close supervision and evaluation by senior controllers that ensures controllers are competent, professional, know their airspace environment and can deal with the pressures and high pace of the job.
I think the headline should have emphasized that they were hired as trainees.
I am not a fan of the Trump admin but Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is one of the few people in it that I think steers clear of politics and prioritizes doing a good job. A horrible air traffic disaster that occurred a couple of weeks into the new administration threw him into the spotlight while he was still getting settled in, and it seems like he took the lesson to heart.
I actually think gamers are a good population to recruit from because you do want people that internalize cognitive abstractions, maintain focus for long periods, juggle competing priorities etc. But one can also imagine some less attractive gamer stereotypes like poor emotional containment or cognitive saturation leading to a rage quit. It will be interesting to see what the attrition rate will be like for this cohort vs others.
It's still the Trump administration. I mean relative to the general (absurdly low) standard thereof. I'm trying to be charitable because I can easily picture someone 10x worse.
Why are they saying “video gamers” as if it is a job title? Qualification for ATC is to be under 31 and the job is male dominated. No shit everyone they hire plays video games.
While their normal demographic might happen to contain a lot of gamers, the article is talking specifically about the results of a recruitment campaign that targeted gamers
Idiotic headline. This is a trainee pipeline. The headline is meant to mislead you into thinking they hired some people based on video games and they are now air traffic controllers.
I blame the readers. It shouldn’t be that hard to think about it for two seconds and conclude they’re probably not just plopping gamers in front of a radar screen. But apparently that’s too much to ask.
Their definition of “video gamer” is literally just somebody who says they play games.
I don’t see what the big deal is. Lots of young people play games every now and then.
Many medical students play video games. You don’t see articles saying “America’s new surgeons…are video gamers!”
yes many of them also play video games and they were specifically focused on this recruitment drive. it wasn't a side effect that just happens to correlate
Better link (.gov):
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/trumps-transpor...
> With only about 25 percent of controllers holding a traditional college degree, this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming. Feedback from controller exit interviews reinforces this, with several controllers pointing to gaming as an influence on their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.
their ads have been targeting busy waiter/waitress staff, as handling a bumping restaurant floor gives the multi-tasking skills needed, or so goes the thinking
They're all very sensible, level headed people who get justifiably upset when you do not do the procedurally and objectively correct (lowest risk, highest percentage) thing to win in a given situation and will calmly spell it all out every single time.
Also no mention of when the NYC ones were told to move to Pennsylvania or be fired? Interestingly also cbs's article https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-york-philadelphia-a...
I feel like those folks would already have been candidates for air traffic controller jobs though.
Had someone on ground and tower at KPAO and several of us pilots were just flying the pattern and it was a blast. Not to mention one was a licensed pilot based out of there who gave me IRL tips for my lesson that week about the field which were really helpful.
Such a remarkable community.
https://airport.apunen.com/
According to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, people typically play video games about controlling traffic in the air? Or the quote was just completely butchered to be something completely else than what was said:
> "A lot of what they do playing games ... is what they do ... controlling traffic in the air," Duffy told CBS News
Indeed, that's the interesting part that remains missing. I don't think Farming Simulator 26 is going to be on their list, but that is an assumption; where is their ad targeting data?!
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.
https://docs.xpilot-project.org/
https://store.steampowered.com/search?term=%22air+traffic%22...
https://bigfatsimulations.com/game/approachcontrolremastered
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unmatched-air-traffic-control/...
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/planes-control/id1015114550 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rarepixels...
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.
Americas Army was the most intuitive game I ever played.
America's Army was actually a pretty respectable FPS at the time and had it's own niche in the gaming community. There was a huge hole in the market in the early 2000s for anything realistic modern warfare related; CounterStrike was pretty much it. Everything else was stuck in the WW2 fad (CoD 1/2, MoH, Red Orchestra, BF1942) or pure fantasy (Doom/Quake/Tribes/Halo etc.)
I miss Tribes
Sorry to break it for you, but irl you will likely spend a long time in prison first.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1gcp7mt...
The idea that you “have to” fight is abdicating your moral responsibility. He chose to fight.
Doing that had a major personal cost, but I wasn't willing to fight for a immoral regime. It wasn't Ukraine, and perhaps the calculation in Ukraine would have been different, but the point is that claiming one doesn't have a choice is an excuse, nothing more. What it's really saying is that one isn't willing to pay the price for making a difficult choice.
The idea of games/communities like MFS and VATSIM providing some sense of real ATC is much less absurd.
