American aviation is near collapse?
Comments
verstandhandel
mikkupikku
I'm not saying the article's thesis is wrong, much of it rings true to me, but we have very comprehensive data and statistics concerning air travel so I'm deeply unimpressed by this article instead hanging its argument on a hodgepodge list of incidents instead of digging into the data to get some proper numbers.
msabalau
We have "proper numbers" for the full range of issues covered in the essay? From airport aesthetics to El Paso being shut down because of lack of coordination around anti-drone testing, or something?
The article is not just about safety, or some other singular topic with clear statistics.
Just because this sentiment will get some cheap upvotes from people who didn't engage with the article doesn't be that the author should have searched for keys under streetlights to provide a false appearance of rigor.
This is an essay from the Atlantic Daily, which is responding, in real time, to the events of the day. It's a minor work of commentary, it is not supposed to be in-depth reporting, and it's bit odd to feel ought to have been a work of investigative reporting, which the Atlantic also does, seperately.
postflopclarity
> but we have very comprehensive data and statistics concerning air travel
somehow I feel like conditions may have changed since that data was collected. just a hunch.
mikkupikku
Safety / incident data collection and publishing from the FAA and NTSB are basically live, you'll get incidents logged within days at most and preliminary reports usually within a few weeks. What lags the most are data analysis and interpretations, but major newspapers should probably be prepared to do their own data analysis if they're making grand proclaiments like the collapse of an industry...
marcosdumay
I don't think you can make any statistical argument from accident data from a single year.
Yes, there is universal data out there. But those events are so rare that you almost never can differentiate a normal year from an abnormal one.
fny
You absolutely can see a difference. [0] The term of art is "Runway Incursions", and the stats definitely show our airports are working at the limits of safety.
[0]: https://www.buckycountry.com/2025/09/22/runway-close-calls-u...
marcosdumay
That's a 7 years graph, where category A incursions change by 0.7σ, and total incursions are basically horizontal.
What statistical conclusion are you taking from it?
jjk166
Category A and B incursions increased by 2.8σ. Further, it was 7 years of increases in a row. Either factor on its own would indicate a process out of statistical control.
happytoexplain
We have "very comprehensive data and statistics" indicating that US aviation is not nearing collapse? I don't understand what you mean.
KK7NIL
He means that anyone making an argument that aviation safety has deteriorated should be using the stats to back it up, instead of anecdotal evidence.
happytoexplain
This is a common kind of "data or nothing" fallacy. Data doesn't reliably capture evidence for the thesis "TSA agents and aviation workers are burning out and ICE is going to make it worse". The part that data is good for hasn't happened yet over a long enough timeline to reflect properly.
If the argument is "deadly accidents are up over the past decade", then yes, of course, we must point to data.
If the argument is, "the aviation industry might be on the verge of a steep decline in availability and/or safety due to recent political/financial problems", then what do you mean "show the data"? That doesn't make sense. It's a concern based on observation, which is fine if it's not presented as a fact.
And if it turns out that a specific accident is due to said forces - what, we don't address those forces, because "data"?
KK7NIL
I agree, but the article does specifically mention crashes as a symptom we're already seeing:
> Fatal crashes, overstressed controllers, and endless security lines reveal a system teetering on the brink of failure.
I have not read the entire article (paywalled), but the introduction sure seems to strongly imply that we're already seeing an unusually high rate of crashes.
flakiness
+1 but this is The Atlantic so having a reasonable expectation would keep you sane.
n_u
I think they mean they would prefer more rigorous statistical analysis.
"Rigor cleans the window through which intuition shines" - Ellis Cooper
HPsquared
"Collapse" isn't within the statistical distribution though, so you'd still to apply judgement in any case. I suppose it's a word with many definitions.
KK7NIL
> "Collapse" isn't within the statistical distribution though
Uh? Maybe you could explain what you mean by this a bit more.
