They should all quit. They can’t replace them all.
It’s the year 2025. The democratically-elected president of the world’s leading superpower is telling people to work for free or they’ll be fired.
General strike for the Christmas week what?
New air traffic control… Flight 563 needs to land! Yes but Flight 236 is already inbound!
236?!!! That’s mostly browns! OK diverting 236 into river, I repeat, 236 diver vessel into river!
Sir! They’re not changing direction! Well launch a scud missile now, according to my calculation that will divert the flight into Jimmy’s new show in black Harlem plus that underperforming school that sends too many brown kids to MIT.
We did it sir! Flight 563 the private jet of Sheryl’s family is coming about to the main gate. We only lost 753 lives this time around! What an improvement!
If these new hires are like the new ICE agents in their training and policing, the planes will fall from the sky.
It’s like charlie kirk’s comment about black pilots only instead of black pilots its nazi traffic controllers
I’m scared to fly if the controllers are anti-dei hires.
That’s anti-racist!!
You folks are next in line for the terror list!I was already there for repeatedly stating that the latter 8 amendments of the bill of rights matter and should be interpreted broadly.
Last thing I want is to have the person guiding my flight to have gotten the job based on how hard they salute the flag. (Which is really just a way of saying kissing Trump’s ass.)
If they are as effective as all the true patriots he’s put in charge of the FBI, HSA, DOJ, etc. air travel is doomed.
The training and requirements to be an ATC are insane, in a extremely thorough way. I highly doubt the Republican administration would be able to find competent replacements among their ‘patriots’.
That said, I doubt further that they would actually care and not just tell people to eat cake, or just privatize the ATC network to some billionaire.
Knowing Trump, he thinks the job is just standing there waving your arms at random
That’s exactly what he does as president
They can pull up some people from the military who run ATC on bases. Those bases don’t have anywhere near the traffic levels that large commercial hubs do, but they might be able to move people around and fill in capacity at smaller airports.
That said, the shutdown is only accelerating issues that have been there since Reagan fired the striking ATC workers. Trump can bloviate about “TRUE PATRIOTS” all he wants. Patriotism can’t direct a plane to the right runway. There’s a certain level of reality that gets in the way. Ending the shutdown won’t change the long term trends. Doing the same plan a second time would only end in disaster. It barely worked the first time; it’s what put us on this long term downwards cycle on the whole ATC system.
Combat controllers. They served after the Haitian earthquake, directing some 200 flights per day into Port-au-Prince. But they are specialized to work in austere environments. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/117884/combat-controllers-crucial-to-haiti-earthquake-relief/
ATL does over 500 per hour at peak times, and averages 200/hr.
200 flights per day are what Chicago Midway does. Chicago O’Hare does 10 times that much.
Combat controllers can only go so far.
Competent is the word here … I have the feeling his current administration replaced 70% of competent people with folks totally unfit for the job.
Examples are FBI’s Patel, or “Mr Health” Kennedy, and the expired Newshost leading the War department…So I can easily see the experienced air controllers be replaced by some interns sifted out from some other departments, slap a week of training on them and airports are good to go.
If they privatize it then it’s even easier to strike as they will no longer be held to government standards.
These people aren’t getting paid, he wants them to do slave labor. It costs money to go to work and it’s a stressful job anyway.
He has people who change his diapers.
NO KINGS
Hear me out? Wouldn’t it be so much more effective to get rid of all those DEI hires and replace every ATC tower with a broccoli headed kid who will refer to every plane as a “buttfor”?
What’s a bu. . . wait a minute!
just privatize the ATC network to some billionaire.
Didn’t Musk try to steal the FAA code for one of his toilet companies to “rewrite”? I thought that was a headline from the past year.
When has competency ever mattered with trump
DEI?
I vote everybody go on strike from flying. Drive everywhere. Increase carbon emissions! I’m high
Cars cause less gCO2e per passenger per km:
254 domestic flights 195 long haul flights 171 car with just 1 person 41 domestic trainI was thinking it would cause more carbon emissions if a hundred people drove across the country in seperate cars instead of all in one plane but I could be wrong
Ride a bike!
ATCs: Fuck you, pay me.
Welp, there went any urge I might have had to fly anywhere in the continental United States.
You realize the planes have to fall somewhere…
My thought as well. At what point do international flights refuse to land on US airports because it’s too dangerous?
There went your ability to do so.
We’ve seen this episode before. Regan fired all the underpaid ATCs and used the military to fill in until they could be replaced.
… And they named an airport after him!
Only MAGAts and jerk-offs use it though.
Before you know it there will be GOP Airlines and Democrat Airlines carriers. Each with their own political traffic controllers and trying to knock each other out of the air.
“At Republican Airlines we let Jesus take the yoke 👍”
I’m not sure they’d feed Jesus since he poor.
No. You misunderstand: Jesus is an undocumented immigrant but because he works for a big corporation, he gets left alone until he complains. Then they get rid of him… Along with his entire family.
