Rendered at 12:30:52 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
mrbigbob 5 minutes ago [-]
i think too many people are getting hung up on the fact whether these air traffic controllers play video games or not.
Being an air traffic controller in the past has been a very difficult job not just to do but to get (for good reason) We have been short air traffic controllers for a long time now and all of a sudden were getting 2,000? How? Did they lax their requirements?
Im not saying that some qualified air traffic controllers havent been hired but considering this current administration lies/mishandles to a spectacular degree almost everything it touches im doubting there are actually 2,000 air traffic controllers and if there are how qualified a lot of them are
ViktorRay 24 hours ago [-]
Wait after reading the article it simply says that many of these hired people also play video games.
Their definition of “video gamer” is literally just somebody who says they play games.
I don’t see what the big deal is. Lots of young people play games every now and then.
Many medical students play video games. You don’t see articles saying “America’s new surgeons…are video gamers!”
ipsod 23 hours ago [-]
Movie watchers and food eaters, too.
ddejohn 18 hours ago [-]
100% of air traffic controllers had consumed dihydrogen monoxide prior to an aviation disaster.
eth0up 11 hours ago [-]
So a chemist and his student walk into a bar.
The chemist says "I'll have an H2O"
Bartender says, "fine. What'll it be for you, young man?"
Student says "I'll have an H2O too"
And dies.
whoamii 18 hours ago [-]
Yeah but do they read hacker news? Are they hackers?! Are hackers controlling our skies now?!
sbodnar 23 hours ago [-]
You deserve a coffee and donut for the laughs on this one good sir.
smcg 20 hours ago [-]
That's because this article is PR fluff for Sean Duffy to make it seem like they are on top of the air traffic controller problem.
yes many of them also play video games and they were specifically focused on this recruitment drive. it wasn't a side effect that just happens to correlate
red-iron-pine 17 hours ago [-]
"US hires over 2000 people who eat tacos as Air Traffic controllers"
ksymph 1 days ago [-]
To be clear, they began a recruitment ad campaign targeting gamers, and ended up meeting their hiring goal of 2,000+. It's not like they pulled 2,000 gamers off the street and stuck them in ATC towers.
> With only about 25 percent of controllers holding a traditional college degree, this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming. Feedback from controller exit interviews reinforces this, with several controllers pointing to gaming as an influence on their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.
red-iron-pine 17 hours ago [-]
there are similar campaigns in Canada for NavCanada hiring ATCs as well
their ads have been targeting busy waiter/waitress staff, as handling a bumping restaurant floor gives the multi-tasking skills needed, or so goes the thinking
monster_truck 2 days ago [-]
Have played competitive fps games with a couple of ATC dudes for almost half of my life now.
They're all very sensible, level headed people who get justifiably upset when you do not do the procedurally and objectively correct (lowest risk, highest percentage) thing to win in a given situation and will calmly spell it all out every single time.
It seems like they probably just ran recruitment ads targeted to people with an interest in gaming, right? The article actually doesn't say anything about how they went about recruiting gamers.
mwambua 1 days ago [-]
Not sure - but I know there's a really serious community of folks who do ATC virtually on VATSIM: https://vatsim.net
I feel like those folks would already have been candidates for air traffic controller jobs though.
shostack 1 days ago [-]
Having flown in VATSIM towered air space and airports it is some of the best VR flight sim time I ever had.
Had someone on ground and tower at KPAO and several of us pilots were just flying the pattern and it was a blast. Not to mention one was a licensed pilot based out of there who gave me IRL tips for my lesson that week about the field which were really helpful.
Such a remarkable community.
ikr678 1 days ago [-]
I suspect popularity of sims like this is because of people who cannot be candidates for ATC roles - either have family or lifestyle restrictions that prevent them relocating or doing shift work, drug dependencies or medical issues, or criminal backgrounds.
leetrout 1 days ago [-]
Of the controllers I have chatted with while they stream on twitch this is the answer. Many people don't realize the controllers have medical tests as well.
monster_truck 13 hours ago [-]
The biggest one tends to be that they are simply too old, or have retired already. The retirement age is 56, with effectively no exceptions.
Virtually nobody lasts that long. If they don't end up needing a prescription that disqualifies them before 50, they end up getting incentivized to leave at 50 anyways.
rmunn 6 hours ago [-]
I think I read a different article than the one from CBS that got posted here, but I can't remember where it was (sorry I can't be more specific, but it's been a busy week for me and it's gone clean out of my head). Anyway, I remember that that article quoted one of the new hires saying that he had always enjoyed flight simulator games, so applying for an ATC job seemed like a natural fit.
I don't know if he was typical or cherry-picked, but it does seem likely that the people who would respond to that kind of campaign would be people who were already interested in aviation, so my guess would lean towards "typical" rather than "cherry-picked".
Again, sorry my memory is vague about an article I read several days ago so that I can't link to the source. I almost didn't post this, but I figured another data point (even a vague one) would be handy.
Logging on to news dot ycombinator dot com for some Borat posting
embedding-shape 2 days ago [-]
> No mention of what games they're playing?
According to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, people typically play video games about controlling traffic in the air? Or the quote was just completely butchered to be something completely else than what was said:
> "A lot of what they do playing games ... is what they do ... controlling traffic in the air," Duffy told CBS News
wahern 1 days ago [-]
Presumably they meant staring at a screen for hours on end while talking through a headset.
1970-01-01 23 hours ago [-]
>No mention of what games they're playing?
