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TangoFox posted:Yeah but it's not caused by a lack of candidates, but more by the FAA's inability to hire anyone without literally tripping over their own dick. I love their new "We don't have a staffing problem, we have a training problem" angle.
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Aug 21, 2019 06:40
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What percentage of traffic controllers are also pilots? I've seen a lot of suggestions in various publications to "remember that most air traffic controllers are not pilots, and do not expect them to understand your situation from a pilot's perspective" and stuff like that, usually quoting an example of an airliner that crashed when the pilot said "we're in the soup" and the traffic controller didn't grasp the gravity of that terminology. But that said, I feel like there's got to be more controller-pilots than the roughly 0.1% rate of pilots in the general population.
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Aug 21, 2019 07:31
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The Real Amethyst posted:And he can just get away with that behavior? I told my reps that I didn’t want to raise a shitstorm over it for him to just get a wrist slap to make me feel better. I want poo poo to change. I mean, I’m a big dude and not in the least actually intimidated by that rear end in a top hat, but if he’s going to do it to ME, he’s almost certainly done it or doing it to someone that it WILL work on. It’s in-process. Sagebrush posted:What percentage of traffic controllers are also pilots? It’s higher certainly, but still low. I’d guesstimate about 10-15% are pilots. ACTIVE pilots is probably more like 2-5%. A lot of controllers come to it after getting frustrated with the flying side of the industry.
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Aug 21, 2019 13:59
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TangoFox posted:Yeah but it's not caused by a lack of candidates, but more by the FAA's inability to hire anyone without literally tripping over their own dick. NavCanada too! Who could’ve possibly known it would take time to find suitable candidates and train them? Certainly not Nav loving Canada, that’s who! The controllers are so amazing, really, in holding this poo poo together amid absurd understaffing, and the management is just so loving bad for letting it reach this point.
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Aug 21, 2019 14:20
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fknlo posted:I love their new "We don't have a staffing problem, we have a training problem" angle. To be fair, they do. Some do. About half. Those other half should be like the US - Mexico border and free flow people back and forth. If you don't have a training problem, open those loving borders and let us in! At some facilities like Jacksonville Approach/Tower, they have 32 DEVs and 27 CPCs. Seriously, what the gently caress. Who the gently caress allowed that to happen? Who said "Oh this is fine, let's keep sending them trainees." That person should be loving fired. And that's not the only facility like that. Human Resources' & the FAA's incompetence as a body of individuals needs to be seriously addressed. First - the hiring process: I know you're from Oakland, but here, we're sending you to Long Island! You'll love it there! (Don't worry that Oakland is perpetually short). Second - You want to be a tower controller? Sorry, you're going en route, good luck getting back! Third - You can't transfer until you make CPC. That means, let's invest literally millions of dollars into you before we know you're going to make it, oh *POOF* you're gone and now you're at your new facility... where you're a trainee again. Address transfers as soon as they walk in the door. Atleast we'd know better and could potentially wash them out if we didn't think they were going to make it. Fourth - The management of training is garbage. If a facility is averaging 1 hour a week of training - SUSPEND/FIRE the Chief. This is literally your only job - making sure your facility runs smoothly. Fifth - Oh you want to go to that facility? No you can't. How about offering options? No, we can't take you at that facility, but we could take you RIGHT NOW to these ones surrounding it. Sign a 3 year contract for that facility and we will transfer you to your desired facility within that time. I could come up with a list of 20 facilities I would work at, if it meant I got to go to my dream facility in 5 years. Sixth - Mutual swaps should NOT be subject to NCEPT. Literally, this makes no sense. Should be: You find someone who wants to swap? Pull the trigger and get release dates from your current facilities. GONE. Seventh - Get rid of front lines. Make it like Nav canada. Every front line should be a fully operational controller that does admin stuff on the side, no discipline, required to hold 16 hours a month or more currency. Eighth - All of the facilities that have been red since NCEPT began should be able to hire off the street for those locations. *HOWEVER* if you're hired off the street for that location, you shouldn't be able to go anywhere else for 10 years (if at all). Ninth - If you quit and get rehired a year later, gently caress you, you can go back to the facility you quit from - or you are subject to provisions from number 8. Tenth - ALL requests for transfers should be posted in a public place so we can see flat out if a trainee / your buddy is trying to leave. (To be fair, I TELL people I am trying to leave - but we have a bunch of people who kept NCEPTs out there and then just turn them down. Eleventh - IF you turn down an NCEPT, you should be banned from the process for 2 years. Maybe 5. Twelvth - If you washed out from a facility before, YOU SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO GO BACK. I'm done. TangoFox fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 15:58
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TangoFox posted:
There's a guy in my old area that would swap with me but I've told him it's not even worth the effort. I wouldn't get the 8% raise for going up a facility level, but I have to get out of here. I'm actually kind of looking at that second one to get the gently caress out of here. I won't make it through another summer of this bullshit without going crazy or intentionally driving off the side of a mountain. I think the looming economic downturn would make this a really bad decision though.