HPsquared
1. It's not a rigorously defined term.
2. "System collapse" would be unexplored territory, so how would statistical analysis be able to infer when it occurs?
KK7NIL
1. Not really. If the crash rates we're seeing under the Trump administration are higher than any similar length period in the last ~10 years, we should start to worry.
2. See above.
toomuchtodo
Well, a tired, overextended air traffic controller at LaGuardia just caused two pilots to die last night while landing. How many deaths would communicate "We have likely reached system failure"? I presume for some, it's going to have to be a few airframes worth of passengers unfortunately. There is a shortage of air traffic controllers. Those working are being pushed to failure. The system as a whole is degrading. These are facts, based on evidence and observations.
There is currently a shortage of ~3k controllers (as of this comment), and the time to train and put new controllers into service is significant. Excess retirements reduces time to system failure due to labor shortages. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
> Entry-level applicants must complete required training courses and spend several months at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City. Applicants are paid while in training. After graduating the academy, individuals are placed in locations across the country and must gain 2-3 years additional training, both classroom and on-the-job experience, before becoming a certified professional controller. This rigorous training includes close supervision and evaluation by senior controllers that ensures controllers are competent, professional, know their airspace environment and can deal with the pressures and high pace of the job.
Controllers in training quit due to a lack of pay whenever a government shutdown occurs. This impairs the talent pipeline to improve system performance anytime a shutdown occurs.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newyorkcity/comments/1s1eh14/i_mess...
US air traffic controllers start resigning as shutdown bites - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45860865 - November 2025 (365 comments)
Flights to Los Angeles Airport halted due to air traffic controller shortage - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45715771 - October 2025 (11 comments)
> The shutdown is having real consequences, as some students at the controller academy have already decided to abandon the profession because they don’t want to work in a job they won’t be paid for, Duffy said. That will only make it harder for the FAA to hire enough controllers to eliminate the shortage, since training takes years. He said that the government is only a week or two away from running out of money to pay students at the academy.
Air traffic controller shortages cause widespread flight delays amid government shutdown - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/air-traffic-controller-... - November 1st, 2025
> “Currently nearly 50 percent of major air traffic control facilities are experiencing staffing shortages, and nearly 90 percent of air traffic controllers are out at New York–area facilities,” the FAA said in a statement posted on X on Friday evening.
Do you feel lucky?
margalabargala
> How many deaths would communicate "We have likely reached system failure"?
"Failure" is really a matter of opinion rather than some objective tipping point. The air system is unlikely to ever actually "fail", and at worst will just become some arbitrary level of degraded that some people will loudly label "failed".
There are plenty of examples around the world of countries with variously degraded air systems, that are far worse than the US status quo but still are not "failed".
There's Egypt, which has labeled crashes caused by bad design as "someone used a bomb and blew it up" for political reasons: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/07/fire-not-bomb-...
Yemen, in the midst of a perennial civil war, still runs commercial flights: https://www.pprune.org/terms-endearment/653181-yemenia-expat...
Russia, with airplane parts sacntioned for years, still runs commercial flights.
Even if the US undergoes a USSR-style sudden collapse, the aviation system is not going to "fail" in the sense of completely breaking and stopping.
ForHackernews
>Yemen, in the midst of a perennial civil war, still runs commercial flights
Not any more, they don't:
> The General Director of Sanaa International Airport, Khaled al-Shaief, said in a post on his X account that the strike had completely destroyed the last of the civilian planes that Yemenia Airways was operating from the airport.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-says-it-has...
margalabargala
That's just from Sanaa. There are still flights to/from other cities in Yemen, mainly Socotra and Aden.
ryandrake
Note also that they deliberately choke off the hiring funnel before they even get applicants, and deliberately dispose of experienced controllers. Air traffic controller applicants must be under 31 years old for initial hire. The mandatory retirement age is 56. Although there are limited exceptions to both rules.
nico
Those age limits should apply to all political offices
toomuchtodo
Air traffic controllers require a significant investment by the federal government, I take no issue with age limits for both investment (lower bound) and safety reasons (upper bound) (if the data says it is reasonable, I'll always defer to the data).