Indeed, that's the interesting part that remains missing. I don't think Farming Simulator 26 is going to be on their list, but that is an assumption; where is their ad targeting data?!
It shouldn't really matter. If you have the proclivity to sit on your bum for hours monitoring many parameters at a time and making decisions you're a much better fit to be trained up for ATC than someone picked at random.
ASalazarMX 18 hours ago [-]
"Weird, this always worked in GTA V..."
esalman 1 days ago [-]
GTA 5 online, probably.
CorvusCrypto 7 hours ago [-]
Oh boy. So... I have some ties still to the FAA and its ATC staff despite living in Sweden and This article is just painting a picture I've seen time and time again when there are staffing woes.
I'm gonna ignore the gamer hype because that's just recruitment that has happened even in other admins (Level Up campaign was the last one in 2022 or so)
They got near to their quota in the training pipeline but it's not like training as most think about where someone can just study hard. Going to the Academy (there's only one in OKC and congress will almost always shut down ideas of opening another elsewhere) is not like a guarantee that someone intelligent or hardworking will pass like in uni. If historic stats are any indicator we will see a ton of washouts there (30%+) and then they need to qualify as a CPC (certified professional controller) in which time they may also wash out while training for their facility which the article didn't actually touch on. The bottleneck is still this process and until that 2000 converts to CPCs I'm not going to be raising hell or singing praises. Great that more are passing the ATSA and going to the academy, but that's step 0.
Not like any of this is Duffy's fault but as we say here: comes with the title man. I really would like to see more staff get there so best of luck to all the candidates, given the amount of OT I've seen (not just from facilities that game it mind you) the FAA needs all the controllers it can get.
watwut 3 hours ago [-]
Why are they "washing out"?
CorvusCrypto 3 hours ago [-]
Various reasons. A lot comes down to the individual facility requirements and there are special needs at each. LOAs to memorize, and unique challenges like with PCTs control of airspace around DC where they run extremely compressed finals to fit all the traffic.
ZHU is also notoriously hard for some (weather is a big factor) and then you do ofc have some not so great historic trends of intentionally trying to wash trainees so OT can be guarded for the CPCs (N90 was infamously known for this but seems to have quelled in latest years)
Shortly said the job is not cookie cutter even after the academy and you need to certify on all positions to be a CPC at your chosen facility. There's levels to each btw up to 12 being the busiest. When you wash there's a chance to retrain and go to another facility as well and there are NATCA (controller union) approved processes to transfer, but yeah many just change jobs after that.
_--__--__ 2 days ago [-]
ATCs are chronically understaffed in a way that endangers all of us, and the FAA has been under scrutiny for their hiring practices for over a decade https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39184451
It's equally plausible to me that this is an example of "we need to try something and this is something" or just deflection from the prior criticism.
madrox 1 days ago [-]
As trying things go, it doesn’t seem that crazy of an idea. I imagine air traffic control would even make for a pretty fun video game.
vunderba 1 days ago [-]
When I was working on my PPL, I used VATSIM which is a worldwide network where volunteer hobbyists actually act as virtual air traffic controllers, so you can practice traffic patterns, instructions, and just get more comfortable when you are operating real-life radio comms.
Put the AI to it. Clod can do a better job anyway /s
comrade1234 2 days ago [-]
I had a coworker from the democratic republic of Congo who insisted that if he was back home he would do ok fighting because he played lots of first-person shooters. I mean he was 100% serious about this. We argued about it.
He got a commitment from our employer to pay his undergrad tuition. But he disappeared one day, probably went home to fight and die. I search for him every now and then but I think he's gone.
I think his naïveté is equal to this policy.
jmpeax 1 days ago [-]
The types of skills from FPS games and real fighting are much further apart than gaming and ATC. A closer analogy would be a coworker who knows Judo is needed for Greco-Roman wrestling. Very different sports with different rules, but the skills in building and navigating a mental map of the environment carry over.
mcv 22 hours ago [-]
I think FPS skills might translate very well to drone operator.
imglorp 1 days ago [-]
The US Army did a bunch of recruiting to teenagers like this, successfully. Work for us, it's just like Call of Duty! They had their own branded FPS even.
I played this game! It was a buggy mess and really unintuitive compared to battlefield.
singleshot_ 22 hours ago [-]
I dunno. If I woke up on a battlefield the first thing I’d probably do is poke my head up to figure out what’s going on and doubtless, I’d be immediately killed.
Americas Army was the most intuitive game I ever played.
ramesh31 23 hours ago [-]
>I played this game! It was a buggy mess and really unintuitive compared to battlefield.
America's Army was actually a pretty respectable FPS at the time and had it's own niche in the gaming community. There was a huge hole in the market in the early 2000s for anything realistic modern warfare related; CounterStrike was pretty much it. Everything else was stuck in the WW2 fad (CoD 1/2, MoH, Red Orchestra, BF1942) or pure fantasy (Doom/Quake/Tribes/Halo etc.)
thoughtpalette 22 hours ago [-]
Seconding this. America's Army (AA) was very popular and well liked, especially because it was free IIRC. Medal of Honor:Allied Assault is another addition to the above list.
