Demographically Correct Air Traffic Controllers

Graduates of accredited university ATC programs are too white, so now its take walk-ins off the street and seek diversity by asking questions about sports, but first give the correct answers to the questionaire to members of a Minority Organization for advancing FAA diversity in the workplace.

No questions deal with air speed, runway visual range, weather, traffic alerts or conflicts. Nothing reveals multi tasking skills or time and distance calculations performed mentally under stress.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/05/20/trouble-in-skies/

Quote: Fleastiff

Graduates of accredited university ATC programs are too white, so now its take walk-ins off the street and seek diversity by asking questions about sports, but first give the correct answers to the questionaire to members of a Minority Organization for advancing FAA diversity in the workplace.

No questions deal with air speed, runway visual range, weather, traffic alerts or conflicts. Nothing reveals multi tasking skills or time and distance calculations performed mentally under stress.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/05/20/trouble-in-skies/

Too much or America has said this is what they want. What more do you expect? I take crap for saying we are in a collapsing society, but just look around. Next they will be taking people who don't speak English well because to require it is somehow "discriminatory."

Quote: Fleastiff

Graduates of accredited university ATC programs are too white, so now its take walk-ins off the street and seek diversity by asking questions about sports, but first give the correct answers to the questionaire to members of a Minority Organization for advancing FAA diversity in the workplace.

No questions deal with air speed, runway visual range, weather, traffic alerts or conflicts. Nothing reveals multi tasking skills or time and distance calculations performed mentally under stress.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/05/20/trouble-in-skies/

How about the flip side,
"more than 60 Asian-American organizations who say Harvard University uses racial quotas and other illegal practices to discriminate against Asian-American applicants"
http://news.yahoo.com/claims-of-anti-asian-discrimination-at-harvard-reveal-a-long--complicated-fight-over-affirmative-action-231625860.html

Quote: Fleastiff

Graduates of accredited university ATC programs are too white, so now its take walk-ins off the street and seek diversity by asking questions about sports, but first give the correct answers to the questionaire to members of a Minority Organization for advancing FAA diversity in the workplace.

No questions deal with air speed, runway visual range, weather, traffic alerts or conflicts. Nothing reveals multi tasking skills or time and distance calculations performed mentally under stress.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2015/05/20/trouble-in-skies/

The CTI (College Training Initiative) program has, largely, been a failure (I'm talking kids coming in since 2003, a trickle at first, then a flood from about 2006). The kids are graduating having been spoon-fed rote information and worked (in all but one school) with simulators; they come into FAA classrooms with the info they need to get onto the floor initially (passing the abc training with all the confidence of their new degrees), and then they try to kill people working live traffic. It's been a nightmare of unlearning to train them. There are brain-skills in the job that are matched nowhere else, and all the book-learning in the world won't help the airplanes move in their heads, won't get them to see 3-dimensionally or field oriented, won't get the clock ticking in their head that each airplane carries, won't allow them to sort the many conversations and movements around them into priorities and bring order out of constant chaos.

You do not want to know how many near-fatal errors these kids have made while inflicting their overconfidence and garbage understanding on who they have to be and what they have to do, on an unsuspecting public. You would never get on another airplane. It has nothing to do with white vs. diversity; it has to do with the government and the schools blithely making promises they had no way of keeping. The students were little more than lab-rats in an experimental way of fast-tracking new hires with the upcoming wave of forced retirements (huge cluster of hires post-Reagan firing of strikers in 1981; longest career anyone is allowed is 35 years, from age 21 to 56, and many of us left after 25 years and/or age 50). Previous to that, there was a hiring freeze from 1991 until 2006, with a couple of small exceptions (one being the first of the CTI's, about 200/year), so there was an Enormous Gap to fill, and Congress panicked.

The error in developing the curriculum and the promises made to the students was in thinking that anybody who had the tuition money could be schooled into doing the job. (The CTI program was contractor-induced and Congressionally approved, pushed by political appointees, none of whom were controllers. Ever.)The schools themselves have a vested interest in high graduation rates, when instead they should be washing out at least 9 of 10 as unsuited to the job. When I came in, I was 1 in 1000 candidates that were allowed to go to the ATC school in Oklahoma City (not bragging, just facts, as the tests they gave then were pretty accurate as to discovering those elusive mental skills), and still 50% of us washed out at that level, before ever getting to a facility. Another 20% washed out in their first year.

