The FAA staffing problem that NO ONE is talking about

This isn’t about lack of traffic. It’s about social distancing.

We are on alternative schedules, in part due to lack of traffic, but the main reason is social distancing.

We're told the exact opposite, staffing is reflected by traffic. And that wasn't my question, at what percentage of traffic are you comfortable certifying a trainee and at what percentage is it pointless to train.
 
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We're told the exact opposite, staffing is reflected by traffic. And that wasn't my question, at what percentage of traffic are you comfortable certifying a trainee and at what percentage is it pointless to train.
I think that is hugely dependent on the facility, there’s no one standard that can be applied. What If you work at like c90, and you have never run trips Bc the traffic is down, but they run trips as a normal core operation? I don’t think you can be certified at a place like that unless you done all the core ops on real, live traffic. But at slower places, where it is more about volume than complexity, maybe you have to certify people who can do the basic core operations and watch them carefully after, keeping it split out as traffic builds until they can adjust.

That’s a call that is hopefully left up to facilities. It won’t be uniform it won’t always be fair, but I feel like that’s better than a one size fits none national standard.
 
Whats your point? Even with a flu vaccine there are still as many as 50 million infections a year in the USA. Do you honestly think with 50 million COVID cases we'd be in the same number of deaths as the flu?
Do you think that the amount of deaths marked as COVID are directly related to COVID, because if your not a sheep and smart you’ll understand even tho many joke “ shark bite but COVID death” they are being coded differently than other diseases. So you tell me how they get coded, genius? Do you know people directly in the medical field filling out paperwork on how a patient died? Or do you know a virologist working sleepless nights adapting to what the virus is doing? Do you know exactly how many flu deaths are directly due to the flu vs someone in bad health if not sit the fuck down and don’t say some ignorant shit.

I think that is hugely dependent on the facility, there’s no one standard that can be applied. What If you work at like c90, and you have never run trips Bc the traffic is down, but they run trips as a normal core operation? I don’t think you can be certified at a place like that unless you done all the core ops on real, live traffic. But at slower places, where it is more about volume than complexity, maybe you have to certify people who can do the basic core operations and watch them carefully after, keeping it split out as traffic builds until they can adjust.

That’s a call that is hopefully left up to facilities. It won’t be uniform it won’t always be fair, but I feel like that’s better than a one size fits none national standard.
C90 runs trips? Idk if you have to go to a turn point on visuals is that real trips or are you just a pawn in the system??
 
Uhh what?

I think what Bandit117 means is, some places are difficult because they're complex (C90, N90, etc) and some places, particularly the smaller facilities, are pretty straightforward and only become difficult due to volume. It's hard to simulate complexity if the normal traffic volume isn't there and it doesn't make sense to certify someone to work complex stuff if they haven't run it live. Makes sense to me.
 
Do you think that the amount of deaths marked as COVID are directly related to COVID, because if your not a sheep and smart you’ll understand even tho many joke “ shark bite but COVID death” they are being coded differently than other diseases. So you tell me how they get coded, genius? Do you know people directly in the medical field filling out paperwork on how a patient died? Or do you know a virologist working sleepless nights adapting to what the virus is doing? Do you know exactly how many flu deaths are directly due to the flu vs someone in bad health if not sit the fuck down and don’t say some ignorant shit.

I really have no idea what you're trying to say here dude

I thought this article someone posted here the other day had a really good way of quantifying actual coronavirus deaths though

 
Do you think that the amount of deaths marked as COVID are directly related to COVID, because if your not a sheep and smart you’ll understand even tho many joke “ shark bite but COVID death” they are being coded differently than other diseases. So you tell me how they get coded, genius? Do you know people directly in the medical field filling out paperwork on how a patient died? Or do you know a virologist working sleepless nights adapting to what the virus is doing? Do you know exactly how many flu deaths are directly due to the flu vs someone in bad health if not sit the fuck down and don’t say some ignorant shit.
Well I guess you’re the fucking expert then so you should explain to us how it works?

If someone with terminal cancer dies from a car accident do you say they died from cancer because they were dead anyway?

If someone with comorbidities gets corona and dies from their lungs filling with fluid did they die from heart disease or COVID?