I miss Tribes
SkyMarshal 22 hours ago [-]
Tribes, Tribes Renegades, and Tribes Ultra Renegades were some of the most fun I've ever had in videogames.
baldeagle 1 days ago [-]
Just like real war…
euroderf 1 days ago [-]
Fog, fog, and more fog.
cucumber3732842 1 days ago [-]
I wonder how much money and headache could've been saved over the years had the DoD simply paid Activision to low key disparage financing vehicles at 20% APR and "dating" strippers in its relevant game franchises.
vee-kay 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
kevin_thibedeau 2 days ago [-]
The planes will just respawn after disappearing from the radar, right?
skeeter2020 1 days ago [-]
I played A LOT of flight controller on my ipod / ipad back in the day, and habour master too, and you need to start from scratch when you have a collision, just like in real life!
mrheosuper 1 days ago [-]
>start from scratch when you have a collision, just like in real life!
Sorry to break it for you, but irl you will likely spend a long time in prison first.
Do you get stars like in GTA if you crash the planes together?
random3 1 days ago [-]
Right?
sellmesoap 1 days ago [-]
I wonder if that happened to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Yezhov as well, FPS games represent you as a Superman, there's a big gap between games and reality. That being said I want my air traffic controller to be good at cooking mama.
korrectional 1 days ago [-]
Idk about Yezhov, in Ukraine all men have to go fight so it's not like he made a naive decision at all, it was not his to make in the first place if that makes sense.
1 days ago [-]
antonvs 1 days ago [-]
He could have made the decision not to fight, he just didn’t want to.
The idea that you “have to” fight is abdicating your moral responsibility. He chose to fight.
wildzzz 23 hours ago [-]
He was a volunteer but many men in Ukraine are conscripted. You technically have a choice but the options are joining involuntary duty, going to jail, or figuring out a way to flee the country.
antonvs 21 hours ago [-]
The reason I commented is that I faced that choice myself. I was arrested, went to court, and was given a suspended sentence conditional on reporting for service, and then left the country.
Doing that had a major personal cost, but I wasn't willing to fight for a immoral regime. It wasn't Ukraine, and perhaps the calculation in Ukraine would have been different, but the point is that claiming one doesn't have a choice is an excuse, nothing more. What it's really saying is that one isn't willing to pay the price for making a difficult choice.
watwut 3 hours ago [-]
I guess he did not liked the idea of being forced to live in Russia along with everyone else in Ukraine. So, he did the one thing he could do.
Gud 1 days ago [-]
He went and defended his country against criminals. Why do you portray him as a naive gamer?
dwroberts 1 days ago [-]
Is there some evidence that he made similar claims? Otherwise you’re making kind of a tasteless comparison with someone you presumably don’t know anything about
tokai 1 days ago [-]
Complete non sequitur. What a horrible comment.
duttish 1 days ago [-]
Hm, on one level I'm confused. War seems to be either very stressful, very boring (hurry up and wait) or shit my pants level of terrifying. Video games are usually designed to be none of those? well except slightly stressful because that can be fun
Cpoll 1 days ago [-]
Video games can be any combination of those three. They don't even have to be fun in a traditional sense to be engaging. In any case, they're probably looking for transferrable skills, not gamifying ATC.
olelele 14 hours ago [-]
I guess he never heard that the first reaction to combat is to soil oneself. In the Scandinavian military service I did they taught us to go to the toilet as a readiness maneuver.
jojobas 1 days ago [-]
For anyone contemplating the same, go play paintball for half a day. You don't just get killed every other round like in Arma, the "death" it's somewhat painful, you get out of breath and start valuing any semblance of cover very much (and get killed from and unexpected direction anyway).
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
It’s just a recruitment campaign. It’s not like they’re putting people straight into a control tower because they like to play Microsoft Flight Simulator or something. They still go through a whole training process.
rcxdude 1 days ago [-]
I think in both cases that while it's far from an equivalent experience, there are some attributes or skills that can transfer across. Not sure why anyone would be particularly keen to bet their life on just that, though.
That's cool, but sim racing enthusiasts typically have gaming peripherals like steering wheels, pedals, and gear shifters that bring them closer to the experience of a real race car driver. For FPS games, they might be realistic in terms of detail, but how would most video games capture the physical stamina needed to carry around equipment, or maybe even aiming and maintaining the sights, equipment, etc.
squigz 1 days ago [-]
The idea of FPS games giving you some sense of real combat is, of course, absurd.
The idea of games/communities like MFS and VATSIM providing some sense of real ATC is much less absurd.
King-Aaron 1 days ago [-]
This is a government that employed a freelance billionaire to cull massive numbers of government staff on quasi-bigoted moral vibes, gutting critical services like food safety regulators (and then tired to re-hire, etc etc), and are now seeing massive widespread outbreaks of exactly the kinds of diseases those exact people were there to prevent.
It wasn't long back before they fired a bunch of ATC staff and in the very same week saw multiple fatal aircraft crashes.
Forgive me for thinking this administration are only capable of making absurd decisions, particularly in a story like this.
They obviously don't, so why bring it up? To srawman on purpose?
FPS games do teach some skills, how relevant they are for real combat is hard to say, but there is definitely some overlap when it comes to decision making. Just like in real combat, you must be decisive and proactive to win.
On a more practical level, the ideas of cover, sight lines and using corners to your advantage in CQB are all the same.
colordrops 1 days ago [-]
Do you realize how much stamina and physical prowess are required to drive an F1 car?
layman51 21 hours ago [-]
Yes, from what I understand, their heart rate is really high during competition, they are sweating a lot, and then their necks have to be strong.