I take exceptional issue with the fact that their pay is not considered essential. There should be no way for this critical infrastructure to be not considered essential. ATC pay should flow regardless of actions of any branch of the federal government, and there should be robust systems in place to ensure these workers are not pushed beyond reasonable work limits. Fix the system or break the system forcing a fix. If it continues to work "good enough" without a fix, no changes will be made.
ryandrake
This assumes that controllers over 56 years old are statistically "unsafe," presumably due to perceived cognitive speed and ability. So unsafe that the concern overrides experience, familiarity with systems, and other key benefits of tenure. I'd love to see that data.
toomuchtodo
My understanding is the 56 year old age limit is due to burnout and other accumulated negative risk factors from the profession. You have a shelf life like a professional athlete due to the sustained high cognitive load and stress of the workload. Replies open to additional references and citations.
It would make an interesting reality TV show to have a group of 60-70 year olds attempt to perform a simulated 8 hour ATC shift under "live fire" conditions.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260323212332/https://www.crisi...
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/media/Fatigue_Report.pdf
https://news.siu.edu/2025/07/072225-siu-research-focuses-on-...
irishcoffee
An elderly woman ran into a bus stop at 70mph, killing 4 people. Their claim was “I couldn’t stop, I don’t know what happened”
They were given 200 hours community service. I think this happened today.
mikkupikku
Why you got to pick an asian woman as your example though?
irishcoffee
I was trying to show that elderly people probably shouldn't be air traffic controllers by providing an extremely recent example of an elderly person ending the lives of an entire family using a car. I didn't mention that the driver was asian. You did. :)
toomuchtodo
78 years old at the time, now 80, sentenced to probation.
https://people.com/family-four-killed-bus-stop-outrage-drive...
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/news/sfpd-arrests-driver-...
(SFPD Case #240-160-569)
lokar
Also, their pay comes from a fund filled by airport fees, not the general budget.
fzeroracer
I'm curious: If your boss emailed you and all of your coworkers with mass buyout offers and demanded that they quit their job how many do you think would take up the offer? 10%? 20%? Do you think it would be enough to cause significant organizational issues?
HarHarVeryFunny
Problems related to air traffic controllers and TSA staff aren't a sign of "american aviation" being near collapse - they are a sign of american goverment being near collapse. This is critical national infrastructure - stop playing stupid political games with it.
znkynz
I am amazed every day that people are expected to turn up every day to work while being unpaid. In westminster-style parlimentary systems, if a government can't guarantee supply[1], they are sacked, and a snap election is called.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_and_supply
The paralysis of the political system in the US is either a feature or a bug depending on your point of view i suppose, but no question that it is entirely dysfunctional that a government can continue existing if it can't pass a budget.
jeremie_strand
The ATC staffing hole is the part that worries me most - you can't hire your way out quickly. Training a new controller takes 2-3 years and academy pass rates hover around 50%, so the structrual deficit we're in now won't resolve for years regardless of what congress does about funding.
jeremie_strand
The controller pipeline problem has been well-documented for at least a decade - the FAA's own workforce reports from the mid-2010s flagged the retirement cliff well in advance. What's frustrating is this wasn't unforseeable; it just wasn't treated as urgent until it became acute.
Someone1234
A lot of core services in the US are near collapse, because society focuses on short-term value extraction, over long term success. If you look at the US's history, there was a much better balance between the two (with the core being seen as a lever towards future wealth).
You see this in education, infrastructure, public health, scientific research, housing, and energy. All foundational systems of a society, which compound the value of everything else, but they aren't immediate profit centers so kick the ball down the road.
It is an attitude problem first and foremost; and I'm not sure how you fix that.
