I’ll scapegoat a single politician. Ronald Reagan - he owns 100% of the responsibility for the current state of things when he refused to negotiate better working conditions in 1981. The entire US is still feeling the aftermath.

This is not true. Aviation in the US has problems because of the tendency for safety regulators to do CYA when making decisions instead of adopting new technology.

Leaded gasoline? Illegal to use in the US - unless you're putting it into an old plane, where it's not likely legal to put unleaded in.

ATC? Done with old radar screens and physical cards.

Ground Control? Someone has to be standing in the tower with a pair of binoculars.

The US has an extremely safe aviation system, but the price for that safety has been technological stagnation. If I spend $70k on a small airplane, the best that'll get me is a 1975 Piper with a lawnmower engine and analog gauges. Replacing those with digital instruments will run ~$20k - the instruments themselves are only $7k, but the regulatory burden is quite pricey.

Reagan didn't do the US any favors when he treated ATC as disposable, but the truth is that the volume of flights has increased enormously and the job of ATC has gotten much harder while at the same time controller staffing has been screwed by budget fights in Congress and a couple years of one very misguided DEI policy.

The US needs to automate more of ATC. Human beings should be dedicated to emergencies, not issuing the exact same clearance 300 times a day.

It is absolutely true. I stated that Reagan is the reason that ATC are overworked and underpaid.

You proceeded to list a bunch of things that have absolutely nothing to do with ATC being overworked and underpaid.

"Automating more of ATC" would change absolutely nothing about the fact they're overworked and underpaid, there would just be fewer controllers with the same workload because they lost all ability to collectively bargain with Reagan.

Name an industry that has automated, and the end result was they kept the same number of employees, but paid them more and reduced their hours. Oh, and it can't be a unionized industry. I'll wait patiently wait for that list.

> Name an industry that has automated, and the end result was they kept the same number of employees, but paid them more and reduced their hours. Oh, and it can't be a unionized industry. I'll wait patiently wait for that list.

I'm not providing that list because it's stupid. ATC is not a jobs program; it's a profession that exists to solve a problem. The goal is not to pay ATC more, the goal is to safely manage air traffic at a reasonable price.

There is a ton of low hanging fruit because ATC is done today via phone calls and analog radio despite digital radar and mandatory transponders. It would substantially reduce controller workload, because important yet brainless tasks like "don't issue a clearance to cross a runway with landing traffic" are trivial for a computer but require the same amount of synchronous focus for a human as managing an emergency landing.

Clearances to cross a runway are given by someone with a radio and a pair of binoculars right now, which is how this was possible. With another few controllers it would have been less likely.

With a few traffic lights and computers controlling them? This wouldn't be possible at all, because the controller could focus on the emergency and the rest of the traffic could just run as normal.

The number of flights in the US is enormous and still growing. ATC, as a job, really sucks because you have to spend years in school and then commit to a career where the government can just decide where you're going to live on a whim (no, a union would not fix this, because everywhere needs ATC but not everyone wants to live everywhere). You have criminal liability if you make a mistake and while you can make six figures, it's very hard to make as much as you would at a similarly stressful and intellectual job because anything in the private sector that's this critical just gets automated ASAP.

I have a pilot's license. I can tell you with certainty that even when ATC is staffed for conditions they still make mistakes fairly often. That's just the nature of the problem no matter how much you pay them or how many controllers you hire. When you're landing a 200mph jetliner every 60 seconds there is too much room for error in a human brain.

I didn’t see anyone scapegoating him for anything other than engaging in direct personal attribution which is counter to aviation safety culture, basic leadership principles, and minimum decorum standards ¯\_(ツ)_/¯