N90 has had years to fix the problem of training. Everything the FAA could do was done. Special bids, extra training pay. checkout bonuses to trainers, move money to get CPCs elsewhere to come, NYC only bids.
What did that amount to? N90 controllers calling it blood money when outsiders came. I heard a rumor that more is coming. One extreme was to kill N90 off entirely and give the airspace to others. PHL is about to take more I hope.
The “blood money” refers to something back in the early 2000’s or 90’s (well before my time anyway) where people were given $100k to come here. I guess the people here were pissed they were here already and not given anything. Or at least that’s my understanding, as I said it was long ago.
The other things you mention, DID work, or weren’t given enough time to work, or were implemented in such terrible ways they backfired. For example, the special bids and ots hires to N90 starting in 2017/18 if I recall correctly. We still don’t know if that would work, because
A) they sent over 100 trainees in less than a year.
B) they did this in conjunction with a new FAA mandated training program which severely limited how many positions you could be training on at once, and forbid training in a position if it was combined with a position you weren’t training in, and instead of doing all the labs before hitting the floor, broke up the lab to individual positions as you progressed. But you had to wait to have a full class before you could actually start the next lab, meaning if you got certified in your first 2 positions fast, you have to wait for the other 3 people to catch up. This caused a MASSIVE backlog. This was the main reason that there were people who got here 3 years ago haven’t even gone to class/lab yet. They got rid of it after a few months when it became obvious it was as bad an idea as we told them it would be, but the damage was done.
Then throw in covid, and well, at least in my area 3/4’s of all those OTS hires from 2017/18 still haven’t gone to class. And now they all got moved to different areas to start all over again because they weren’t given the option to go to PHL. And all this happened on top of the THIRTY TWO withdrawals when NCEPT got announced and left a gap where we had no trainees left. I got here in 2014 and was dead last in seniority for CPC’s in my area until this year.
But people are successful here. In my area alone we’ve certified 5 people just this year between April and now after training was allowed again (all CPC-IT, 2 from level 5 up/downs, level 7 up/down, level 11 tower). Unfortunately 6 people have retired though lol. Which is the crux of it. We HAVE been certifying people, but more have been retiring.
Not even going to get into the terrible foundation the Academy training gives an OTS hire going to a level 12 Tracon. We shouldn’t have to be teaching you what the methods of radar identification are, that should be something you know coming here.