I was curious about your point and it turns out that the gamer beat the F1 driver but they were both in a VUHL 05 which is a road-legal supercar. It seems like they were on a mountain road track too.
imtringued 16 hours ago [-]
Yes, I'm pretty sure most people will realize that the difference between the stamina and physical prowess needed to go from driving virtual F1 races to driving real F1 is much less than the difference between the stamina and physical prowess you need to go from being a soldier in call of duty to being a real soldier.
You know, the former involves physical steering wheels, shifters, pedals, realistic vehicle models, etc.
Meanwhile the latter involves pressing a single button to reload a fire arm and clicking a mouse button to fire.
You have to be pretty dense to think that aiming with a mouse has any resemblance to aiming with sights or a scope or even just pulling the trigger. You know, real guns have recoil.
Meanwhile most high end steering wheels have force feedback that can "fight back".
scrapcode 1 days ago [-]
When I got interested in flying I took to flight simulators and the VATSIM network[0], as I had seen mentioned multiple times that the radio work can be a difficult aspect of flying to pick up on when flying out of a towered/busy field. By the time I started, I was comfortable on the radio and pre-flight checks, and this seemed to gained quite a bit of favor from my CFI.
I'm not saying it made me a well-versed pilot, but simulating these situations can do a lot to get one going.
I got my PPL a few years ago. VATSIM and flight sim were huge tools.
I would, literally, fly my training flights a few times using full VATSIM and then show up IRL to do the same thing. It made a massive difference.
My instructor even said it makes his job so much easier. He had to do nothing with me.
I was able to cut my rental time over half. It paid for itself a dozen times over. Like literally it saved me $5k or so.
I recently gifted my yoke and controls to my GF who is getting her commerical cert. She is so excited. She is already flying her training flights using it. It's so helpful.
From a very naïve perspective, why isn’t air traffic control a solved problem?
Would love to be educated here, but it seems like there are just not that many moving pieces per airport (<10,000) and all of them are tagged with transponders, etc. And a human in the loop with respect to coordination might be the biggest source of risk.
This all seems like queuing theory and collision avoidance, which are very well done by computers.
kj4211cash 1 days ago [-]
Worked in this area for a couple of years. We have automated collision avoidance systems and have for years. But things can go off nominal fast and you don't want passenger aircraft making drastic maneuvers that fast. Because conditions can change so fast, queueing theory isn't that useful either. It's useful for more strategic as opposed to tactical air traffic control, what we call air traffic flow management. There's been a ton of research in this area for decades, for example at the National Center of Excellence in Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR) and at NASA's Aviation Systems division. I could say a lot more offline about why, in my humble opinion, progress has been unbelievably slow, but the short answer is that it's government plus modern day academia operating in an environment where funding is low and risk tolerance is lower.
themadturk 1 days ago [-]
I'd suggest looking at Admiral Cloudberg's recent analysis of the Jan. 2025 airliner/military helicopter collision in Washington DC. It's a study in the difficulties of air traffic control in the 21st century and the reality of transponder usage, complicated by an overwhelmed airport and legislative indifference. Transponders aren't universally used, technology and people aren't perfect.
This one is long; I suggest reading the first chapter, then skipping to chapter 7 for the important parts of the story.
Weather conditions, ground/runway conditions, obstructions, mechanical issues. There are tons of edge cases with huge consequences for error. Same reason self driving is not a solved problem, but with dramatically less tolerance for error.
taiwan_num1 1 days ago [-]
But it feels like planes have a huge advantage in that they all have trackers constantly broadcasting their location to one another. Almost like they are working as a team compared to FSD systems which are limited to a small range of self collected info from vision/lidar.
Not that it can ever be fully automated but it seems like much easier problem to solve.
jimbo808 1 days ago [-]
Doesn’t meaningfully change the answer. There are still tons of edge cases with catastrophic failure modes. The transponder won’t tell you about the alligator on the runway, a vehicle where it shouldn’t be, unexpected braking action, a mechanical problem, or a plane not doing what it was cleared to do. Tracking the planes is the easy part.
p_l 1 days ago [-]
The thing is... not everything you need to track, not even all airplanes, will have transponders.
Sometimes the transponders will be faulty, sometimes you have to direct a broken aircraft safely to the ground with no transponder available.
And sometimes you are doing ATC for a zone that does not, in fact, require transponders (those are required only for the strictest controlled zones, not in general)
baby_souffle 1 days ago [-]
The reasons we haven't automated air traffic control are similar to the reasons why we still have pilots in the cockpit even though we technically don't need to some of the time.
jml7c5 1 days ago [-]
Uneducated guesses:
My impression is that it's at least partially down to how brittle a fully automated system could be. You want as much of a "manual" backup as possible, and that only be achieved by doing things manually all the time to keep up practice. With the current system, even with enormous degradation (massive power outages, cyberattack, software flaw, etc.) it's possible to get planes out of the sky without much risk. If a fully automated system fails, it's an enormous disaster.
The other problem is that the "worse is better" arrangement where ~everything is done via voice over radio makes automation difficult. Voice is simple, universal, and enormously flexible, but hard for computers to handle systematically. Some two-way protocol and associated pilot UI would be useful... but then you have to decide on that protocol and UI, every manufacturer has to implement it, every airline has to buy it, and every pilot has to be trained. Unless it's very, very clear what the optimal solution is and that the benefit outweighs the cost, that sort of coordination is difficult.
(And remember, the ultimate result of such a change would be a rigid system that is difficult to change, more fragile, and does not save much money relative to the total cost of the airline industry.)
ChrisMarshallNY 1 days ago [-]
I remember in the 1980s, when there was an attempt to rewrite the US air traffic control system in Ada. A friend of mine, was on that project.