The government has to start from somewhere on pre-qualifying hirees, so they use a 4 year college degree, or high school plus 3 years work experience as a floor. After that, the best success rate comes from people with ZERO knowledge walking in the door, who can be trained in a very specific and specialized job "the FAA way" without having a load of crap to un-learn, whether from previous military ATC experience or a CTI school. The one training asset they can walk in with is a pilot's license. Everything else has to do with how their brain functions and whether they have the personality traits necessary to persevere in the job. Personality-wise, you have to be extremely conscientious and detail-oriented, with a strong service dedication to the flying public, willing to work constant nights and weekends, able to abase yourself in learning with training periods of 1-5 years, sometimes several of those periods in your career, thrive in a constant stress-inducing fast-moving environment, and still get proper rest, give up any use of drugs or more than occasional alcohol for decades, and not burn out, but be able to be completely ego-driven in telling pilots where to go while being constantly monitored, recorded, and critiqued on literally every word that comes out of your mouth and every decision (hundreds every hour) you make.

It's not for everyone.

I haven't seen this new bio-metric test (or whatever they're calling it) they're using to select candidates, so I don't know what they're testing for. It could be another contractor folly. They could have gotten it right this time. I don't know, and only time will tell. But the schooling approach got it dead wrong. I feel terrible for the CTI kids who got sold a bill of goods, by the government, by their schools, by themselves. I really do; they've blown 50-100K on tuition to train for a job they're not fit to do, and their schooling has left them fit to do nothing else. But the emphasis has to be on people who can do the job, not people who paid to get the job, because "each controller holds more lives in our hands every day than a surgeon does in a lifetime". And that's what's important.

So recognized universities opted to become matchbook schools. Not the first time. Sure won't be the last time.

I agree with Mr. Lincoln's attitude: "Find out what brand General Grant drinks and send it to my other generals".

Quote: beachbumbabs

The CTI (College Training Initiative) program has, largely, been a failure (I'm talking kids coming in since 2003, a trickle at first, then a flood from about 2006). The kids are graduating having been spoon-fed rote information and worked (in all but one school) with simulators; they come into FAA classrooms with the info they need to get onto the floor initially (passing the abc training with all the confidence of their new degrees), and then they try to kill people working live traffic. It's been a nightmare of unlearning to train them. There are brain-skills in the job that are matched nowhere else, and all the book-learning in the world won't help the airplanes move in their heads, won't get them to see 3-dimensionally or field oriented, won't get the clock ticking in their head that each airplane carries, won't allow them to sort the many conversations and movements around them into priorities and bring order out of constant chaos.

Thanks for the inside view.

Seems an odd gig to get into. Not that I don't suspect they are shadowed or doubled upon being put in the hot seat, but it doesn't seem like something for which you can train for without just doing it. And just doing it means you are the only line keeping 300 people on this side of existence.

If I messed up once at the truck stop, someone got away with $100 in gas. Messed up in the casino, the corp. loses $1,000 to fines or AP. Mess up in the tower, a few hundred people die and tens of millions of $$$ are lost. Kind of funny, in a not-humorous-at-all way.

BBB having an opinion about this, imagine that?

As for the allegation, any such notions that these people at the top get about diversity ... I cringe when it involves ATCs etc. But I am resigned about it.

I recognize that we can't really be 100% a meritocracy, we never were to begin with, the anointed just have changed. But to me, things like ATCs need to be as close to meritocracy as you can get.

Quote: Face

Seems an odd gig to get into. Not that I don't suspect they are shadowed or doubled upon being put in the hot seat, but it doesn't seem like something for which you can train for without just doing it. And just doing it means you are the only line keeping 300 people on this side of existence.

I would have to figure they start you at very small airports then you get promoted to a larger one with the top-tier being the regional control centers (like the one Jane's father worked at in "Breaking Bad.") It is surprising to me that the military folks don't do as well. You would think that would be the most natural feeder group out there.

Quote: AZDuffman

It is surprising to me that the military folks don't do as well. You would think that would be the most natural feeder group out there.

That doesn't mean its a GOOD feeder group; some sign up for ATC to escape latrine duty. I already posted about
the air force guy who thought he was signing up for vehicular traffic control because everything in the air force has the word 'air' in front of it. Air desk, air mop, air bucket. etc.

Military ATC experience was good for ten points on your exam, but that doesn't mean you were good at your job.

FAA does rotate from remote sleep fields to larger and larger airports, with Oshkosh Wisconsin being a mandatory five years experience and volunteers only.