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Aug 21, 2019 16:21
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Bruh, just because you have to cheer for the Rockies now, it doesn't make it that much worse. You could be down here and in the city sprawl not being able to find a cheap house anywhere, and pay $8k a year property insurance. In all seriousness, if you were going to quit and get rehired, then do the swap.
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Aug 21, 2019 21:56
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TangoFox posted:Bruh, just because you have to cheer for the Rockies now, it doesn't make it that much worse. You could be down here and in the city sprawl not being able to find a cheap house anywhere, and pay $8k a year property insurance. Quitting isn't really an option, just a perverse fantasy I have. I'm just completely miserable here for a multitude of reasons, work just tops the list. I don't want to get too E/N in here. It's not like you can find cheap houses here either.  That's all the options under $300k. They're pretty much all mediocre condos or houses in really, really bad shape. I can afford more and would be willing to pay more, but the whole thing where I hate it here makes me not want to do that. You're realistically looking at like $400k minimum to get into a decentish house that hasn't been updated since it was built in 1983. I know there are way more expensive places and I knew what the cost of living was before I moved here. The thing where I expected to like it here therefore making the cost of living worth it sadly didn't materialize for me. The other transfers that have transferred back out over the past year or two made a loving killing though.
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Aug 21, 2019 23:33
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Well... I mean, if the market actually crashes then that'll ripple across the real estate markets too. We have a retard who is moving out there now. GFL with him.
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Aug 22, 2019 04:56
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TangoFox posted:Well... I mean, if the market actually crashes then that'll ripple across the real estate markets too. There are price cuts on a whole bunch of houses both here and in KC. I think it has already started. That person will probably end up in my area. They're about to start just stuffing transfers to us because our staffing is poo poo and can't sustain the proposed increase to our daily staffing for next year. We just got someone from ZHU that is apparently just appallingly bad.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:11
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I forgot which thread it was in, but I think it was this one where not too long ago the topic of fix-to-fix clearances came up, and how they don't exist anymore. Well, https://youtu.be/nC-MKCR8Z40 You're welcome.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:24
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My wife is retiring from her controller position in two weeks, and she got to work this morning and found out she was completely unpersoned. Badge doesn’t work, can’t sign in to anything, regional office showed her as “separated from the agency”. Cool. Cool.
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Aug 22, 2019 22:11
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:My wife is retiring from her controller position in two weeks, and she got to work this morning and found out she was completely unpersoned. Badge doesn’t work, can’t sign in to anything, regional office showed her as “separated from the agency”. Cool. Cool. FAA bureaucracy working nominally, I see.
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Aug 22, 2019 22:50
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:My wife is retiring from her controller position in two weeks, and she got to work this morning and found out she was completely unpersoned. Badge doesn’t work, can’t sign in to anything, regional office showed her as “separated from the agency”. Cool. Cool. Early retirement!