It did not end well.
It's a very hairy problem, and mistakes are very costly.
On another note: Those video gamers are gonna have some pretty clunky video experiences.
notatoad 1 days ago [-]
"all of them are tagged with transponders" seems like a very dangerous assumption to base a system on.
ryandrake 1 days ago [-]
It's not only a dangerous assumption, it's simply incorrect. Transponders on aircraft are not required in most of the US, including around Class D towered airports unless operating within a designated Mode C veil or at/above 10,000 feet MSL.
isubkhankulov 1 days ago [-]
The collision in LGA in March revealed to me that not all objects are tracked.
jackling 1 days ago [-]
But wouldn't that be a case where regardless of human or machine, the outcome wouldn't change since there was no tracking information?
nitwit005 1 days ago [-]
Consider the ratio of air traffic controllers to the number of people moving through the airport. It's not a huge cost. There's often far more staff moving bags.
It was a problem at very rural airports, and now some people man those remotely.
shin_lao 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
pfannkuchen 1 days ago [-]
Unions?
jmpman 13 hours ago [-]
One of my pilot friends told me that he knew of someone training to be an air traffic controller, and they completed the training but were denied the job due to an Obama era racial quota program which discriminated against him. I was skeptical of his claim, as he leans as far right as they come, and anything that Obama touches, he criticizes. But in this scenario, his anecdote was correct. Don't know if that's still the case, but recently it was.
gcanyon 24 hours ago [-]
So instead of training Air Traffic Controllers to play video games, you trained Gamers to direct air traffic?
It's Armageddon! :-)
tsoukase 19 hours ago [-]
It would be more interesting if they control for the games played. Eg Air traffic controllers that play Flight Sim, truck drivers that play GTA5 or teachers with Call of duty.
themadturk 1 days ago [-]
I don't know why hiring gamers for ATC would be any different than hiring anyone else to do it. There's extensive training required, and I don't think it's something you can get a college degree for anyway. Maybe there's some advantage for gamers, but I don't see where it would be all that important.
freetime2 1 days ago [-]
From the article:
> Duffy added that many current trainees started out as gamers. Only about 25% of controllers hold a traditional college degree, while former controllers note that gaming requires many of the same skills that air traffic controllers use on the job, such as thinking quickly, staying focused and managing multiple sources of information as they guide more than 80,000 flights to their destinations daily.
There is also a rigorous application process to get into the training program that only 10% of applicants pass:
> Among the criteria to become a controller are to hold U.S. citizenship, be under the age of 31 and pass the FAA air traffic pre-employment tests.
> Aspiring controllers must also pass an exam that the FAA says predicts candidates' "aptitude to be an air traffic controller." Within a week, they are notified if they have passed.
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
So if gamers on average tend to be younger, and do better on the aptitude test than the general population, I think it makes sense to target them with recruitment campaigns to attempt to increase the number of qualified applicants coming into the funnel. Presumably non-gamers are also still welcome to apply.
And if it doesn’t work out and gamers don’t end up getting accepted at a higher rate than anyone else, then it’s no great loss, either.
db48x 16 hours ago [-]
I remember playing atc on a Unix machine which had dial–in access back in the BBS days.
mellosouls 1 days ago [-]
What could go wrong with preferring people who have ingrained disconnect between the objects on screen and real living humans.
lbriner 23 hours ago [-]
I think what has already gone wrong with US Air Command having drone pilots for foreign wars based in shipping containers in Texas. Starts off as surreal/not morally challenging, and then it sinks in, these are real people. Also, I am not on the frontline with my comrades so am I a coward? Can I face my family tonight after this.
righthand 23 hours ago [-]
You are not on the front lines but USA does not have military service requirement and hasn’t been defending itself for well over half a century now.
The drone pilot is not on the front lines but they were never killing people to protect the country (as we haven’t had to defend the homeland for over half a century).
Most people join the modern day military so they can have a chance to kill people, not because the country is under any real threat. It is a jobs program.
What is left in embarrassment hat makes facing your family difficult, when your family is programmed to believe you’re saving them somehow?
budman1 23 hours ago [-]
"Most people join the modern day military so they can have a chance to kill people".
Strong disagree.
Jobs training, money for college. Exciting way to spend your 20's (99% of the military does not directly kill anyone). Patriotism, family tradition.
SkyMarshal 22 hours ago [-]
It could reduce stress and cognitive load and improve their focus, efficiency, and stamina.
timcobb 23 hours ago [-]
> The exchange ended with Mr. Trump telling Mr. Duffy that he had to hire people from MIT as air traffic controllers. These air traffic controllers need to be “geniuses,” he said.
I guess MIT didn't work out...
Glyptodon 1 days ago [-]
Are they focusing on RTS players with high APM?
lrae 1 days ago [-]
They tried, but the max hiring age is still 31.
mannyv 1 days ago [-]
Just like the old rumors of Missile Command players being recruited for NORAD etc.
Really, there are people that play ATC games for fun.
SkyMarshal 22 hours ago [-]
It's not a terrible idea, especially if they find people who are already good at one of the many Air Traffic Control realistic sim videogames:
Only 10% make it through the first week? At least the weed out process is quick.
pavel_lishin 2 days ago [-]
Where do you see it taking a week?
