Comment by RandomBacon
3 months ago
I'm an Air Traffic Controller and I'm required by the FAA to say these opinions are my own and not necessarily of the FAA.
Some fully-certified air traffic controllers cannot afford to live where they work, not to mention the trainees that have the added stress of training and making less money. At my first facility, to live within 45 minutes of work, my whole paycheck went to rent, thank goodness I had savings from my previous job.
With regards to stress, other controllers have told me about how they arrive at home after work not remembering their drive home, or driving slowly in silence. I remember trying to open my apartment door with my car fob/remote one time wondering why it wasn't working.
And that pay is on par with M-F 9-5 desk jobs that don't kill you mentally and physically. ATC is 24/7 and is notorious for leading to drinking problems, suicide, etc. Entry-level pilots for major airlines make more per hour than us, and we're pay-capped by law and will never make as much as their captains.
How much advance notice do you get of overtime requirement? Can you plan a week or month ahead? Do you have to cancel days off or vacations? (How much of those stats are available by FOIA, for each ATC location? Also, how can we see how many hires wash out/quit by year of experience, or pay grade?)
> At my first facility, to live within 45 minutes of work, my whole paycheck went to rent...
That's because your federal base payscale starts very low, $47K base for an ATC-4 in 'No locality' [1], right?
[0]: https://www.faa.gov/jobs/working_here/benefits
[1]: https://www.faa.gov/jobs/working_here/benefits/pay/atspp_pay...
I'm on the "No" list for overtime, so I don't normally get scheduled it, but when I do, it's about two or three weeks in advance. People on the "Yes" list get the scheduled overtime when the schedule comes out about 5 or 6 weeks in advance.
By law we cannot work more than 10 hour days, 6 days in a row. There are some facilities where controllers are all being scheduled to that limit.
I do often get calls on my days off asking if I want to come in for overtime that day.
Our schedules are generally pretty consistent, so I can kind of plan my time off in advance, but on a particular day I won't know if my shift starts at noon or 3pm until the schedule is posted. We can trade shifts, ask to be bumped up or back an hour or two, or even use leave for maybe the first few or last few hours of a shift, but coworkers get squirrelly about it if you do it too often.
If you bid leave, those days are guaranteed. If something comes up that you want to do (party, convention, child's recital) and put in a leave request and it doesn't get approved, then most people will call in sick. As long as there's not a pattern to calling in sick (like you only call in sick on Saturdays), then most people don't care, because this is a job where your head needs to be focused and not distracted or in a funk.
You could probably FOIA the wash-out/quit stats, but I have no idea.
Yes, pay after graduating from the FAA Academy is about 50k until you start getting certified on sectors (D1, D2, D3, then CPC).
Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.
> on a particular day I won't know if my shift starts at noon or 3pm until the schedule is posted.
Why? What's the rationale to that? Presumably that doesn't work if you have small kids or dependents, or a commute with a bad rush-hour.
What I'm trying to get at is now that the situation at ATC has the full attention of the public, in a bipartisan way, time to tell us if you could wave a magic wand at the whole setup, what things would you improve?
1 reply →
> pay-capped by law
Thanks! What an elusive bit of critical damning evidence.
Most people don't make that much and live lots of places.
Not sure that "can't afford to" is quite on the nose, but terminology aside I wouldn't object to paying them more.
How many hours per day?
How many days per week?
Paid vacations?
40 hours per week.
Most people work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Some work 10 hours a day, 4 days a week. A few work 10 hours one day, 6 hours a second day, and 8 hours the third/fourth/fifth days.
Many facilities are 24/7 so we have rotating schedules where people have to work the midnight shifts. Shift work is brutal.
Most controllers also work Saturdays and Sundays. Controllers often miss their kid's activities and other family or social functions.
Standard Federal leave accrual: - 4 hours of sick leave every pay period (two weeks). - Employees with 0-3 years accrue 4 hours of annual leave per pay period. - Employees with 3-15 years accrue 6 hours... - Employees with 15+ years accrue 8 hours...
We bid once a year for our RDOs (Regular Days Off aka "weekend") and annual leave for the following year.
Some controllers advocate that we should accrue more sick leave (and they make good points), and while the 4 hours may be a federal law, they could implement work-arounds such as allowing us to accrue an additional different type of leave.
Opinions are my own and not necessarily of the FAA.
Thanks for the reply. There are a few claiming 12 hours per day, but it looks like it depends on the site.
Sorry for the delay, I wanted to write a long reply about my experience in math/physics. Short version:
After teaching math for 3 hours I get tired, and in some special cases I teach for 6 hours but at the 5 hours mark I was making too many errors. (And it included some pauses in between.) I'd would not try to make a decisions that risk lives after that.
I took some exams that were 3, 5 or even 8 hours long. It's possible but I have to administer the pauses, bathroom and even going to the bar to drink a coffee to survive them and give good answers. And in case of a mistake, I can review it half an hour later and there are no lives at risk.