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Aug 23, 2019 00:31
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:My wife is retiring from her controller position in two weeks, and she got to work this morning and found out she was completely unpersoned. Badge doesn’t work, can’t sign in to anything, regional office showed her as “separated from the agency”. Cool. Cool. Lucky. Is there a way on flightaware or flightradar24 to pull a playback of arrivals into an airport during a specific timeframe? I know you can do it with individual aircraft but haven't seen if you can do it for everyone going to a particular airport. Tonight was a good highlight of what can and does happen multiple times a day with Denver and I'd love to find a way to capture that.
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Aug 23, 2019 06:41
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TangoFox posted:To be fair, they do. Some do. About half. Those other half should be like the US - Mexico border and free flow people back and forth. If you don't have a training problem, open those loving borders and let us in! wtf you hijacked my mind. I've got some insight to the Jax approach bullshit. People want the Jax area, they go to ZJX. There's LITERALLY a 67% chance you get to go to an area that is a free checkout and you get 6 figure welfare and plug in about...two hours a day on average (honest to god not exaggerating about this poo poo). If you get hosed and get sent to the two areas that carry the entire facility, you actually have a chance of not making it. They don't make it, they fight to stay in the area, and JAX goes "hell yea we'll take 'em!". This is a big reason why sometimes when a fac gets a ZJX person they are an absolute all-star, and others they would just rather send them off to be useful in TMU. Once in a blue moon some person who can't breathe and tie their shoes at the same time washes out in one of those free areas too, but it's rare.
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Aug 24, 2019 18:51
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Tommy 2.0 posted:wtf you hijacked my mind. I've got some insight to the Jax approach bullshit. People want the Jax area, they go to ZJX. There's LITERALLY a 67% chance you get to go to an area that is a free checkout and you get 6 figure welfare and plug in about...two hours a day on average (honest to god not exaggerating about this poo poo). If you get hosed and get sent to the two areas that carry the entire facility, you actually have a chance of not making it. They don't make it, they fight to stay in the area, and JAX goes "hell yea we'll take 'em!". This is a big reason why sometimes when a fac gets a ZJX person they are an absolute all-star, and others they would just rather send them off to be useful in TMU. Once in a blue moon some person who can't breathe and tie their shoes at the same time washes out in one of those free areas too, but it's rare. That's fair. I know a girl who certified 6 months after the academy in ZJX. I know their eastern area on the border with ZMA does like 50% of the traffic. As we've said before, it's like a 2 area center that happens to have 4 other areas. It's nuts the disparity between areas up there. I have an ERR into there and into ZAN. The one thing I can't stand about ZJX controllers is the absolute amount of them who stand their drooling and bang their drum that says "Oh my god we're level 12 the FAA just won't recognize us!!! We are super busy busy busy!" Of course typically the people that say this work in one of the non-busy areas. TangoFox fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Aug 25, 2019 |
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Aug 25, 2019 22:49
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TangoFox posted:That's fair. I know a girl who certified 6 months after the academy in ZJX. I know their eastern area on the border with ZMA does like 50% of the traffic. As we've said before, it's like a 2 area center that happens to have 4 other areas. It's nuts the disparity between areas up there. I have an ERR into there and into ZAN. I was in that area. It's called the North Area. Doesn't actually border ZMA's airspace that much, but there was a little bit of coordination with them with the southbound h/uh. The D Side trainees had more respect than veteran CPCs in the Gulf area. The main area that did deal with ZMA was the Gulf Area and they were just glorified phraseology specialists. I'll put it like this....ever met a controller you could talk poo poo to and say they don't work traffic? That they aren't actually controllers? That's what ANYONE in the facility could say to people in the Gulf Area and those guys would just nod their head and take it. So yeah, the rest of the fac would scream about "we're level 12 give us our money!" yet they were doing less ops then a level 5 tower only that was only open from 9am-7pm and not allowed to have pattern work. The central and east areas are actually less complicated but they are h/uh only, so they would have some volume with their "hi and bye" traffic. The West area is hands down the slowest area in the entire fac but they have 9 sectors like the North, so new trainees try not to go there either. It was pretty common to call the West Area up at 11am on a Wednesday and "West Low" answer. Because they had combined the entire area up on two scopes. It was hilarious watching the West area have to call in MULTIPLE trackers for poo poo our guys would send D sides away for. Nah. I'm not bitter at all about the poo poo show that was ZJX. Tommy 2.0 fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Aug 26, 2019 |
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Aug 26, 2019 03:38
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When one controller goes off station and is replaced by another, what sort of things do they tell the new controller in the briefing? How would the briefing vary between e.g. a sleepy delta and a busy bravo?
