Donald Trump has said that current air traffic control issues were caused by the "incompetent Biden Administration," and called Pete Buttigieg a "total novice."
Hmm… Break shit, blame others, announce he will fix it, doesn’t fix shit.
It wasn’t fine. ATC hasn’t been properly staffed in decades, and many of them are functioning alcoholics because they can’t get mental health support or they’ll be forced to take unpaid leave for 6 months.
Like everything else, Trump made it all worse, but ATC has been struggling since before Reagan due to chronic underfunding. It’s been getting worse as more and more of them retire. Trump made it worse by firing the replacements who had undergone years of training. When things began to derail, they hired back the ones that had already retired.
There’s no game plan. Congress has no game plan in place to fix this. I’m not a both sides kind of person (check my comment history), but most elected officials in Congress are completely incompetent. It goes without saying for this administration as well.
As one example, the current problems in Newark are because there are just 20 ATCs that work that airport (from Philadelphia by wire) and 5 of them went on leave. This in turn caused downstream effects in other places because airlines cancelled flights or had to reroute. Think about that: the Northeast aviation system begins to fall apart if a single-digit number of people who normally work 6 days a week, who work overtime, decide to take leave.
The reason they went on leave is because they lost all communications for like 90 seconds when they were tracking a couple dozen flights. These people are such nervous wrecks and it came so close to a major aviation disaster that they had to go on leave to recuperate from the stress.
It wasn’t fine. ATC hasn’t been properly staffed in decades, and many of them are functioning alcoholics because they can’t get mental health support or they’ll be forced to take unpaid leave for 6 months.
Like everything else, Trump made it all worse, but ATC has been struggling since before Reagan due to chronic underfunding. It’s been getting worse as more and more of them retire. Trump made it worse by firing the replacements who had undergone years of training. When things began to derail, they hired back the ones that had already retired.
There’s no game plan. Congress has no game plan in place to fix this. I’m not a both sides kind of person (check my comment history), but most elected officials in Congress are completely incompetent. It goes without saying for this administration as well.
As one example, the current problems in Newark are because there are just 20 ATCs that work that airport (from Philadelphia by wire) and 5 of them went on leave. This in turn caused downstream effects in other places because airlines cancelled flights or had to reroute. Think about that: the Northeast aviation system begins to fall apart if a single-digit number of people who normally work 6 days a week, who work overtime, decide to take leave.
The reason they went on leave is because they lost all communications for like 90 seconds when they were tracking a couple dozen flights. These people are such nervous wrecks and it came so close to a major aviation disaster that they had to go on leave to recuperate from the stress.