If ATCs strike right now, what could they even do? They can’t possibly bring on enough scabs to do the job. If they tried, it’d be a disaster and ensure US air travel dies.
Hey, Air Traffic Controllers! You have immense power right now!
Not really, no. Just ask those who got fired by Reagan.
That didn’t work out as well as Reagan thought it would. And has been fucking up our air travel situation for the last 40 years. To do it again would literally kill air travel in the country for the next 30 years. People would literally stop flying.
Edit: to be clear, I’m not saying this isn’t going to happen. Trump is a fucking moron who thinks of himself as the second coming of Reagan. So he will 100% happily fire all of the traffic controllers we have if they even breathe the word “strike”. I’m just outlining what a god-awful fucked up future we have in store for us.
To do it again would literally kill air travel in the country for the next 30 years. People would literally stop flying.
From a climate perspective, that would be fantastic.
Given everything you know about America, do you really think it would be fantastic for the climate?
Because personally, I’m pretty sure people would just end up driving instead of flying, which is generally worse for the environment. Rich people would still be flying in private jets. We’d just see less commercial flights (and nearly zero general aviation), which would largely be replaced by people taking long road trips
It may still have a net positive on emissions if only barely, a flight to Disneyworld gets canceled and not replaced is generally good, same thing with non essential conferences and conventions. But it could also respin up road trip culture, IE packing into and going to Carlsbad Caverns instead of flying out to the Florida.
If it were replaced with massive investment into public transport and new dedicated high speed rail between US cities, it’d be a huge net positive.
A man can dream, anyway.
I say do it! Air travel is a huge waste and harmful to the environment. Maybe this will finally lead to better trains!
Air travel is worse than trains, better than driving. Knowing America, people would only end up driving more. I personally don’t think that’s a good thing
People fly because it’s the fastest means of travel. The fastest trains will never be as fast as flying but people are also never going to be able to drive as fast as high speed rail.
You’d need to build high speed rail first
Won’t happen until there’s demand which won’t exist so long as flying is so accessible.
Which caused domino effects that are still being felt. They can’t do that again. There simply isn’t anybody they can hire.
I keep hearing/seeing people say “they can’t do that…” Then they do it with no repercussions.
It has nothing to do with anyone imposing consequences. There simply is no way to hire people for this job to replace what’s already there. They can’t even backfill turnover from retiring ATCs. Reality takes care of this on its own.
I’d be willing to bet on trump speculating in the next few days that we should get AI to do their jobs.
This already happened. Back in February, Musk/SpaceX got the contact to “modernize” ATC.
Pretty sure you’re referring to the Verizon contract to upgrade ATC communications backbone potentially being handed over to SpaceX
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It has not happened yet, and definitely did not happen in February as you stated
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The reported deadline for switching the contract was in March. The fact we haven’t received any news about it likely means the efforts to replace Verizon with SpaceX failed
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It’s specifically in regards to communication between towers/approach/center and their associated data sources. It doesn’t actually affect the day-to-day operations of ATC. “Modernize” is just a political buzzword being thrown out by politicians here. When ATC talks about the need to modernize, they’re referring to the technologies used. Two separate things being conflated by politicians looking for a cheap win
Ah, gotcha. Appreciate the clarifications!
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It’s not a strike when they aren’t getting paid for labor hours
The federal government could easily say to the strikers: Get back to work now, or you go to jail
It is illegal for ATC to go on strike, and the punishment can include jail time. Likely most would capitulate
OK, they go to jail.
If they hold out, the government really has nothing they can do.
Solidarity. Solidarity. Solidarity.
In theory, that’s true. In practice, most people aren’t willing to risk jail time
Consider what happened with controllers under Reagan. Nearly all went on strike. Of those that went on strike, there were 2 groups: Those that crossed the line and went back to work when ordered, and those that held the line in solidarity
Those that crossed the line were allowed to keep their jobs. Those that didn’t were immediately fired and barred from ever working for the federal government again. That effectively meant their career was over. They could never work as an air traffic controller again. Jail is an even bigger threat than that
It’s more or less a literal prisoner dilemma, except we have a historical precedent for it. I think it’s incredibly shitty, but realistically I don’t see it working
This isn’t the same situation. ATCs just can’t be replaced this time. Reagan showed why that’s an incredibly bad idea, and the repercussions of doing it again would destroy the civil air transport system.
So yes, they can arrest them if they like or bar them from becoming ATCs again. The situation remains that air travel won’t exist anymore.
no…facepalm
Really? You think this is an unprecedented situation in labor history?
alright we will do it your way, tell the ATC workers to stand their ground and goto jail. we will see how many stand in “solidarity”
Imo it will happen if things drag on.
Just wait till holiday season!
But the upshot is that commercial airlines heavily fund Republicans. So if they start having issues, they’ll start letting their Republican folks know about it.
No. They’ll just get a bailout and we’ll go even further into debt.
My guess is the holidy season is when things start to ignite. That’s when stress on the system hits the maximum, and when people start to realize that people who can barely afford food and shelter can’t afford to do anything for the holidays. It will be hard to hide the recession at that point.
No way am I flying in US airspace. This is just the latest in a series of major issues.
The primary result of this is primarily delayed or cancelled flights. Safety hasn’t been significantly affected, although controllers are human and susceptible to human factors such as stress or fatigue that they may feel more pressure to work through than normal
America’s doing real great right now.
No… no we are not.
Pretty sure the italics was the equivalent of /s.
Can you order them back to work and then not pay them?
We even have a word for this: slavery.
Yes, although ATC controllers have a lot of tools to not be working traffic
If a controller states they’re too fatigued to work traffic, they must be given other duties, if available. They’re given heavy legal protections to be able to say: I don’t feel safe working traffic today. Bit of a counter balance to the fact they’re basically slaves in regards to other worker protections
Here we go. Now shit is getting real for the white collar people.
Those Epstein files must be really bad.
Anyone that says fire striking ATC’s like Reagan did in the 80s. The 90s was when cheap domestic and international flights really took off along with businesses going international going full bore. Compared to the 80s, the economy is far more dependent on air travel and that disruption to shipping activity is what would end the shutdown.
A lot more ATCs are needed today compared to the 80s and the military shifted to less in volume but more expensive (supposedly higher quality that makes up the difference in quantity) military. Military ATCs don’t have the numbers to replace regular ATCs
Could they even shift over the ATC from the military? I feel like the air base near me is even more active then ever these days.
They could as long as the US doesn’t get into a very major war that requires a huge amount of logistics for overseas equipment and personnel. Can’t do it for long because of how many military bases are overseas. Maybe you’re seeing traffic related to Venezuela and the hurricane. Regardless it’s just not enough people. The military doesn’t staff as much as they used to, don’t operate as much aircraft like they used too (though it’s all much more expensive even inflation adjusted).
I can see them shifting military ATC’s to airports and having airports restrict flights down a lot to favor flights carrying commercial cargo. If you’re flying somewhere and there’s enough cargo space expected for FedEx, USPS, UPS to pay to jam some cargo in there, good. If not, shit out of luck. FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, etc - their planes probably get scheduled with priority
how billionaires and millionaires travel if all airport shut down?
Mad Max-esque convoys.
We’re proceding very quickly to the find out phase. Republicans can stop this any day by changing senate rules or even forcing chuck schumer to speak for 48 hours instead of allowing a silent fillibuster. Schumer wouldn’t last very long on a podium.
My guess is they don’t want a real fillibuster because people would just read the republican budget out loud.
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This happens all the time.