It wasn't long back before they fired a bunch of ATC staff and in the very same week saw multiple fatal aircraft crashes.
Forgive me for thinking this administration are only capable of making absurd decisions, particularly in a story like this.
FPS games do teach some skills, how relevant they are for real combat is hard to say, but there is definitely some overlap when it comes to decision making. Just like in real combat, you must be decisive and proactive to win.
On a more practical level, the ideas of cover, sight lines and using corners to your advantage in CQB are all the same.
I was curious about your point and it turns out that the gamer beat the F1 driver but they were both in a VUHL 05 which is a road-legal supercar. It seems like they were on a mountain road track too.
You know, the former involves physical steering wheels, shifters, pedals, realistic vehicle models, etc.
Meanwhile the latter involves pressing a single button to reload a fire arm and clicking a mouse button to fire.
You have to be pretty dense to think that aiming with a mouse has any resemblance to aiming with sights or a scope or even just pulling the trigger. You know, real guns have recoil.
Meanwhile most high end steering wheels have force feedback that can "fight back".
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/
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Traffic_Controller_(series...
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1vlnlq9/faa_hires...
Mmm. Unless your /etc/hosts is wide open or your shell is running as root, you got something like
because the way to do what you intended is to sudo 'tee' or something similar in function. AFAIK, you can't 'sudo' shell redirection.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.
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...
Not that it can ever be fully automated but it seems like much easier problem to solve.
Sometimes the transponders will be faulty, sometimes you have to direct a broken aircraft safely to the ground with no transponder available.
And sometimes you are doing ATC for a zone that does not, in fact, require transponders (those are required only for the strictest controlled zones, not in general)
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.)
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.
It was a problem at very rural airports, and now some people man those remotely.
It's Armageddon! :-)
I guess MIT didn't work out...
The drone pilot is not on the front lines but they were never killing people to protect the country (as we haven’t had to defend the homeland for over half a century).
Most people join the modern day military so they can have a chance to kill people, not because the country is under any real threat. It is a jobs program.
What is left in embarrassment hat makes facing your family difficult, when your family is programmed to believe you’re saving them somehow?
Strong disagree.
Jobs training, money for college. Exciting way to spend your 20's (99% of the military does not directly kill anyone). Patriotism, family tradition.
> Duffy added that many current trainees started out as gamers. Only about 25% of controllers hold a traditional college degree, while former controllers note that gaming requires many of the same skills that air traffic controllers use on the job, such as thinking quickly, staying focused and managing multiple sources of information as they guide more than 80,000 flights to their destinations daily.
There is also a rigorous application process to get into the training program that only 10% of applicants pass:
> Among the criteria to become a controller are to hold U.S. citizenship, be under the age of 31 and pass the FAA air traffic pre-employment tests.
> Aspiring controllers must also pass an exam that the FAA says predicts candidates' "aptitude to be an air traffic controller." Within a week, they are notified if they have passed.
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
So if gamers on average tend to be younger, and do better on the aptitude test than the general population, I think it makes sense to target them with recruitment campaigns to attempt to increase the number of qualified applicants coming into the funnel. Presumably non-gamers are also still welcome to apply.
And if it doesn’t work out and gamers don’t end up getting accepted at a higher rate than anyone else, then it’s no great loss, either.
https://store.steampowered.com/search?term=%22air+traffic%22...
https://bigfatsimulations.com/game/approachcontrolremastered
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unmatched-air-traffic-control/...
Really, there are people that play ATC games for fun.
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
It sounds like they are weeded out before even being accepted.
The requirements themselves are at https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
The medical requirements are furthermore: (and there's a long list on the site for the specifics for each standard)... for example, the first one under eye: ...It goes on for the training requirements...
And the specifics for that can be found at https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FAA_Order_JO... with is a 285 page pdf.I am not a fan of the Trump admin but Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is one of the few people in it that I think steers clear of politics and prioritizes doing a good job. A horrible air traffic disaster that occurred a couple of weeks into the new administration threw him into the spotlight while he was still getting settled in, and it seems like he took the lesson to heart.
I actually think gamers are a good population to recruit from because you do want people that internalize cognitive abstractions, maintain focus for long periods, juggle competing priorities etc. But one can also imagine some less attractive gamer stereotypes like poor emotional containment or cognitive saturation leading to a rage quit. It will be interesting to see what the attrition rate will be like for this cohort vs others.
https://youtube.com/shorts/OT7yVBF1EOQ?si=TkLfjrvpsdIyBm7X