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
It sounds like they are weeded out before even being accepted.
projektfu 1 days ago [-]
The medical certificate weeds out many of them. Many video gamers are proud of their ADHD, and that is a no-no. If they've been depressed, have sleep disorders, etc. They would have to go through a difficult process to be issued a certificate if they eventually are able to. I doubt a casual, "sure, I could try it", applicant would spend the $6000+ to get the medical in that situation.
rawgabbit 1 days ago [-]
It was this quote: ” Aspiring controllers must also pass an exam that the FAA says predicts candidates' "aptitude to be an air traffic controller." Within a week, they are notified if they have passed”
shagie 1 days ago [-]
As noted in a sibling comment, that there is no "in a week" implied in the 10%.
Individuals must meet the following minimum qualifications in order to be eligible for an Air Traffic Controller position:
Be a United States citizen
Be under the age of 31
Pass a medical examination
Pass a security investigation
Pass the FAA air traffic pre-employment tests, including the Air Traffic Controller Specialists Skills Assessment Battery (ATSA)
Speak English clearly enough to be understood over communications equipment
Have one year of progressively responsible work experience, or a Bachelor's degree, or a combination of post-secondary education and work experience that totals one year
The medical requirements are furthermore:
Air Traffic Controller candidates must have the capacity to perform the essential functions of these positions without risk to themselves or others. Candidates must be physically and mentally fit and meet standards for vision, hearing, cardiovascular, neurological and psychiatric health.
(and there's a long list on the site for the specifics for each standard)... for example, the first one under eye:
Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable.
...
It goes on for the training requirements...
Entry-level applicants must complete required training courses and spend several months at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. Applicants are paid while in training. After graduating the academy, individuals are placed in locations across the country and must gain 2-3 years additional training, both classroom and on-the-job experience, before becoming a certified professional controller. This rigorous training includes close supervision and evaluation by senior controllers that ensures controllers are competent, professional, know their airspace environment and can deal with the pressures and high pace of the job.
I think the headline should have emphasized that they were hired as trainees.
I am not a fan of the Trump admin but Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is one of the few people in it that I think steers clear of politics and prioritizes doing a good job. A horrible air traffic disaster that occurred a couple of weeks into the new administration threw him into the spotlight while he was still getting settled in, and it seems like he took the lesson to heart.
I actually think gamers are a good population to recruit from because you do want people that internalize cognitive abstractions, maintain focus for long periods, juggle competing priorities etc. But one can also imagine some less attractive gamer stereotypes like poor emotional containment or cognitive saturation leading to a rage quit. It will be interesting to see what the attrition rate will be like for this cohort vs others.
floren 1 days ago [-]
Sean "DEI Bike Lanes" Duffy?
anigbrowl 1 days ago [-]
It's still the Trump administration. I mean relative to the general (absurdly low) standard thereof. I'm trying to be charitable because I can easily picture someone 10x worse.
platevoltage 1 days ago [-]
Sean Duffy? Steers clear of politics?
cakbeslik 22 hours ago [-]
gamers might be good fit for the job, and if everyones happy no need for dramatize it
rxyz 24 hours ago [-]
one of the greats of early League of Legends esports, Froggen, went into ATC recently
This probably explains why I saw the Ghost from Pacman trying to eat my plane when I was making that ILS approach for runway 32 Right.
31337Logic 15 hours ago [-]
Something, something, "Ender's Game".
sahabaj 23 hours ago [-]
why is that? are they good at observing
paxys 1 days ago [-]
Why are they saying “video gamers” as if it is a job title? Qualification for ATC is to be under 31 and the job is male dominated. No shit everyone they hire plays video games.
ro_bit 1 days ago [-]
While their normal demographic might happen to contain a lot of gamers, the article is talking specifically about the results of a recruitment campaign that targeted gamers
22 hours ago [-]
effnorwood 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
Ozzie-D 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
37384848 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
kortilla 1 days ago [-]
Idiotic headline. This is a trainee pipeline. The headline is meant to mislead you into thinking they hired some people based on video games and they are now air traffic controllers.
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
I blame the readers. It shouldn’t be that hard to think about it for two seconds and conclude they’re probably not just plopping gamers in front of a radar screen. But apparently that’s too much to ask.
Being an air traffic controller in the past has been a very difficult job not just to do but to get (for good reason) We have been short air traffic controllers for a long time now and all of a sudden were getting 2,000? How? Did they lax their requirements?
Im not saying that some qualified air traffic controllers havent been hired but considering this current administration lies/mishandles to a spectacular degree almost everything it touches im doubting there are actually 2,000 air traffic controllers and if there are how qualified a lot of them are
Their definition of “video gamer” is literally just somebody who says they play games.
I don’t see what the big deal is. Lots of young people play games every now and then.
Many medical students play video games. You don’t see articles saying “America’s new surgeons…are video gamers!”
The chemist says "I'll have an H2O"
Bartender says, "fine. What'll it be for you, young man?"
Student says "I'll have an H2O too"
And dies.
yes many of them also play video games and they were specifically focused on this recruitment drive. it wasn't a side effect that just happens to correlate
Better link (.gov):
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/trumps-transpor...
> With only about 25 percent of controllers holding a traditional college degree, this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming. Feedback from controller exit interviews reinforces this, with several controllers pointing to gaming as an influence on their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.
their ads have been targeting busy waiter/waitress staff, as handling a bumping restaurant floor gives the multi-tasking skills needed, or so goes the thinking
They're all very sensible, level headed people who get justifiably upset when you do not do the procedurally and objectively correct (lowest risk, highest percentage) thing to win in a given situation and will calmly spell it all out every single time.
