Comment by Apreche
10 months ago
How many of those nerds who role play as air traffic controllers on flight simulations at home qualified to do it for real? How much extra training would they need?
10 months ago
How many of those nerds who role play as air traffic controllers on flight simulations at home qualified to do it for real? How much extra training would they need?
The irony of someone on THIS site of all of them scoffing at other people for being nerds . . .
It's an interesting thought. I wonder if VATSIM could provide a meaningful "pre-ATC" qualification. The people are already clearly interested/enthusiastic about the job.
I was told by a private pilot that the people on VATSIM are usually real air traffic controllers keeping in practice to do things like ATC the big air shows, which are volunteer ATC.
From what I understand, if they are over 30 and have less than 20/20 vision, they aren’t qualified.
Seems like a problem to me; nearsightedness is becoming more and more common.
Which is basically a problem with how we do school. Turns out that making teenagers stare at screens all the time mints a lot of near sighted 20 year olds who wouldn't have otherwise been.
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Do you have a date when that policy was instituted? I've known a lot of air traffic controllers, and most of them wore glasses.
Think the qualification is to get into the training program, presumably air traffic controllers who develop near nearsightedness later in life aren't summarily fired.
Still, seems like a crazy requirement.
First result in google for "air traffic controller training"
https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
Edit: I didn't take a stance on this topic, if you think I did, you are incorrect. I was simply linking the website that outlines the requirements instead of postulating as to what they were.
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