I Asked For Your Stories...And The Air Traffic Controller Controversy Is WORSE Than I Thought
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
193.88477
Summary
In this episode, we re talking about Air Traffic Control (ATC) and why it s one of the most important jobs in the airline industry. We also hear about a disturbing comment made by an ATC instructor about a black pilot.
Transcript
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So, for a couple of years now on the show, we've been tracking the issue of flight safety,
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the airline industry, all the issues in the airline industry.
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And a couple of days ago, we did a show about air traffic control in particular.
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And we know about DEI and the airline industry and what's happened there.
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We know about we've got planes falling apart in the skies, doors falling off,
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There are the issues with how the planes are being assembled.
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But maybe most concerning of all, it's air traffic control
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because these are the people who we are relying on to,
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while we're all in the air, we're at their mercy.
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And they're going to be the ones who are first line of defense
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Tragedy strikes when that job is not done in a satisfactory way.
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A lot of comments from people in this industry or around it.
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And I think the takeaway from these comments, as always,
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is that if you're kind of depressed based on what you heard on my show,
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I'm an underrated optimist, actually, it turns out.
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it's always like, yeah, it's that bad, but it's so much worse.
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So, we'll go through some of these comments now.
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My son scored 98th percentile on air traffic control testing.
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Flew and perfectly handled aircraft, far above required in the simulators.
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Told by one of his instructors, Obama wanted them black and low income.
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I mean, it's not surprising at one level, but it's also shocking to hear.
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And if you didn't have this context, you might hear that and say, and be skeptical.
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But that one of the instructors would actually say out loud, well, I know that we, yeah,
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you scored 98th percentile, but we need, we're looking for someone who's black.
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But what we've seen is that, yes, when we've discussed the, in general, the discrimination
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against white men, that this is something that they're being directly told.
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I had an alarming encounter with an ATC while on vacation in Cancun last December.
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He's an ATC in New York and said it's difficult for him not to crash Air Force One whenever
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And yes, that is very much in line with what we've talked about on the show.
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If you go to the ATC subreddit and you're going to find people making comments like this
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and you would like to say that politics don't matter.
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No one is saying that, well, we can only have conservatives who are in the airline industry
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I mean, that'd be nice, but obviously that's not attainable.
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But the problem is that, especially these days, leftists in general are so unhinged,
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so unstable, as you say, and are so convinced that if you disagree with them, that you are
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a clear and present danger to them and to the country and you're Hitler incarnate and
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all this kind of stuff, which gives them a moral justification in their own minds to
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If you think the air traffic controller subreddit is bad, the teacher one will really surprise
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I'm 100% serious when I say I pulled all my children from public school last year after
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I've seen some of that and I don't have my kids in public school and I don't really need
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You know, I'm the last guy in the country who needs to be convinced of that.
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It's kind of on two levels because if you go and you listen to what teachers are saying
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in a place where they can speak anonymously, then yeah, you'll see many comments that make
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you concerned about the quality of the teachers.
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But you'll also see they're talking about, in many cases, they're complaining more openly
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and more freely because they're anonymous about what's happening in their classroom,
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about the quality of the students and the kids and what's happening there.
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And that to me is the far more depressing fact.
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Because if you've got a problem with the quality of the teachers, well, in theory, that's fixable.
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But one thing I see, and I hear this too from teachers in my own personal life who I've talked
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to, again, where they can speak off the record, and they'll tell you it is so much worse
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However bad you think it is, it is so much worse.
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Like, you've got kids in these classes who cannot understand anything.
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They can't pay attention or understand anything you're telling them.
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Even if you can get them to put the phones down, which is hard enough, but it's just like
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I went through training to be ATC in the Air Force back in 2001.
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We had a situation in the tower where more senior people that were rated would not talk
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We had three guys get discharged for testing positive for weed.
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That one almost shut the airfield down because there weren't enough controllers left.
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Well, you mentioned another factor here that I think an underrated factor with the proliferation
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So it's not hard to believe at all that you've got more and more people sitting in control
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towers at the airport who are stoned out of their minds.
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I'm not just a helicopter and fixed wing pilot.
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I work for the FAA as an airway transportation system specialist in the Department of Defense.
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I flew this exact helicopter route day and night.
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The helicopter pilot was to remain below 200 feet, not at 200 feet.
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Had she been down at 100 feet where every other normal helicopter pilot would be, it would
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have been a close encounter, but not swapping paint.
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I personally looked up into the wheel well of a B-757 flying there.
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No one wanted to remain working at the FAA under Obama.
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This was an extreme contrast to when I worked for the FAA.
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I was working with one guy that was at the FAA when it was the Civil Aviation Authority
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Under Obama and Biden, they were leaving as fast as they could.
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Another comment says, add to this the fact that black ATCs are providing the test answers
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to other blacks in an effort to promote their culture in the tower.
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At this point, I'd rather drive than have to deal with the changes and dangers associated
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I drive whenever I can, but it's very often not possible.
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For what I do for a living, what a lot of people do, you have to fly.
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And it's the thing with any technology, the more that people use it, the more dependent
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Because air travel's been so ubiquitous for so long, people have just spread out more
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and people are working remote more now and all of these different things, which means
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And so you can't just cut it out of your life entirely, or it'd be very difficult to.
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And this comment says, I've been with the post office for nearly a decade.
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Everything you described about air traffic controllers and how their union protects their
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god-awful behavior applies to letter carriers as well.
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I've seen people keep their jobs after doing some of the craziest, unprofessional things
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Things that would get you fired from other non-union jobs in about 10 seconds.
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It drives me crazy as somebody who shows up every day and cares and has to pick up the
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And I realize the air traffic control is a bit more serious than delivering mail, but
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Yeah, it's a very, it's a really funny thing when you take accountability out of it, when
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you protect people from accountability, when you protect people from the consequences for
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their actions, when you protect people against the consequences of bad behavior, you get more
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And we're seeing that play out in many industries.
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