PS - This also impacts private enterprise, like corporations. Enshittify their current offerings for the next quarter bump but ruin their brand reputation/long-term viability.
Ethee
I'd argue more that it's an incentive alignment problem. From the 70s on we changed the way a lot of the incentives work so corporations could more freely capture markets and a lot of Americans were convinced that this would help enrich them as well. All it's done is hollow out our social services and further consolidate wealth in this country. Ironically the people most hurt by these policies are the ones who keep voting for them so until we hit some catalyst inflection point where people can map the policies being enacted onto what's happening in their own lives this cycle will continue. Most Americans seem pretty ready to accept whatever bullshit makes them feel good so the beatings will either continue until morale improves or until everyone feels beaten enough to do something. Seems more likely it's the former than the latter.
mmooss
> It is an attitude problem first and foremost; and I'm not sure how you fix that.
From a certain perspective, it should be easy: That balance is the norm that has persisted through centuries; the current situation is relativley very new.
I think the important question is, why has this attitude shifted - despite having obviously bad consequences - and how is that shift being sustained?
esafak
Through the right incentives, like repealing quarterly reporting requirements. https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-sec-preparing-el...
lotsofpulp
Quarterly reporting requirements are clearly not the causal factor in short term incentives. All the best performing publicly listed businesses invest on decades long timelines risking billions and tens of billions of dollars.
Simultaneously, plenty of non publicly listed businesses make decisions that benefit in the short term at the expense of the long term.
Reducing quarterly reporting requirements does reduce transparency, however,
fzeroracer
I don't think it's as much an 'attitude' problem as it is a 'wealth' problem.
The richest folk in this country have bought out every single media apparatus it can get its hands on and have spread decades of propaganda. The 'philanthropic' billionaire that spent wealth so that they could have a building or initiative named after them have vanished and gave their wealth to the methhead billionaires that rip up the wiring of the country to sell for pennies.
boelboel
It can't be fixed because America is not a nation state.
rsync
I am flying from SFO -> DEN in a few days and I see that Denver wait time is 4 minutes and, as is well known, SFO does not use TSA or federal security staff.
Denver does, however, so I wonder why there is no wait at DEN and hundreds of minutes at Houston/Atlanta/JFK ?
oceanplexian
I’m a frequent flier and flown into all of the above, the ones with TSA issues have been perpetually mismanaged under the best conditions, it’s not even remotely surprising that they are having issues under pressure.
riffraff
This is not news, there was an episode of Last Week Tonight on the Air Traffic Control crisis last summer[0].
From memory: on the human side airports are understaffed, there are no young controllers in the pipeline, attrition is high, and the less people are available the higher the burnout rate, which creates a vicious cycle. On the technical side, airports are unmaintained, systems are obsolete and crumbling.
John Oliver makes the case that most of the issue is that the FAA is financed through discretionary spending so e.g. it's subject to shut downs and can't do long term planning.
jorblumesea
This is largely true for almost all US public services. Decades of focusing on the needs of the 1% is producing a situation where almost everything is under funded or poorly implemented. Critical infrastructure isn't a priority.
SecretDreams
The final paragraph is maybe the most relevant. It goes well beyond just aviation. I'm sure we've all felt this.
> The ICE deployment is a particularly extreme example of what the political scientist Steven M. Teles has dubbed “kludgeocracy,” in which the government reaches for short-term, improvised solutions while resisting real reform. “‘Clumsy but temporarily effective,’” Teles has written, “also describes much of American public policy. For any particular problem we have arrived at the most gerry-rigged, opaque and complicated response.” The U.S. aviation system has been held together by such patches for years, but the kludges may finally be failing.
wagwang
Yes, that's how I would describe using immigration to address labor shortages
convolvatron
I don't think there is anything inherently wrong in using immigration to address labor shortages. however, not having an official policy, such a labor visa with clearly defined rules, combined with a stable population of 'illegals' that don't have the same labor protections, is and was not really a fair or sustainable situation.
wagwang
It's inherently unfair because its used to drive down wages of the lower classes. Outside of highly skilled work that cannot be sourced from within the country that is critical for nation security, the moral response is to just pay the workers more.
