Discussion

American Aviation Is Near Collapse

aa_is_op: Jeez... I wonder why!

mikkupikku: I'm not saying the article's thesis is wrong, much of it rings true to me, but we have very comprehensive data and statistics concerning air travel so I'm deeply unimpressed by this article instead hanging its argument on a hodgepodge list of incidents instead of digging into the data to get some proper numbers.

SecretDreams: The final paragraph is maybe the most relevant. It goes well beyond just aviation. I'm sure we've all felt this.> The ICE deployment is a particularly extreme example of what the political scientist Steven M. Teles has dubbed “kludgeocracy,” in which the government reaches for short-term, improvised solutions while resisting real reform. “‘Clumsy but temporarily effective,’” Teles has written, “also describes much of American public policy. For any particular problem we have arrived at the most gerry-rigged, opaque and complicated response.” The U.S. aviation system has been held together by such patches for years, but the kludges may finally be failing.

toomuchtodo: Well, a tired air traffic controller at LaGuardia just caused two pilots to die last night while landing. How many deaths would communicate "We have likely reached system failure"?There is a shortage of air traffic controllers. Those working are being pushed to failure. The system as a whole is degrading. These are facts.

happytoexplain: We have "very comprehensive data and statistics" indicating that US aviation is not nearing collapse? I don't understand what you mean.

ryandrake: Note also that they deliberately choke off the hiring funnel before they even get applicants, and deliberately dispose of experienced controllers. Air traffic controller applicants must be under 31 years old for initial hire. The mandatory retirement age is 56. Although there are limited exceptions to both rules.

nimbius: it is a perfect storm:- deregulation of airlines in the 1980s led to rampant consolidation of routes and SPOF hubs that only work for revenue purposes and offer no real resilience in traffic planning. over-subscription of flights and lack of any real competition compounds this issue.- climate change and global warming increasingly exacerbate severe weather conditions that ground aircraft and incur delays or cancellations in an already fragile system- reagan-era policy hostile toward air traffic control labor unions that once checked the excesses of capital resulted in understaffing issues for more than two decades later. poor regulation of working hours, outmoded systems, and wage stagnation has further stressed the ATC system.- the partial government shutdown has caused massive delays and cancellations of flights as the artifice of security theater begins to break down under its own political morass.the solution is reform and regulation through policy change and investment. this is not possible in late stage capitalism (Streeck, 2016.)

Someone1234: A lot of core services in the US are near collapse, because society focuses on short-term value extraction, over long term success. If you look at the US's history, there was a much better balance between the two (with the core being seen as a lever towards future wealth).You see this in education, infrastructure, public health, scientific research, housing, and energy. All foundational systems of a society, which compound the value of everything else, but they aren't immediate profit centers so kick the ball down the road.It is an attitude problem first and foremost; and I'm not sure how you fix that.PS - This also impacts private enterprise, like corporations. Enshittify their current offerings for the next quarter bump but ruin their brand reputation/long-term viability.

n_u: I think they mean they would prefer more rigorous statistical analysis."Rigor cleans the window through which intuition shines" - Ellis Cooper

HPsquared: "Collapse" isn't within the statistical distribution though, so you'd still to apply judgement in any case. I suppose it's a word with many definitions.

KK7NIL: > "Collapse" isn't within the statistical distribution thoughUh? Maybe you could explain what you mean by this a bit more.

HPsquared: 1. It's not a rigorously defined term.2. "System collapse" would be unexplored territory, so how would statistical analysis be able to infer when it occurs?

verstandhandel: no paywall: https://archive.ph/20260323153943/https://www.theatlantic.co...

ryandrake: Just a standard warning to readers: when you use an archive.ph (or other archive.today) link, you risk your computer's resources being used to participate in a DDOS against another web site, as reported/discussed recently on HN.

davidcollantes: Got a link to the entry?

wagwang: Yes, that's how I would describe using immigration to address labor shortages

convolvatron: I don't think there is anything inherently wrong in using immigration to address labor shortages. however, not having an official policy, such a labor visa with clearly defined rules, combined with a stable population of 'illegals' that don't have the same labor protections, is and was not really a fair or sustainable situation.

