Over the past years air traffic controllers have had more and more issues but at the same time the Job itself has become stressful.
Why not make the position a Military one. . where you must a an Air Force officer to hold ANY/ALL position(s) in the Control tower. This would apply to ground control and aircraft movements as well.
Would this not save loads of money and strengthen our nations security to a point. Assuming they would make the transmissions digital.
Exactly how do you suppose having military officers as ATC would solve any problems? Any “issue” you can think of is common to all humans, even Air Force officers. Fatigue, mental instability, operational errors…all these can happen to any controller, military or civilian. There is absolutely no benefit to security and CERTAINLY no monetary benefit to your plan.
Do you have any idea how many controllers there are in the U.S.? Approx. 27,000! That’s a lot of new Air Force officers. Especially when you consider that there are currently about 67,000 officers in the entire Air Force. Not to mention that officers aren’t exactly inexpensive. And while the military has fine controllers, I’m pretty sure VERY few of them have ever handled the number of aircraft that New York, Boston, Atlanta, et.al. deal with every day.
Security?!? What’s a controller going to do? Scream “I am an officer in the U.S. Air Force! You better not try anything funny!” at a terrorist over the radio?
Most air traffic controllers in the Air Force are enlisted, not officers.
There’s a large, bad percentage of American liberals who want the military spending to be cut. Guess who would go first if the controllers were Air Force.
The job of the military is to defend the nation, not control airplanes.
The FAA has millions invested and a great program to train civilian controllers to deal with the antiquated infrastructure and stress that our national atc system is under. The Air Force has none of that.
Um. No. You REALLY don’t want that. The Air Force has officers who have some air traffic training and wear the ATC career field badges (13Ms) but to be very clear they are not Air Traffic Controllers. They are Air Field Operations Officers. Their experience in actually separating airplanes is very limited indeed. As far as the Air Force is concerned, Air Traffic Controllers are NCOs and junior enlisted men. 13Ms are supposed to maintain currency in at least one operational position. It doesn’t have to be the most complex position and it doesn’t have to be during any actual traffic. So when it occurs it will likely be under at least one, if not both, of those conditions, that is to say in the least complex position and/or with little to non-existent traffic.
You clearly don’t understand either military pay or the AT pay systems. You aren’t going to save any money under such a scheme. Initially, a very big and qualified maybe. But after the first two years? Not a chance. Even on top of not actually saving any money, how exactly does one go about accomplishing such a thing? Are you going to take the easy route and just commission every controller in the FAA, DOD and contract facilities? You can’t do that for a number of reasons, to include maximum age, minimum education, health or other basic commissioning requirements. You would automatically make a significant portion of the controller population ineligible because they are older than 35 or don’t have at least a bachelor’s degree. The Air Force Class 3 Flight Physical is far more stringent than the FAA Class 2 Airmen’s medical. Let’s not even think about FAA or contract controllers being required to pass the AF Physical Fitness Assessment. It isn’t difficult so long as you are prepared for it but even active duty folks fail it with some regularity.
And no, they wouldn’t have any greater authority because of their status as officers.
I work on both sides of the fence. My full time job is an FAA 2152. On weekends I’m a 1C1. I know alot of other people position and I’m fairly sure that the vast majority of them will agree. This is a BAD idea that doesn’t solve anything and only creates additional problems and that is the only reason it would ever potentially gain any traction.