Also no mention of when the NYC ones were told to move to Pennsylvania or be fired? Interestingly also cbs's article https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-york-philadelphia-a...
I feel like those folks would already have been candidates for air traffic controller jobs though.
Had someone on ground and tower at KPAO and several of us pilots were just flying the pattern and it was a blast. Not to mention one was a licensed pilot based out of there who gave me IRL tips for my lesson that week about the field which were really helpful.
Such a remarkable community.
Virtually nobody lasts that long. If they don't end up needing a prescription that disqualifies them before 50, they end up getting incentivized to leave at 50 anyways.
I don't know if he was typical or cherry-picked, but it does seem likely that the people who would respond to that kind of campaign would be people who were already interested in aviation, so my guess would lean towards "typical" rather than "cherry-picked".
Again, sorry my memory is vague about an article I read several days ago so that I can't link to the source. I almost didn't post this, but I figured another data point (even a vague one) would be handy.
https://airport.apunen.com/
According to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, people typically play video games about controlling traffic in the air? Or the quote was just completely butchered to be something completely else than what was said:
> "A lot of what they do playing games ... is what they do ... controlling traffic in the air," Duffy told CBS News
Indeed, that's the interesting part that remains missing. I don't think Farming Simulator 26 is going to be on their list, but that is an assumption; where is their ad targeting data?!
I'm gonna ignore the gamer hype because that's just recruitment that has happened even in other admins (Level Up campaign was the last one in 2022 or so)
They got near to their quota in the training pipeline but it's not like training as most think about where someone can just study hard. Going to the Academy (there's only one in OKC and congress will almost always shut down ideas of opening another elsewhere) is not like a guarantee that someone intelligent or hardworking will pass like in uni. If historic stats are any indicator we will see a ton of washouts there (30%+) and then they need to qualify as a CPC (certified professional controller) in which time they may also wash out while training for their facility which the article didn't actually touch on. The bottleneck is still this process and until that 2000 converts to CPCs I'm not going to be raising hell or singing praises. Great that more are passing the ATSA and going to the academy, but that's step 0.
Not like any of this is Duffy's fault but as we say here: comes with the title man. I really would like to see more staff get there so best of luck to all the candidates, given the amount of OT I've seen (not just from facilities that game it mind you) the FAA needs all the controllers it can get.
ZHU is also notoriously hard for some (weather is a big factor) and then you do ofc have some not so great historic trends of intentionally trying to wash trainees so OT can be guarded for the CPCs (N90 was infamously known for this but seems to have quelled in latest years)
Shortly said the job is not cookie cutter even after the academy and you need to certify on all positions to be a CPC at your chosen facility. There's levels to each btw up to 12 being the busiest. When you wash there's a chance to retrain and go to another facility as well and there are NATCA (controller union) approved processes to transfer, but yeah many just change jobs after that.
It's equally plausible to me that this is an example of "we need to try something and this is something" or just deflection from the prior criticism.
https://docs.xpilot-project.org/
https://store.steampowered.com/search?term=%22air+traffic%22...
https://bigfatsimulations.com/game/approachcontrolremastered
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unmatched-air-traffic-control/...
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/planes-control/id1015114550 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rarepixels...
He got a commitment from our employer to pay his undergrad tuition. But he disappeared one day, probably went home to fight and die. I search for him every now and then but I think he's gone.
I think his naïveté is equal to this policy.
Americas Army was the most intuitive game I ever played.
America's Army was actually a pretty respectable FPS at the time and had it's own niche in the gaming community. There was a huge hole in the market in the early 2000s for anything realistic modern warfare related; CounterStrike was pretty much it. Everything else was stuck in the WW2 fad (CoD 1/2, MoH, Red Orchestra, BF1942) or pure fantasy (Doom/Quake/Tribes/Halo etc.)
I miss Tribes
Sorry to break it for you, but irl you will likely spend a long time in prison first.
https://old.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense/comments/1gcp7mt...
The idea that you “have to” fight is abdicating your moral responsibility. He chose to fight.
Doing that had a major personal cost, but I wasn't willing to fight for a immoral regime. It wasn't Ukraine, and perhaps the calculation in Ukraine would have been different, but the point is that claiming one doesn't have a choice is an excuse, nothing more. What it's really saying is that one isn't willing to pay the price for making a difficult choice.
The idea of games/communities like MFS and VATSIM providing some sense of real ATC is much less absurd.
It wasn't long back before they fired a bunch of ATC staff and in the very same week saw multiple fatal aircraft crashes.
Forgive me for thinking this administration are only capable of making absurd decisions, particularly in a story like this.
FPS games do teach some skills, how relevant they are for real combat is hard to say, but there is definitely some overlap when it comes to decision making. Just like in real combat, you must be decisive and proactive to win.
On a more practical level, the ideas of cover, sight lines and using corners to your advantage in CQB are all the same.
I was curious about your point and it turns out that the gamer beat the F1 driver but they were both in a VUHL 05 which is a road-legal supercar. It seems like they were on a mountain road track too.
You know, the former involves physical steering wheels, shifters, pedals, realistic vehicle models, etc.
Meanwhile the latter involves pressing a single button to reload a fire arm and clicking a mouse button to fire.
You have to be pretty dense to think that aiming with a mouse has any resemblance to aiming with sights or a scope or even just pulling the trigger. You know, real guns have recoil.
Meanwhile most high end steering wheels have force feedback that can "fight back".
I'm not saying it made me a well-versed pilot, but simulating these situations can do a lot to get one going.
