> Duffy has said that air traffic controllers who abuse their sick time during the shutdown could be fired.
Good luck firing any controller who goes to their doctor and explains what not earning an income is doing to their mental health, or what working DoorDash on their days off is doing to their fatigue levels.
ATC controllers have the power. The system is already approaching failure; excess/pulled forward retirements or quits would only hasten this, based on how long it takes to put new hires through the training pipeline. This assumes the US populace cares when the commercial air traffic system comes to a halt when domestic airspace can no longer safely be managed, and booking a commercial flight becomes Russian roulette.
> The shutdown is having real consequences, as some students at the controller academy have already decided to abandon the profession because they don’t want to work in a job they won’t be paid for, Duffy said. That will only make it harder for the FAA to hire enough controllers to eliminate the shortage, since training takes years. He said that the government is only a week or two away from running out of money to pay students at the academy.
It is highly likely something has to break before anyone cares enough to fix this. It's unfortunate.
(ATC system is short ~3k controllers of target staffing levels, as of this comment, and 56 is mandatory retirement age)
Antiquated and insufficient equipments have certainly caused serious accidents in the past. So better equipment is always welcome. But the current bottleneck seems to be the humans who are supposed to use those equipment to make complex decisions. They're few in number, overworked and underpaid. I don't think adding any amount of additional equipment is going to resolve the situation without resolving the HR problem first. I don't believe that the current state of the art technology is advanced enough to replace them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state