SecretDreams
> the moral response is to just pay the workers more.
While I don't disagree, and while I firmly believe in UBI (which is the natural conclusion to your logic), without a comprehensive plan in place, just "paying people more" will be a bit of a death spiral since that is a core contributor to inflation on a large scale.
autoexec
If you look at the massive increase in, for example, CEO salaries over the last few decades why was nobody worried about inflation then? "Pay people more" seems to be just fine as long as it's only certain people. Once the wrong kind of people, whose wages have stagnated for decades, want an increase in pay then our entire economy is suddenly at risk. I feel that the main driver behind the inflation we've seen in the last few years has primarily been greed, but nobody seems interested in trying to fight inflation on that front either. Inflation is a problem, but we need a better way to deal with it besides "the average worker still gets paid like it's 1975"
JumpCrisscross
> CEO salaries over the last few decades why was nobody worried about inflation then?
Because it’s economically insignificant. Total CEO pay across the Russell 1000 excluding Musk is in the tens of billions. Paying a few people more isn’t inflationary. (It’s other kinds of problematic.)
franktankbank
What other kinds of problematic is it?
JumpCrisscross
> What other kinds of problematic is it?
There seem to be social consequenes to that sort of income inequality. There are solid arguments for enabling founders to become fabulously wealthy. The argument seems a bit more stretched for managers.
wagwang
There's no evidence that tight labor markets lead to a inflation death spiral, food in america is supposed to be expensive because America is a wealthy nation. The elites like to dress this up as something that is bad for the lower class but it's quite the opposite, the lower class in wealthy high cost of living, low immigration countries do very well, not that there are many of these countries left.
SecretDreams
Agreed. Immigration for a labour shortage is a tale as old as time. Mass migration was very common post WW1/2 Europe. People went where there were jobs and labour shortages.
Policy around this type of thing is important.
My post is more about the general dysfunction and solution schemes we see in some governments. I think having the ICE example might bring about some bots and trolls, though. I don't care for the ICE example, it's just a part of the quote.
ryandrake
The US policy seems pretty clear: Allow companies who employ undocumented workers to benefit and profit from it, while making sure only the individual workers shoulder the criminal and livelihood risks.
trimethylpurine
I thought the policy is that you can't hire without documentation. Do you mean that there is a scheme in place, outside of the legal framework?
array_key_first
Yes, there is a legal scheme in place: you're not allowed to validate the authenticity of provided documentation as a company. If someone is undocumented, they can forge documents and that's completely allowed.
The reason we have this loophole is because many industries, particularly in the South, rely directly on immigrant labor. The republicans cannot risk alienating their consistency or further hurting the already brittle economy of Red states. That's why we get a constant flow of completely ineffective and performative solutions, like ICE.
Just start locking up executives who have employees that are undocumented, and the problem would disappear before your very eyes. But, building a wall is easier, and you can see a wall.
ndiddy
> The reason we have this loophole is because many industries, particularly in the South, rely directly on immigrant labor. The republicans cannot risk alienating their consistency or further hurting the already brittle economy of Red states.
One example of this playing out was when the Florida state senate (Republican supermajority) shot down a bill that would have required businesses to use E-Verify to validate the authenticity of their employees' documentation. https://www.cfpublic.org/politics/2025-05-05/bill-to-expand-...
> Bill Herrle, state executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small businesses, said the bill would have made the state’s labor shortage worse and dampened productivity and entrepreneurship in the state. He said his group was relieved that it didn’t pass.
