Air Traffic Controllers Start Resigning as Shutdown Bites
www.thedailybeast.com
Unpaid air traffic controllers are quitting their jobs altogether as the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues.

Overtaxed and unpaid air traffic controllers are resigning “every day” due to stress from the government shutdown.

“Controllers are resigning every day now because of the prolonged nature of the shutdown,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told CNN.

“We hadn’t seen that before. And we’re also 400 controllers short—shorter than we were in the 2019 shutdown.”

Air traffic controllers are federal workers, which means they are part of the approximately 730,000 federal employees working without pay since the shutdown began on Oct. 1.

  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
    3·
    12 hours ago

    ChatGPT/Generative AI is a horrible tool for ATC.

    That said? A significant part of ATC’s job is more or less scheduling and optimization (as in the problems). Various “AI” tools are actually REALLY good at that (even when it is just transforming human language into formats that packages that handle optimization problems can interpret) and the workload of ATC could be dropped drastically if basically all routine tasks were routed through “AI” and it was up to ATC to supervise that.

    The big issue is that ATC’s job… really fucking sucks. Because most of the time it is just updating runway assignments based on delays and priorities and so forth. But sometimes it is preventing catastrophe when a medical emergency happens or an engine falls off a plane or whatever. And that is not at all something that “AI” can handle.

    Last Week Tonight did an episode on ATC last year-ish that REALLY shines a light on this. A massive overhaul of the towers with an emphasis on technology and providing “AI tools” would go a REALLY long way. But the core of it is still the lunatics who can handle constant high pressure scheduling broken up by even higher pressure crisis management as they try to connect a woman whose husband is dead in the seat next to her to an aviation instructor to try and get her on the ground… all while a passenger jet is concerned about a rattle in the engine.