The FAA seems to disagree.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/business/air-traffic-cont...
> Staffing Was ‘Not Normal’ at Reagan Airport Tower, According to F.A.A. Report
> The report, reviewed by The New York Times, said that one controller was communicating with both helicopters and planes. Those jobs are typically assigned to two people, not one.
The pandemic also messed with training new ones for a while.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/3935...
SEC. 502.
Introduced by Rep. Graves, Sam [R-MO-6], passed with veto-proof bipartisan support.
Dollars to donuts congresscritters wanted the ability to fly to/fro DCA vs Dulles to save themselves time.
Maybe collaborating on a solution to get it out of this mess is better than playing politics no matter what?
Here’s a write up from 2023 for example, they’re all over the internet from the last decade:
https://www.kreindler.com/articles/understaffed-and-undertra...
One article cited it’s been a concern since Bush was in office.
If the head of a company gets pushed out because the richest man in the world has a vendetta against that company (in this case the FAA was trying to fine SpaceX and upset Musk) that can cause strife within in the company, especially when that same person writes an email (fork in the road is language Musk used in very similar emails he's sent in the past) telling you that you should quit.
What does that have to do with anything? My boss takes vacations too, but if my team didn’t have a manager we would surely be worse off.
> These plane crashes are totally unrelated to politics or staffing.
Please provide a citation for this claim.
I'll revise my earlier statement. It has nothing to do with the staffing of the agency's head. Yes, if there were not enough traffic controllers, that's indeed a staffing problem. But if the former head of the agency let that go on, putting air safety at risk, then he deserved to be fired.
Those candidates still had to pass the training but they have had a much higher attrition rate. So despite increased hiring ATC continues to be understaffed.
https://viewfromthewing.com/diversity-in-the-skies-faas-cont...
Please provide a citation for this claim.
> Below is the email that was sent to federal employees on January 28, 2025 presenting a deferred resignation offer. If you did not respond to that email and wish to accept the deferred resignation offer, you may do so by following these steps.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-administration-offeri...
> The White House expects up to 10% of federal employees to quit in September in a program meant to end work-from-home practices, senior administration officials told CBS News.
If they leave abruptly without planning for their absence? Yes, quite possibly.
If anything, this incident has been predicted and warned for years and years and years, and is an indictment of FAA and ATC policy over the last couple decades, accelerating over the last 2-8 years or so.
The reason we can assume there’s no connection between the new administration and this incident is… because there’s no reason to make that assumption, based on the reality of ATC policy, (lack of) changes in the problem domain, and longstanding known risks in the status quo.
