Certainly, the FAA is a contributing factor through wages and working conditions leading to controller shortages, but airlines can also do more to better accommodate pilots.
This is a system headed to failure, with those responsible not making responsible choices and who won’t be held accountable when failure occurs (hundreds of passenger air transport deaths).
There aren’t enough controllers (possibly budget). The ones who are are horribly overworked and it’s an ultra-high stress job.
Between that and pay they can’t recruit more to ease the burden. But the existing ones are burning out, making things worse.
Maybe better equipment could lessen the load, but that’s big money too.
Is there a simple rule change that can fix this other than limiting the number of flights? I doubt it.
ATC has ridiculous age limits for onboarding and retiring staff, and there are a lot of things (aeromedical and otherwise) that can disqualify your from becoming a pilot. I think they can lighten up and still maintain aviation’s good safety record.
(1) hire enough people to perform the ops
(2) hire enough people to update and modernize the policy
Any other solution that doesn't emphasize building up the human capital is easy to argue against, IMO. You simply cannot draw from an empty well, and you really really don't want text GPTs attempting to land you no matter how well-intentioned the fine-tuning.
Making no judgement either way, its worth pointing out that there are other ways.
Firstly one could prioritise this over some other budget item. Perhaps, for example, the military budget (currently 766b) or the TSA budget (currently 11.2b, up 1.6b over last year.)
Secondly, one could restore taxes that have recently been cut. While this is indeed a "short term increase" it can also be framed as "a restoration of tax income recently removed."
Removed incidentally by a govt that was already running a deficit.
Again i make no judgement. All budgeting (at a personal or govt level) is about setting spending priorities. It just appears that safe air travel in the US is not a priority right now.