> “When I talk to small business owners now, I’m finding them busy doing a job they’d like to hire someone to do’’ Herrle said. “They’re working the line. They’re working in the kitchen. They’re working the register. And when a small business owner is doing that, guess what they’re not doing? They’re not being an entrepreneur. They’re not spending time trying to find ways to build and grow their business.’’
trimethylpurine
According to 8 USC 1324, it looks like what you're talking about could quickly land you in prison for up to 5 years. So, it's a scheme maybe, but not a legal one.
array_key_first
That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about - 8 USC 1324 is related to harboring or bringing an alien. Companies hiring people with what they believe are genuine documents, by reasonable inspection, is perfectly legal. Please note this just means you have to look at them.
The companies are doing this "unknowingly". Of course they're not stupid, they're fully aware they're hiring a lot of undocumented people. But nobody, on record, knows that. To them, all their employees have documents which appear valid. It is pretty easy to forge I-9 documents.
Part of this is because the US has incredibly poor identification infrastructure. Often, not even US citizens can be reliably identified, as seen in commercial banking. The other part is that companies cannot choose to not hire people because they think they are undocumented. You can't hire someone because they're too brown and not American sounding enough.
That's not to say that I think the solution is universal identification or legalization of racism in hiring practices.
trimethylpurine
Okay, I can see for that one that you might say that you didn't pay them to enter the country and that you didn't help them find a home and so you aren't technically harboring.
But, what about this one?
18 U.S.C. § 1546
This says, "having reason to know." So, you actually don't have to really know, you just have to have reason to know, to be incarcerated. That really seems like I should check, if only to cover my own ass. Like if the picture wasn't clear but you accepted it anyway, you had reason to know? Seems pretty loose for anyone that wants to enforce it.
I'm clearly not an attorney, so if you are, please correct me.
ryandrake
There's written policy and then there's policy as-enforced.
ambicapter
Describes problem-solving in every company I've worked at as well.
woodpanel
Clumsy solutions for short term political wins, you say?
So like instead of hiring by merit doing it via DEI?
nimbius
it is a perfect storm:
- deregulation of airlines in the 1980s led to rampant consolidation of routes and SPOF hubs that only work for revenue purposes and offer no real resilience in traffic planning. over-subscription of flights and lack of any real competition compounds this issue.
- climate change and global warming increasingly exacerbate severe weather conditions that ground aircraft and incur delays or cancellations in an already fragile system
- reagan-era policy hostile toward air traffic control labor unions that once checked the excesses of capital resulted in understaffing issues for more than two decades later. poor regulation of working hours, outmoded systems, and wage stagnation has further stressed the ATC system.
- the partial government shutdown has caused massive delays and cancellations of flights as the artifice of security theater begins to break down under its own political morass.
the solution is reform and regulation through policy change and investment. this is not possible in late stage capitalism (Streeck, 2016.)
jjk166
Calling it a perfect storm is too generous. This is deliberately tearing down the floodgates that protect you from the extremely normal and predictable storms.
FpUser
>" A careful, iterative process of safety regulation culminated in a 16-year period, from 2009 to 2025, when no U.S. airline had a fatal crash."
This is quite amazing
ryandrake
Just a standard warning to readers: when you use an archive.ph (or other archive.today) link, you risk your computer's resources being used to participate in a DDOS against another web site, as reported/discussed recently on HN[1].
davidcollantes
Got a link to the entry?
ryandrake
Updated my reply with the initial story, but there have been followups on HN.
buredoranna
People who dedicate their lives to studying an industry, can get very good at being able to predict the probability of events in their domain.
These same people are commonly off by orders of magnitude when predicting the magnitude of these same events.
The author of this article won the "Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting". I'm going to infer from this, that he's better at political reporting, than he is at predicting the future of an entire industry.
And if he is truly convinced of this outcome, he should be shorting the airlines. (I'm gonna guess he hasn't done that).
(edit: syntax)
no paywall: https://archive.ph/20260323153943/https://www.theatlantic.co...