Comment by clutchdude
2 months ago
From the article:
> Has this had a long-term impact on aviation safety and air traffic controller shortages? Likely yes.
This was a terrible conclusion. Ask any ATC person what's up with staffing and "COVID training and hiring disruptions" will be in the first few sentences they say.
The fact this article goes on and on without a single mention of the impact COVID has had gives me all the stock I need to place in it.
Some folks may find it hard to believe, but the 1-2 year interruption in hiring pipelines can cause large ripples that take years-to-decades to resolve.
Slapping a DEI strawman up and trying to tie it to a tragedy reflects on the changes some seek.
This article is not talking about COVID, it's talking about the absurd changes to the hiring process that disadvantaged qualified candidates in favor of people who said science was their worst subject in high school (15 points). How could this not have an impact on hiring?
Because COVID happened much sooner and has likely had a bigger impact than the hiring practices from a decade ago - notice we don't have a concrete number of "disadvantaged qualified candidates" from this article. Whereas, I can point COVID with actual numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42952695
If we're going to say "Did that contribute to a shortage of qualified ATC..?" then you have to considering all inputs into what is a current conversation rather than extrapolate your already asserted points from the article.
Weren't you the one who said ...
> the 1-2 year interruption in hiring pipelines can cause large ripples that take years-to-decades to resolve.
Looking at [1], the difference between planned and actual hires in 2013–2015 was 1362, much higher than during 2020–2022 when it was just 384 (and this is using the pre-COVID target).
I don't know what happened in 2013–2015, but whatever it was, it seems to have had a 3.5 times bigger impact than COVID.
Well, we do know one thing that happened: this scandal.
[1] https://www.natca.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FY23-Staffi...
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> Likely yes.
Love the in-depth analysis they use to answer that question...
That is the frustrating part - the article had it's lane and just had to stick in it.
Instead, we get someone extrapolating and guessing when we have actual data from COVID on class delays/size reduction(as well as more controllers retiring earlier) coupled with lower training intensity while air traffic was depressed.