SecretDreams: Agreed. Immigration for a labour shortage is a tale as old as time. Mass migration was very common post WW1/2 Europe. People went where there were jobs and labour shortages.Policy around this type of thing is important.My post is more about the general dysfunction and solution schemes we see in some governments. I think having the ICE example might bring about some bots and trolls, though. I don't care for the ICE example, it's just a part of the quote.

ryandrake: The US policy seems pretty clear: Allow companies who employ undocumented workers to benefit and profit from it, while making sure only the individual workers shoulder the criminal and livelihood risks.

wagwang: It's inherently unfair because its used to drive down wages of the lower classes. Outside of highly skilled work that cannot be sourced from within the country that is critical for nation security, the moral response is to just pay the workers more.

TacticalCoder: A plane hits a firetruck that was on the runway and the cause is... ICE?I've got a very simple question about border controls: currently in the country of France each year there are approximately 500 000 migrants coming into the country. Out of which about 10% do find work. So 90% do not contribute to the economy and get the benefits from the nanny state. How is this sustainable? I understand leftist publications linking agents enforcing immigration laws with planes crashing into a firetruck: that's leftist logic.But yet I'm all ears: how is 500 000 migrants coming yearly into a country, with only 10% of them ever finding work, not going to create problems? I'm willing to fancy leftist logic but it better be really good to sell that pill.Once again: we're talking about a plane hitting a firetruck and the article is about ICE. Maybe it was ICE agents driving the firetruck? Honestly I'm lost.

mhb: Uh, they know their audience? I read about the crash on the NY Times. Then I saw that there were comments so I thought to myself what can people have to say about a plane crash where it looks like ATC told the truck to stop? Times readers did not disappoint: Congress and government shutdown, lack of TSA staffing, Trump’s fault, ICE, DOGE…

toomuchtodo: Air traffic controllers require a significant investment by the federal government, I take no issue with age limits for both investment (lower bound) and safety reasons (upper bound) (if the data says it is reasonable, I'll always defer to the data).I take exceptional issue with the fact that their pay is not considered essential. There should be no way for this critical infrastructure to be not considered essential. ATC pay should flow regardless of actions of any branch of the federal government, and there should be robust systems in place to ensure these workers are not pushed beyond reasonable work limits. Fix the system or break the system forcing a fix. If it continues to work "good enough" without a fix, no changes will be made.

ryandrake: This assumes that controllers over 56 years old are statistically "unsafe," presumably due to perceived cognitive speed and ability. So unsafe that the concern overrides experience, familiarity with systems, and other key benefits of tenure. I'd love to see that data.

margalabargala: > How many deaths would communicate "We have likely reached system failure"?"Failure" is really a matter of opinion rather than some objective tipping point. The air system is unlikely to ever actually "fail", and at worst will just become some arbitrary level of degraded that some people will loudly label "failed".There are plenty of examples around the world of countries with variously degraded air systems, that are far worse than the US status quo but still are not "failed".There's Egypt, which has labeled crashes caused by bad design as "someone used a bomb and blew it up" for political reasons: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/07/fire-not-bomb-...Yemen, in the midst of a perennial civil war, still runs commercial flights: https://www.pprune.org/terms-endearment/653181-yemenia-expat...

jorblumesea: This is largely true for almost all US public services. Decades of focusing on the needs of the 1% is producing a situation where almost everything is under funded or poorly implemented. Critical infrastructure isn't a priority.

bena: You are being disingenuous. The article is about the aviation industry as a whole. The article talks about various accidents that have occured in the past few years. What it means for airports, etc.Then there's a section about the airports and TSA. TSA is currently working without pay due to a shutdown over funding. The issue of contention in this funding bill is ICE. The administration is responding by sending ICE to airports to fulfill TSA functions or not, it's, as always, unclear with this administration.The article has 10 paragraphs. 3 mention ICE.

HarHarVeryFunny: Problems related to air traffic controllers and TSA staff aren't a sign of "american aviation" being near collapse - they are a sign of american goverment being near collapse. This is critical national infrastructure - stop playing stupid political games with it.

samschooler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...

