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?
He said 3-4 months lol
“Bio break guys. Can we just pause the air traffic for 10 mins?”
This was why MMO experience was sought out.
“We cannot allow you to protect your data.”
Fox 21 is a local affiliate of Fox based in Duluth, MN. It’s a regional news source for Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
I seriously doubt they get enough traffic from GDPR regulated countries to retrofit their entire site to be compliant when it is targeted for a very specific audience in the US.
“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
As an American, I would use it.
A VPN.
Well in this case the website itself is preventing me from risking my privacy accessing it.
I saw ‘fox’ in the URL and wasn’t surprised.
I played an ATC game on my phone. Was pretty good at it. Can I has job?
That wasn’t a game.
Steady on Captain Rackham. Dont want to spoil the ending now.
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
throws controller
Steve looked up from the corner of the tower. “What the hell, man? I didn’t know you could pick me up, but what the hell? Just toss me like that? Jesus, dude, calm the fuck down!”
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…
“Atlanta Center, Delta 412, descending through flight level 190, vector for runway 26 Right.”
“Delta 412, copy. Hold your horses, bad connection on your end, total dial-up energy.”
“Atlanta Center, American 805, five miles behind Delta 412, also requesting 26 Right.”
“American 805, radar contact. Wait, you guys are practically sniffing each other’s tailpipes, this spacing is absolute dogshit.”
“American 805, we can go around and vector back if—”
“Nah, speedrun mode activated. Both of you cleared land 26 Right, first one down gets the lobby win! LEeeerrrooooyyyyy mmmmmmJjjeeennnkkkiinnnsssss!!!”
Incredible comment, thank you!
“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?”/tower launches anti-aircraft missile and TKs plane, then resigns
female pilot voice
[most vile stream of misogynistic insults she’s ever heard followed by screeching]
female pilot voice
How male-dominated is that profession, anyway?
Very. The quick search I did indicated that 70.7% to potentially 97% of pilots are men.
“I approached yer mom last night, n00b.”
Does the game allow cheats or the ability to spawn natural disasters? I want simcity levels of control.
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.
Best we can spare are the ones flying a hot air balloon into the control tower at unreasonable speeds.
The recruitment video from April showed scenes from games including Fortnite and an American football title, and proclaimed: “You’ve been training for this…”
Fortnite… Yeah, fuck, we dead… That’ll be like eleven 9/11s💀
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”
—The Far Side, October 15, 1990
sitting in the cabin
“this is your captain, brb nerds, going afk”
You just reassured me, 100% without copyright infringements to boot!
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.
Just respawn if you die.
Bunch of air traffic controllers blaming their teammates for EVERY crash incoming
“You were supposed to cover me, wtf and you call yourself prestige 8 on cod? I’ve seen bots smarter than you.”
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.
Leroooooooy Jenkins!!
Being good at some computer games (not just flight simulators) is helpful in getting through the recruitment process. I’d say a mix of having good orientation and implementing and executing a strategy is required at the very least (and sticking to it, which I didn’t do lol), which you definitely get/practice in games.
However the actual training process can cut those numbers dramatically, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they ignored obvious red flags with some of these ‘gamers’ just to pump those numbers up.
Too bad I am an audio gamer 🙁
Jokes aside, thanks for reminding me this audio game exists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Blind_Legend
Apparently there’s a PC version
