m_fayerLaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/24/laguardia-airplane-pilots-safety-concerns-crash
There was a single traffic controller handling the entire airport. This was bound to happen and will keep happening unless things change. It's absurd that the US hasn't been able to fix its ATC shortage in decades.
Currently over 41% of facilities are reliant on mandatory overtime, with controllers frequently working 60-hour weeks with only four days off per month.
Agreed. There are a whole bucketload of problems, each one contributing to the staff shortage. The US has problems that other countries don't have (or have less of). It's a long-term organisational issue. None of it is insurmountable, but things need to be done differently, and the politics of that may be insurmountable.
Being an air-traffic controller anywhere in the world is a very intense job at times, and needs a huge amount of proficiency that only a small number of people are capable of doing. Couple that with:
- the FAA expects you to move to where ATCs are needed, so many of the qualified applicants give up when they hear where the posting is. You can't force them to take the job!
- the technology is decades out of date and the Brand New Air Traffic Control System (it's seriously called that) won't roll out until 2028 at the earliest
- Obama's FAA disincentivised its traditional "feeder" colleges that do ATC courses to "promote diversity", net outcome was fewer applicants
- Regan broke the union in the 1980s
- DOGE indiscriminately decimated the FAA like it did most other government departments