Well I’ve talked about it another thread. I have a brother who retired from ATC early (50) in 2020 and one of the major reasons was the poor students that they were getting from OK City. Actually met a guy at a gas station in 2020 once who just retired early (50) as well and stated the same. Worked in ATL tower and said “I got tired of baby sitting kids.” I have controller friends still in the FAA that have backed that up. One friend was a QA guy for the SE region and said “I see operational errors on a regular basis and no accountability.” My brother saw a rise in OEs with no disciplinary action whatsoever. He used to say that mediocrity was the norm now.
www.avweb.com
This and there has been an on-going lawsuit about it for 10 years. Plenty of articles been written about it over the years so nothing really new. It just in recent times the results of that new ATC hiring have started to come to fruition.
In just 1100 hours, I’ve had three runway incursions, all at non-towered fields: a helicopter hover taxi across the runway seconds after I announced taking off on the CTAF (than God my first instructor taught that upon lining up, look both ways and confirm that intersections are clear before adding power; met up with the helo CFI later and he admitted he was too caught up with talking to his student - we had a good discussion about runway safety and it went well), a plane taxiing across the runway 500 feet ahead of us when we were in the flare (all normal calls had been made, radios working properly; that was at a weekly fly-in - it was his first time attending and has never been seen at one since), and a mower suddenly turning onto the runway when crossing the threshold.
That doesn't sound like a DEI issue. Was there a surge in retirements at some point?
RCCA ???
Go back further to the Class of 81Well I’ve talked about it another thread. I have a brother who retired from ATC early (50) in 2020 and one of the major reasons was the poor students that they were getting from OK City. Actually met a guy at a gas station in 2020 once who just retired early (50) as well and stated the same. Worked in ATL tower and said “I got tired of baby sitting kids.” I have controller friends still in the FAA that have backed that up. One friend was a QA guy for the SE region and said “I see operational errors on a regular basis and no accountability.” My brother saw a rise in OEs with no disciplinary action whatsoever. He used to say that mediocrity was the norm now.
Now, is all this exaggeration? Has it always been this way? Well if you look at the stats, OEs have risen sharply about 10 years ago but some of that was due to ATSAP reporting process. Basically ASRS for controllers. Now they’re free to report their mistakes without punitive action. There’s more reporting of errors now but when you have a shortage of personnel and you’re trying to fill seats, you take what you can get. That means, instead of the tried and true method of CTI grads and military veterans, the FAA opened the flood gates to off the street applicants. Combine that with pushing people through training to fill an agenda, then you’re gonna have higher rates of errors.
AI just needs to take over the entire ATC system. AI would never turn down practice approaches for workload.
I talked to a controller ~5 years ago about this, and his view (as he was retiring) was that ATC never recovered from the PATCO firings in 1981. His view was that the brain drain was substantial, and rebuilding the expertise took more controllers than could be hired and staffed. The quality trend line has been a negative slope, augmented by technology to help flatten or inflect the trend.
Sorry, Root Cause Correction Action. A problem solving methodology to thoroughly dig into a problem, find the root cause, and fix it.
I get people are human and can mess up, but then trying to say "it's on the plate" like it's my problem -- can't load what I don't see...I think he might have finally got it when I responded to that with "should I be expecting the ILS or RNAV?" 
Probably not, but I have heard it before once when the ground controller cleared a B727, A DC3 and a mighty C-152 to the same intersection on the airport. I told my instructor that this isn't going to work and I did not start to taxi, when another voice came on the radio, B727, DC3, C-152 STOP.!! (he used N numbers but I have long forgotten them)
As mentioned above there is an active federal class-action lawsuit over the change in the FAA's controller hiring practice to favor a "biographical" priority to who should be a controller vs the skill/aptitude based priority used prior to the change via the CTI program. Here's one synopsis of the action but there are others as well. And its not the only instance.
Funding for increased staffing is being proposed.
thehill.com
What's the source for this except? Seems to me that this is the plaintiff's summary of the reason for his failure vs what the biographical questionnaire actually graded. But I guess we will see how successful this suit actually is.
I spoke with a local Approach Controller last month. FAA has never recovered from the "surge hiring" after 1981. So every 20-25 yrs after the surge hire, those controllers are retiring from age and burnout. That starts another surge hire wave. Surge hire 1982, surge hire 2002, surge hire 2022-current. He told me a large portion of the current air traffic controllers are eligible to retire in the next 3-5 yrs.
