> The ad also highlights the salary on offer to controllers, saying it is $155,000 (£115,000) after three years of work.
Unless the US government shuts down again, at which point you stop being paid, you are required to keep working, you have no right to strike[0], and the competences you've built across this job are largely hard to directly make use of elsewhere so the incentive to job-hop is low.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...
If you're a government, you can; it's called a draft. The US seems to be preparing for it.
Some are clear rejects, some are good for getting up early and walking perimeters, others would suit the motor pool. An occasional few will gel for traffic control, signal intell, etc.
The trick then, for a state, is to incentivize with carrots, sticks, patriotic abstractions like duty, etc. the ones they want for the jobs they have.
Now its time for levelling up training.
Jump to minute 18 for a discussion on floppy disks or, appropriately, to minute 25 for an "honest recruitment ad".
My main source is https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa..., and I'm assuming in particular that the screenshot of the letter in footnote 1 is genuine. In the section ended by footnote 16, there is a claim than in 2014 the FAA sent out just short of 3k job offer letters whereas in 2019 that had dropped to below 1k.
That sounds like cutting off your own recruitment pipeline.
It's also evidence that the FAA did not drop the standards for qualification and certification, which is reassuring.
If that game existed, I would try it.
Does it?
As a pilot, you connect using either Microsoft Flight Simulator or X-Plane. Your flight simulator will include graphics (hopefully up-to-date) for your chosen area. Pick a starting airport, spawn at a ramp location (a gate, cargo area, etc.), connect to the network, file a flight plan (or go VFR), call up (or announce intentions), and go.
As a controller, VATSIM organizes ATC by region of the world, then in to 6-8 divisions within the region, then in to individual ARTCCs, ACCs, or FIRs[2]. You'll typically register with a division, then make your home in a particular ARTCC/FIR. For example, I was registered with VATUSA and made my home in the Indianapolis ARTCC.
There is software[1] for both pilots (connecting your flight sim to the network) and controllers (providing a radar display). Each "radio frequency" has an associated text chat and voice chat for communication. ATC are trained to support both text and voice simultaneously, following pilot's preference.
For controllers, your chosen ARTCC/ACC/FIR handles your training. They provide the "sectorfiles" that give you a graphical view of your airspace and your airports. (Think of it like a modern version of an old-style vector display.) They also help you through training, both book learning and sim training. You start controlling things on the ground, and work your way up to controlling things in the air.
[0]: https://vatsim.net/
[1]: https://vatsim.net/docs/policy/approved-software
[2]: Air Route Traffic Information Center / Area Control Center / Flight Information Region. Different countries use different terms, but mean the same thing: It's a large three-dimensional volume of airspace.
I've spent many hours in VATSIM and loved it, so don't be discouraged from diving in, but as a warning: I encountered a pervasive issue with pretentiousness across the VATSIM community, with some divisions setting largely arbitrary rules and procedures which don't exist in real world ATC.
Anti-griefing works by keeping the barriers to entry very high, so chances are you won't try VATSIM, even though MSFS is technically available on Steam.
I made a patch that made it a multiplayer networked game where each player controlled the space of one airport. When I was doing that I remember being surprised how the entire game was written as a parser in lex (or maybe yacc? not sure anymore) not straight C.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348390/I_am_an_Air_Traff...
(only on Switch) https://www.sonicpowered.co.jp/bokukan/nsw/rjgg_allstars/
THEME TRAFFIC CONTROLLER
> "You've been training for this," the ad says.
Wow looks like Microsoft were not kidding with their 'this is also an xbox' ad campaign. Also really console gamers is who you target for this role? USG is becoming a joke
Here's a classic example of a controller noticing a pilot is hypoxic, indirectly testing his competency and ability, and likely being careful with how he routed traffic around the unreliable pilot until he got better. This alone seems pretty hard to imagine automated with current technology without some overkill prone-to-failure solution.
I mean, I've seen quite a few cases where inordinate amounts of effort are expended to create automation to fit the needs of humans and legacy human-oriented interfaces, whereas redesigning the entire flow for the capabilities of modern tech can be significantly cheaper and more reliable.
I'm sure that there are a million various complications in this area that I have no idea of, but still would hope that the people in charge are looking to redesign the whole thing rather than just each piece individually.
I’d image air control for a whole airport is even more complex than that, you can take any conclusion you’d like.
What you can probably do is create software which observes traffic and simulates it into the future and notifies the human ATCs about risks. It might even be a good idea to try and digitize it for the ATCs so they talk less and press buttons more (which will feed into the simulation) and use TTS for the legacy transmissions to pilots that don't have an updated interface. Given the regulation on that industry it seems unlikely anyone competent enough to do it will have an interest to even try.
Even then you'll probably run into the long-tail distribution issues, similar to self-driving cars. 99.9% of all situations are pretty standard, but once in a while something so abstruse happens that it's not pre-programmed and requires some creativity to solve.
> What you can probably do is create software which observes traffic and simulates it into the future and notifies the human ATCs about risks.
Fully agree. Some of the recent close calls really were "obvious" much earlier, meaning they were not caused by late course changes.
Out of curiosity, about a year ago I queried a few models about how to fly a particular instrument approach. It was an ILS approach using a DME arc transition. Other the basic concept of lateral and vertical guidance, most of the models got literally everything wrong. Wrong headings, wrong NAVAID frequencies. Wrong procedures. Maybe they’re better now in this domain, but they were confident in their claims of the ability to read an approach plate. But it was terrible.
I now know 100% that you are not a pilot. No thanks! 100% no thanks.
Clippy: "Cessna 123, cleared for takeoff runway two-seven."
Cessna 123: "Cleared for takeoff runway two-seven, Cessna 123."
[seconds later]
Clippy: "Piper 456, cleared for landing runway niner. Where do you want to go today?"