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Aug 26, 2019 04:58
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Sagebrush posted:When one controller goes off station and is replaced by another, what sort of things do they tell the new controller in the briefing? In the center we have a couple things that are required (adjacent airspace configuration, status of equipment, weather, etc) that are the same every time, but after the general status is done, you go plane by plane giving a brief description of what’s going on. If I’m leaving the next guy with any specific traffic conflicts that I was working on I’ll generally make sure to mention them, and what my intent was if I was already working on it. If the relieving controller has any questions, you answer them. If both controllers know each other relatively well, a position relief briefing can be really, really quick, even when the sector is busy. When it’s REALLY busy, you’ll see a relieving controller stand behind the position for a twenty seconds or a minute before getting a briefing, to get a feel for what’s going on. A good controller will also stand behind the new controller for a similar period before they leave to make sure they didn’t miss anything.
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Aug 26, 2019 12:22
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Anyone work at Atlanta TRACON? How is it?
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Aug 31, 2019 17:36
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Finally gotta my first goddamn certs. Only took 4 months and an extension (one of my trainers wanted me to see more, busy traffic). With the number of trainees we've got on the floor now, the number upstairs, and the average number of training hours we get a day, I'm looking forward to certifying in 2029. Could always wash out, go to a tower, and certify three times as quickly!  My cousin can't wrap her head around how slow training is at a center (she's in a tower). A lot of trainees are getting crap for hours due to staffing issues. Apparently, management was going to start denying trainee leave requests unless they had reached their training minimums for the week. That didn't last long. We also lost a guy I went to the academy with. Washed at about 60% of his hours into training for D1. They're sending him to the nest. E: vvvv I'm at ZSE its all nice on rice fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Sep 14, 2019 |
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Sep 14, 2019 17:14
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Congrats! Where did you end up, again? ZMA just got briefed that we start CPDLC training in May. Of 2020. Which means that the shutdown moved that program back MORE THAN A YEAR. I continue to be absolutely astonished by how poor management is here.
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Sep 14, 2019 17:18
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its all nice on rice posted:Finally gotta my first goddamn certs. Congrats! That's always a huge weight off the shoulders. I was back in KC last week and visited the center. I've talked to the ATM and facrep about my TMU bid as well as my ERR. I basically just assume the ERR is dead in the water at this point, but both tell me I should be at the very top of the list for the TMU bid. I stop by TMU while I'm there and one of my old sups that is in TMU now basically tells me to give up hope as they can pretty much never get the needed deviations to hire anyone they want to. So I'm pretty bummed about that. It's pretty hosed when you can't even move on anything that isn't a sup bid. I obviously haven't heard anything official yet, but I'm not expecting much at this point. I did just put in for a staff support job at Denver tower because why the gently caress not?
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Sep 17, 2019 01:20
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Job portability is hilariously broken in this system. If you can find a facility that needs/wants you, you should be able to go on your own timeline. If they can’t staff a facility because it’s too busy, underpaid, and located in
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Sep 17, 2019 15:42
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Yeah, it's super broken. I don't even know what I do at this point to be honest. One of the reasons I came here is that I knew I'd be able to get out if I didn't like it for whatever reason. But nope, I'm stuck. Apparently can't bid out on non-sup bids, can't ERR, can't swap any more, nothing. I know that none of this is solely on the union, but the thing where they've assisted in getting to where we are now with this stuff has some of my saltiness focused in their direction. This NCEPT stuff alone is loving stupid and I can't believe they agreed with the latest revision.
