In the past I was expecting something clever when the title is us does x. Now it's just like oh what incompetent shit are they now trying.
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“Air traffic control, please respond. We aren’t able to see the landing strip and we might crash!”
“Sounds like a skill issue. Git gud.”
How is "gamer" defined? Someone who has played video games? Did they also hire 2000 "readers?"
How many "lives" are they given?
"Tea baging": is a maneuver or stage during the landing of an aircraft. Also "landing flare" and "round out".
so i have a little bit of insight into this whole thing. i got a few friends who are controllers and i've been in the hiring process myself for nearly 2 years. to save you the history of the hiring process of the last few years: long. duffy "supercharged" the hiring process last year, making it take a lot less time than it used to (months instead of years).
anyway, we don't actually know if 2000 "gamers" got hired from this latest bid, they're just saying that because they were catering to gamers with the advertisement (which was majority genAI content lmao). if you applied to the bid, you're automatically a gamer.
now a few things on what this means for us and the safety of aviation. the minimum requirements are as follows: do you have a pulse? can you obtain a security clearance? do you not have any medical problems that will make you unfit to do the job? have you not taken any federally illegal drugs in the last few years? can you do a few basic math problems? if you can answer yes to all of these questions, you get hired. that's what the 2000 number is.
when you get hired by the FAA, those 2000 people don't immediately get to go control traffic at the busiest airport. all ATC candidates must go to the FAA's training academy in OKC for 3-4 months to learn how to control traffic. it's designed to train someone who doesn't even know what a plane is to the basics of controlling traffic, phraseology and proper procedures and all. not everyone makes it through the academy and is a large percent of the attrition rate for applicants.
only after all that do they go to a real facility, but not like LAX. and then they learn some more before touching live traffic.
so overall, i'm not super worried about it. only the people who are actually capable will get though and even then, it will be well over a year before they are controlling on their own if they don't fail training at their facility
So, be worried in about 6 months then?
about 6 months minimum before they're allowed to talk to real planes, a year and a half minimum after that before they are out on their own. the academy will get rid of a lot of people who truly are not cut out for this type of work, and facility training will get rid of more. tbh i'm not super worried because the job is do it by the book or find another job. if they don't do it right, they won't be talking to real traffic for very long if at all
What bogus hysteria. Do you have any idea how many people play video games? Would you expect them not to advertise a recruitment drive on television because we don’t want our air traffic controllers to just kick up their feet and watch the screens? Let’s not be idiots.
It’s far more interesting to ask why they need to advertise a recruitment drive. The profession has been losing skilled people because its high skill, high stress, high stakes, and their paycheck gets jerked around every time there’s a government shutdown. Let’s focus on that instead of clutching our pearls over them hiring people who have played video games before.

"We cannot allow you to protect your data."
“We cannot take a print of your anus, therefore we are blocking you”
There should be an extension that prevents you from risking your privacy accessing an american site that does this
Then again americans wouldn't be able to access 90% of their internet so maybe it would be pointless
"Seattle Approach, Cherokee 8121K, 20 southwest of Seattle VOR at 7,500, en route Arlington, request transit Class Bravo airspace."
-"LMAO, shut the fuck up *****. Why don't you get gud at being a pilot instead of being carried under tower from support every time looser?"
female pilot voice
[most vile stream of misogynistic insults she's ever heard followed by screeching]
"I approached yer mom last night, n00b."
Cool they “hired” but if they fail the tests then they won’t be hired. Which is the main issue. People fail out of the school, because it’s hard and stressful.
Yeah, that's the point though, the schools/training was massively underenrolled.
if the failure rate is 50%, you need twice as many candidates to fill the jobs. more so if it's higher.
we also desperately need more medical staff, but nobody is scrambling to hire young men for nursing and other non-doctor medical roles. they are still predominantly marketed for women
Assuming is it anything like the scene where in breaking bad. But minus the shitshow of that particular scene?
Please at let be the ones that are the hardcore MS flight sim nerds, they do have many who take it super serious at least.
teabagging their coworker/teammates that they just betrayed for the lols
"and they pay me for this shit lmao FUCK YOU MOM I TOLD YOU MY SKILLS WOULD PAY OFF"
Plane Landed!
style: 4500
substance: 4500
speed: 4000
civilian health: 5000 PERFECT
rings collected: 5000 PERFECT
black box: INTACT
Grade: A
"A?! A?? wtf do you even want!? WHERE'S MY GODDAMN S-RANK!?"
throws controller
Hi guys! Welcome back. So today we're going to see if we can trigger that unsigned integer underflow bug that some of you have been talking about. As you can see here I've already got an Iberia Airbus A380 heading perfectly due West towards Null Island and, thanks to the telemetry bug we found last week that still hasn't been patched we've got it showing as a two-seater Cessna so the occupation rate is 15000% so what were going to do is get the latitude, longitude and altitude to all cross zero at the same time...
Bunch of air traffic controllers blaming their teammates for EVERY crash incoming
I found a glitch. When you crash a few planes on the other runways, all the traffic has to go over a single one. Still the same traffic and points but way easier to manage
Pilot successfully landed a plane in a high risk situation
"WOW, GG GUYS, GG"
Way back in the day there used to a game called Tracon, which was an air traffic control simulator. I played it a few tells and from those experiences I knew that ATC was never going to be a path for me. I caused so many midair collisions.
There are also other ATC simulation games, but it looks like that particular developer also sells professional ATC training software, so I'd kinda imagine that that "I'm really good at TRACON" might be a better standard than most ATC games in terms of someone being able to be an actual ATC.
I'm glad I don't know more about aviation and human nature so I don't have to worry about this as much as it probably warrants.
People who are used to not facing real consequences, directing 200-ton metal tubes full of humans through the air above us?
Probably fine.

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