Comment by applied_heat

3 months ago

Hopefully they don’t throw juniors on to the busiest runways in the country

Where else would they learn how to handle that kind of environment?

  • By starting at smaller airports or less busy runways, getting comfortable, then stepping up to more demanding situations.

  • On submarines (still flying, just underwater), we don’t throw new underway buddies into the most difficult scenarios right away. We do give them a seemingly overwhelming amount of qualifications to achieve in a very short period of time, but we don’t make them practice the hard stuff until we’re sure that they understand the fundamentals. Because much like ATC, if you make a mistake hundreds of feet underwater (or thousands of feet in the sky), you’re gonna have a bad time.

    …kind of. In reality, there is always a qualified individual ready to physically stop you from doing the wrong thing, and there are multiple independent safety systems, interlocks, etc.