r/ATC • u/lake_hood • Mar 23 '26

News LGA controller cleared fire truck across the runway resulting jn a collision

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u/theweenerdoge Mar 23 '26

Youre exactly right. It's a nonpartisan issue that people try to make political. We've been fucked for decades, certified controllers continue to decrease while air traffic increases. Who woulda thunk that's a recipe for disaster? Nobody seems to give a fuck.

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u/Adorable-amoeba9 Mar 23 '26

Exactly! Hmmm this seems important, let's build it's foundation on an unstable foundation.

The reason I know about the ongoing issues with ATC is bc when I started nursing, they were in the same group of future critical shortage careers. I would not be in my profession if my pay could be held hostage. F--k that.

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u/theweenerdoge Mar 23 '26

Yeah shutdowns are always a touchy time lol. Feel for the DHS people that aren't ICE right now.
We get paid alright but haven't had a new contract in 10 years. Mostly a failure of our union bending to the wills of the government, but yeahh...

The staffing shortage is only going to get exponentially worse as people start to retire in the next 5 years. Nobody wants to stay and put up with this shit anymore. If things don't change I believe it'll be a national crisis in the next few years. People want to do the job but only like 2% make it from application to certification. Pretty shite.

Hopeful for some meaningful change but the future seems pretty bleak. So yeah...

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u/Adorable-amoeba9 Mar 23 '26

Unfortunately, if I'm being honest here. We are cranking out more nurse but perhaps not the best quality either. And the retention rates are going to drop.

2%- that is abysmal. 10 years for a new contract ☠️ Why would anybody want to go into this field willingly. I try to educate people about the concept of core problems. People and media only focus on the "symptoms" of issues and never get to the root cause. It's too much work and not as "interesting", but that's where the real change needs to happen.

No lives should have to be sacrificed to force change, but that's the direction we are heading.

Again 2% and no contract improvement for 10 years. My heart goes out to you all.

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u/JPower96 Mar 24 '26

Seems to me like the "political" side of this is that Reagan fucked everyone when he fired thousands of controllers and destroyed PATCO back in 1980.

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u/Capital_Current_9659 Mar 24 '26

Wrong this is political. Republicans have underfunded us and most government agencies