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Sep 17, 2019 19:38
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I’ve been at my facility almost seven years now. I’ve been a CPC for ~four of those years. Today I walk in and get told to report to the QA office for a mandatory briefing. The title of this briefing? “The ATSAP process, a briefing for Developmental candidates.” This is the biggest waste of time I’ve seen at this agency, which is an agency that is always striving to perfect the art of wasting time and resources.
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Oct 4, 2019 18:16
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Yeah but did you die?
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Oct 4, 2019 18:31
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MrYenko posted:I’ve been at my facility almost seven years now. I’ve been a CPC for ~four of those years. Today I walk in and get told to report to the QA office for a mandatory briefing. I got that either earlier this year or late last year.
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Oct 4, 2019 19:14
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Headquarters likes to pass down the dumbest poo poo for mandatory face-to-face briefing items.
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Oct 4, 2019 22:25
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There was a plane up in Canada today with the ADS-B identifier ANUSTART. Thought the limit was 7 characters, but, sure enough, it was there.
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Oct 7, 2019 23:32
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I assume they meant A New Start? Otherwise they could have just gone with ASS42069
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Oct 9, 2019 03:00
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Yeah, it's a joke from Arrested Development.
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Oct 9, 2019 03:03
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Ugh, I'm sensing a conflict brewing between my flight school and our air traffic controllers because a certain subset of our instructors and students can't handle being told they've done something wrong without bitching about the controllers being "unprofessional" and "condescending." From the controllers' side, what's the answer in terms of teaching new pilots (and maybe older pilots, and co-workers) to realize that we're not in competition with ATC, and we both in fact want the same thing: safe, orderly flight? I've basically been teaching "you're going to make mistakes, they're going to make mistakes, just be polite and considerate and work to fix the loving mistakes and don't get your ego involved." Some of this poo poo ends up with literal days of instructor whinging as a result, and I believe it's fully ridiculous.
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Oct 13, 2019 15:54
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PT6A posted:Ugh, I'm sensing a conflict brewing between my flight school and our air traffic controllers because a certain subset of our instructors and students can't handle being told they've done something wrong without bitching about the controllers being "unprofessional" and "condescending." What are the issues?
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Oct 14, 2019 03:16
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PT6A posted:From the controllers' side, what's the answer in terms of teaching new pilots (and maybe older pilots, and co-workers) to realize that we're not in competition with ATC, and we both in fact want the same thing: safe, orderly flight? My wife worked a smaller tower so it may have been different, but having pilots come tour the tower so they could see what was actually happening on the other end (and just talk shop with the people on the other end of the radio) helped a lot. Similarly, the controllers held somewhat regular “pilot meetings” where a few would go to the school/airfield and talk about what was being done and (more importantly) why. Bonus points if the controllers could get some time flying in a cockpit to get some additional perspective. There are always going to be some rear end in a top hat pilots, and rear end in a top hat controllers, but most people will be fairly reasonable if they can reach a point where they realize “the other guy” isn’t a complete moron who’s just trying to ruin your day.
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Oct 14, 2019 14:54
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WithoutTheFezOn posted:...a complete moron who’s just trying to ruin your day. But enough talking about managers.
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Oct 14, 2019 15:34
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Bidding season is the best. There was just an unironic "slap in the face" in an email exchange about how slow we're bidding.
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Oct 17, 2019 21:41
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fknlo posted:Bidding season is the best. There was just an unironic "slap in the face" in an email exchange about how slow we're bidding. You’re not the only ones who have members who think bid season is the single most important thing in the universe, if that makes you feel any better.
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Oct 18, 2019 20:44
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MrYenko posted:You’re not the only ones who have members who think bid season is the single most important thing in the universe, if that makes you feel any better. Oh I know. There was always drama at ZKC too. They went to a bid schedule this year and our area rep says that we'll be doing the same here next year. I get it and it's annoying when someone takes a couple days to bid, but people get way too mad about it.
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Oct 18, 2019 22:44
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