KK7NIL: 1. Not really. If the crash rates we're seeing under the Trump administration are higher than any similar length period in the last ~10 years, we should start to worry.2. See above.

buredoranna: People who dedicate their lives to studying an industry, can get very good at being able to predict the probability of events in their domain.These same people are commonly off by orders of magnitude when predicting the magnitude of these same events.The author of this article won the "Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting". I'm going to infer from this, that he's better at political reporting, than he is at predicting the future of an entire industry.And if he is truly convinced of this outcome, he should be shorting the airlines. (I'm gonna guess he hasn't done that).(edit: syntax)

fzeroracer: I don't think it's as much an 'attitude' problem as it is a 'wealth' problem.The richest folk in this country have bought out every single media apparatus it can get its hands on and have spread decades of propaganda. The 'philanthropic' billionaire that spent wealth so that they could have a building or initiative named after them have vanished and gave their wealth to the methhead billionaires that rip up the wiring of the country to sell for pennies.

oblio: Your numbers for France don't match anything I can find online.The number of immigrants per year seems to have been max 340k, about 50% have employment quickly, etc.You complain about "leftists" but as someone who definitely doesn't want open borders, the general fear in your comment and the numbers that seem made up make your comment read a lot more like (far-) "rightist" stuff.

irishcoffee: An elderly woman ran into a bus stop at 70mph, killing 4 people. Their claim was “I couldn’t stop, I don’t know what happened”They were given 200 hours community service. I think this happened today.

exe34: It's a good thing they fired all the dei people.

billfor: It’s a good thing new hires don’t have to wait or be rejected because the FAA needed to hire a different race or sex for the position.

nathan_compton: The FAA never had any such policies as far as I can tell.

riffraff: This is not news, there was an episode of Last Week Tonight on the Air Traffic Control crisis last summer[0].From memory: on the human side airports are understaffed, there are no young controllers in the pipeline, attrition is high, and the less people are available the higher the burnout rate, which creates a vicious cycle. On the technical side, airports are unmaintained, systems are obsolete and crumbling.John Oliver makes the case that most of the issue is that the FAA is financed through discretionary spending so e.g. it's subject to shut downs and can't do long term planning.[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeABJbvcJ_k

hagbard_c: Well, yes, it is. That does not mean that all the problems have been solved by getting rid of those who gained their positions purely based on inalienable characteristics unrelated to job requirements but it does make for a better chance of solving the problems.

exe34: yes exactly, they hired people by the colour of their skin before, not whether or not they could do their jobs. this is why airplanes have now started falling out of the sky and crashing into stuff on the ground.

fzeroracer: I'm curious: If your boss emailed you and all of your coworkers with mass buyout offers and demanded that they quit their job how many do you think would take up the offer? 10%? 20%? Do you think it would be enough to cause significant organizational issues?

nico: Those age limits should apply to all political offices

KK7NIL: He means that anyone making an argument that aviation safety has deteriorated should be using the stats to back it up, instead of anecdotal evidence.

happytoexplain: This is a common kind of "data or nothing" fallacy. Data doesn't reliably capture evidence for the thesis "TSA agents and aviation workers are burning out and ICE is going to make it worse". The part that data is good for hasn't happened yet over a long enough timeline to reflect properly.If the argument is "deadly accidents are up over the past decade", then yes, of course, we must point to data.If the argument is, "the aviation industry might be on the verge of a steep decline in availability and/or safety due to recent political/financial problems", then what do you mean "show the data"? That doesn't make sense. It's a concern based on observation, which is fine if it's not presented as a fact.And if it turns out that a specific accident is due to said forces - what, we don't address those forces, because "data"?

KK7NIL: I agree, but the article does specifically mention crashes as a symptom we're already seeing:> Fatal crashes, overstressed controllers, and endless security lines reveal a system teetering on the brink of failure.I have not read the entire article (paywalled), but the introduction sure seems to strongly imply that we're already seeing an unusually high rate of crashes.

trimethylpurine: I thought the policy is that you can't hire without documentation. Do you mean that there is a scheme in place, outside of the legal framework?

ryandrake: There's written policy and then there's policy as-enforced.

ForHackernews: >Yemen, in the midst of a perennial civil war, still runs commercial flightsNot any more, they don't:> The General Director of Sanaa International Airport, Khaled al-Shaief, said in a post on his X account that the strike had completely destroyed the last of the civilian planes that Yemenia Airways was operating from the airport.https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-it-has...

margalabargala: That's just from Sanaa. There are still flights to/from other cities in Yemen, mainly Socotra and Aden.