You probably aren’t stupid. So why don’t you look at the math. It’s really easy to predict how many people will die in a month based on past statistics. How many more people are dying in the USA since this all began? Are they all attributed to COVID? We need your help.
 
Uhh what?
So some places run simultaneous parallel approaches to three runways. C90 is one of them. I think you could make a good case that if that’s a normal operation at a facility, you can’t certify someone unless they can show they can do it, for example.
 
Uhh what?
Yes. At a level 6 up/down you’re not going to see the complexity like a place like NCT or N90. If you know the rules and can run a legal approach, you understand that making the slow guy number 1 usually doesn’t work, that’s going to be good enough. Maybe you don’t ever get to the “busy” of 6-8 planes, maybe you only see 2-4. If all you do is run to and from the main airport with a satellite or 2 that’s good Enough.

At a busier, more complex place where they run multiple parallel dependent and independent approaches, but haven’t really been doing so since traffic died, that would be an example of something that you’d have to demonstrate you can do on live traffic.
 
Yes. At a level 6 up/down you’re not going to see the complexity like a place like NCT or N90. If you know the rules and can run a legal approach, you understand that making the slow guy number 1 usually doesn’t work, that’s going to be good enough. Maybe you don’t ever get to the “busy” of 6-8 planes, maybe you only see 2-4. If all you do is run to and from the main airport with a satellite or 2 that’s good Enough.

At a busier, more complex place where they run multiple parallel dependent and independent approaches, but haven’t really been doing so since traffic died, that would be an example of something that you’d have to demonstrate you can do on live traffic.

I’ll give a real world example for what you’re saying. When I was in the AF there was a 6 month period where F-22’s were grounded. I was at a base that only had F-22’s. We certified a few people during that 6 month period. When the 22’s started flying again, guess who sucked?
 
Yes. At a level 6 up/down you’re not going to see the complexity like a place like NCT or N90. If you know the rules and can run a legal approach, you understand that making the slow guy number 1 usually doesn’t work, that’s going to be good enough. Maybe you don’t ever get to the “busy” of 6-8 planes, maybe you only see 2-4. If all you do is run to and from the main airport with a satellite or 2 that’s good Enough.

At a busier, more complex place where they run multiple parallel dependent and independent approaches, but haven’t really been doing so since traffic died, that would be an example of something that you’d have to demonstrate you can do on live traffic.
I'd never call NCT complex. It's completely structured airspace that works high volume. They have an absolutely massive SOP that dictates how arrivals come into every single airport they serve. It's a perfect example of a facility that isn't complex but works high volume. I can't speak to N90 as I don't have experience there
 
I'd never call NCT complex. It's completely structured airspace that works high volume. They have an absolutely massive SOP that dictates how arrivals come into every single airport they serve. It's a perfect example of a facility that isn't complex but works high volume. I can't speak to N90 as I don't have experience there

I'd call N90 the biggest scam in ATC by far. They do way less work (that's much more structured) than most of the big facilities who surround them, for way more money. Yes they get the benefit of all the traffic count they steal from adjacent facilities who clean up all their messes or spoon feed them traffic on a silver platter after N90 shuts them off on a whim, but they don't actually do the work to space the traffic (remember when the Shamrock wouldn't fly into a Thunderstorm? And the guy lost his shit probably wanted to shut down all traffic and put 10 facilities in the hold...because... N90 you do what i say!). Most people who have been around a little bit and to multiple big facilities know this is the case but saying so comes at a cost.
 
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They do way less work (that's much more structured) than most of the big facilities who surround them, for way more money.
I can confirm that absolutely nothing in the N90 area is structured. If anything, it's (sometimes poorly) controlled chaos because of the legacy of a bunch of old cranky fucks who will retire before they ever allow any sort of change to their airspace because god forbid they don't want to train on any new procedures lol.

I did an FDT into LAX 2 years ago and was fucking astonished at how different their procedures are. RNAV everything. Center vectors us off course by 5 degrees for like 10 miles to gain sep behind the B777 we were following and then we were cleared back on course and were RNAV literally all the way to the numbers. No vectors from approach, nothing. It was night and day compared to N90.

Case in point is Sham-wow flying for 50 miles on runway heading because nothing is RNAV.
 
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