[0] https://vatsim.net/
I would, literally, fly my training flights a few times using full VATSIM and then show up IRL to do the same thing. It made a massive difference.
My instructor even said it makes his job so much easier. He had to do nothing with me.
I was able to cut my rental time over half. It paid for itself a dozen times over. Like literally it saved me $5k or so.
I recently gifted my yoke and controls to my GF who is getting her commerical cert. She is so excited. She is already flying her training flights using it. It's so helpful.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1vlnlq9/faa_hires...
Mmm. Unless your /etc/hosts is wide open or your shell is running as root, you got something like
because the way to do what you intended is to sudo 'tee' or something similar in function. AFAIK, you can't 'sudo' shell redirection.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Traffic_Controller_(series...
Would love to be educated here, but it seems like there are just not that many moving pieces per airport (<10,000) and all of them are tagged with transponders, etc. And a human in the loop with respect to coordination might be the biggest source of risk.
This all seems like queuing theory and collision avoidance, which are very well done by computers.
This one is long; I suggest reading the first chapter, then skipping to chapter 7 for the important parts of the story.
https://medium.com/@admiralcloudberg/reaping-the-whirlwind-i...
Not that it can ever be fully automated but it seems like much easier problem to solve.
Sometimes the transponders will be faulty, sometimes you have to direct a broken aircraft safely to the ground with no transponder available.
And sometimes you are doing ATC for a zone that does not, in fact, require transponders (those are required only for the strictest controlled zones, not in general)
My impression is that it's at least partially down to how brittle a fully automated system could be. You want as much of a "manual" backup as possible, and that only be achieved by doing things manually all the time to keep up practice. With the current system, even with enormous degradation (massive power outages, cyberattack, software flaw, etc.) it's possible to get planes out of the sky without much risk. If a fully automated system fails, it's an enormous disaster.
The other problem is that the "worse is better" arrangement where ~everything is done via voice over radio makes automation difficult. Voice is simple, universal, and enormously flexible, but hard for computers to handle systematically. Some two-way protocol and associated pilot UI would be useful... but then you have to decide on that protocol and UI, every manufacturer has to implement it, every airline has to buy it, and every pilot has to be trained. Unless it's very, very clear what the optimal solution is and that the benefit outweighs the cost, that sort of coordination is difficult.
(And remember, the ultimate result of such a change would be a rigid system that is difficult to change, more fragile, and does not save much money relative to the total cost of the airline industry.)
It did not end well.
It's a very hairy problem, and mistakes are very costly.
On another note: Those video gamers are gonna have some pretty clunky video experiences.
It was a problem at very rural airports, and now some people man those remotely.
It's Armageddon! :-)
> Duffy added that many current trainees started out as gamers. Only about 25% of controllers hold a traditional college degree, while former controllers note that gaming requires many of the same skills that air traffic controllers use on the job, such as thinking quickly, staying focused and managing multiple sources of information as they guide more than 80,000 flights to their destinations daily.
There is also a rigorous application process to get into the training program that only 10% of applicants pass:
> Among the criteria to become a controller are to hold U.S. citizenship, be under the age of 31 and pass the FAA air traffic pre-employment tests.
> Aspiring controllers must also pass an exam that the FAA says predicts candidates' "aptitude to be an air traffic controller." Within a week, they are notified if they have passed.
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
So if gamers on average tend to be younger, and do better on the aptitude test than the general population, I think it makes sense to target them with recruitment campaigns to attempt to increase the number of qualified applicants coming into the funnel. Presumably non-gamers are also still welcome to apply.
And if it doesn’t work out and gamers don’t end up getting accepted at a higher rate than anyone else, then it’s no great loss, either.
The drone pilot is not on the front lines but they were never killing people to protect the country (as we haven’t had to defend the homeland for over half a century).
Most people join the modern day military so they can have a chance to kill people, not because the country is under any real threat. It is a jobs program.
What is left in embarrassment hat makes facing your family difficult, when your family is programmed to believe you’re saving them somehow?
Strong disagree.
Jobs training, money for college. Exciting way to spend your 20's (99% of the military does not directly kill anyone). Patriotism, family tradition.
I guess MIT didn't work out...
Really, there are people that play ATC games for fun.
https://store.steampowered.com/search?term=%22air+traffic%22...
https://bigfatsimulations.com/game/approachcontrolremastered
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unmatched-air-traffic-control/...
> Historically, fewer than 10% of applicants met the FAA's requirements to work as an air traffic controller and gain admission to the agency's training program.
It sounds like they are weeded out before even being accepted.
The requirements themselves are at https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
The medical requirements are furthermore: (and there's a long list on the site for the specifics for each standard)... for example, the first one under eye: ...It goes on for the training requirements...
And the specifics for that can be found at https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FAA_Order_JO... with is a 285 page pdf.I am not a fan of the Trump admin but Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, is one of the few people in it that I think steers clear of politics and prioritizes doing a good job. A horrible air traffic disaster that occurred a couple of weeks into the new administration threw him into the spotlight while he was still getting settled in, and it seems like he took the lesson to heart.
I actually think gamers are a good population to recruit from because you do want people that internalize cognitive abstractions, maintain focus for long periods, juggle competing priorities etc. But one can also imagine some less attractive gamer stereotypes like poor emotional containment or cognitive saturation leading to a rage quit. It will be interesting to see what the attrition rate will be like for this cohort vs others.
https://youtube.com/shorts/OT7yVBF1EOQ?si=TkLfjrvpsdIyBm7X