zoraniko
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Mar 24, 2026 3:18 AM
zoraniko
1114
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scribbydibbydo
The amount of empathy here shows great character and ability to comprehend things beyond ourselves. This is how we should respond to Everyone’s mistakes. Even the trumpets.
Pelican3
I blame Ronald Reagan
TheFastpaws
Trump and the GOP caused this problem. They’ve been gutting things for years and the latest shit has made it even worse. This poor man will now have to live with this for the rest of his life.
deaththeunholy
One guy in the tower dealing with another emergency on the ground. Seems like they should have paid for at least 2 ATCs to be on shift at any one moment in-case theres emergencies they don’t want to get worse?
ePluribus
Those brave souls who Push Tin deserve so much more than they ever get. This man did the very best he could in a sh*t-sandwich situation, and innocent people paid a price. But he's still going to be broken, and after situations like this, ATCs often get rostered off on 'indefinite leave' or just flat-out quit. There's no coming back from this, for people with good souls.
freakdiablo
That sigh after "You can sort that out with your ramp..." I felt that. This is going to sit heavy with him for a long, long time.
meganical
The lack of air traffic controllers and how overworked they are under the current administration is a big reason why I refuse to fly on an airplane for now
Totallycasual
JFC those stupid captions are terrible at the best of times, so much worse on a serious topic.
Clockworkdancerobot
This is just one disaster in many set in motion over a LONG time.
NVGoddesscottage
They should all go home until Trump resigns and a new president sets up TEAL FREE EDUCATION to vastly increase the number of flight controllers to make things safe.
odevon96538339
I am kind of surprised the fire truck driver did not look both ways before crossing the runway, even after obtaining clearance. I don’t know a thing about aviation but I would think they would have seen the plane in the distance and have had time to react.
umlcat
I have seen this many times. It seems like drivers for long hours sort of get stuck with looking forward ...
pompoikpoik
They'll probably explain this is Biden s fault
durandal2
I feel like it is very important context to remember that it was only THIS SINGLE GUY, the ONLY ATC in the tower, NO backup or relief, managing both air and ground traffic at La Guardia!!
TheAnswerWasAlwaysMoreLube
Are you telling me that every plane has at least two pilots while the air traffic controller of the 19th-busiest airport in the United States only is one guy? That sounds wild.
theblondeone
Wait, he was working by himself? WITH an additional emergency onsite? JFC...
dripstone
the thing is he also had to quickly put this out of his mind so that he could continue to direct incoming flights to go around because the airport was now shutdown so as not to make things worse.
freakdiablo
One thing I've heard repeatedly is it's SOP to immediately remove the controller and have someone else take over. Partly, yes they have to do a drug and alcohol test, see if they're physically fit. But also, yeah, now he's emotionally compromised. Leaving him in play is going to continue to strain him. Having no one to cover him just shows how fucked it is.
dripstone
One of the things that I expect to come out is that there was no one else to take over. That shift apparently only had two people on duty and they didn't even know which controller was doing what.
Filanwizard
Having someone work tower and ground solo may work fine at some airports, I am sure up at Stewart in Newburg or Bradley up in Connecticut that is fine at 12am. But the FAA should know better than to try it at the Royal Clusterfuck of Queens aka La Guardia.
yeahhedugit
https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1ZndmN3JldXM1MGU0Ym83OXEzaGZxN2psbjBycXh5dTRjcHJreng5diZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/I3WAJgc0J61Xxkff5o/200w.webp
FlintNorth44
The trump regime is to blame with all of the cuts. Never let them forget.
mstalltree
air traffic controller is one of the hardest jobs on earth.
yeahhedugit
And then they cut the workforce and increase the hours.
TheAnswerWasAlwaysMoreLube
You could double my pay and I would never do it. Way too much stress and pressure, along with bad, non-flexible work hours. Top that off with little credit for their work.
vwzzjxv6f9101
I feel for the man but he should go to prison. Two people died on his watch so far. This is a tacit admission of guilt.
I’ve been in aviation over 42 year. I’ve had my share of mistakes but no one has died or been injured as a result. It’s a big burden to carry. Millions of lives are on the line daily mistakes do carry consequences. 😩
CorrectMostOfTheTime
Reagan started the cluster and trump and crew exacerbated it. This administration is solely responsible
Totallycasual
If you have had your share of mistakes but nobody died from them, it just means you got very lucky, or more importantly the people around you were very lucky that your mistake didn't kill them. This person was massively overloaded if the early discussions are anything to go by, but i think we all need to take a step back and let the investigations run their course without political interference.
vwzzjxv6f9101
No politics here just action have consequences.
anthropogenicentropy
You can't just say "no politics" after saying something political. Do you not think prosecuting attorney or judge are political positions?
Targe0
They have always been over worked and under paid, and during this administration it has only gotten worse.
neospor1n
Currently. Over worked and not paid.
elvianempire
only DHS is shut down, so only TSA is affected. ATC is not affected currently. but every time there is a shutdown, as there was at the beginning of the year, more personnel quits.
Targe0
And because it's a job that requires extremely high standards, there are not a lot of viable candidates that can be hired every year.
And that's a problem because every airport needs a fair number of them working at any given time.
So any that quite or retire tend to remove a large portion of the industries work force.
SortaSordid
Reagan fired 11,345 ATCs in 1981, the profession has never recovered from that. Today there are too few of them to handle the workload event like this are to be expected now. https://www.npr.org/2021/08/05/1025018833/looking-back-on-when-president-reagan-fired-air-traffic-controllers
Frederf
There's a reason why DCA is "National Airport" amongst controllers.
sentx
I had no idea it was Bill Clinton who renamed it after Reagan.
VictusVonGuyver
Newark Airport is a special case too with budget cuts. The FAA opted to dismiss the staff at Newark airport's control tower for radar and coordination. So they rely on the Internet along with the duties passed into the Philadelphia International Airport staff to relay all that information.
If the Internet fails, the connection is cut, or something else interrupts communication, it becomes chaos. Instead of two towers with reliable staff, we have one tower overworked trying to have two airports
nicetomeetyouimdad
Doesn’t help that you can’t be older than 31 to become an ATC unless you go military first
elvianempire
that doesn't matter, as the number of applicants vastly outnumber the spots available for training each year.
Zyrixion
Once again, it all goes back to Ronald Fucking Reagan.
yamsonyamsonyams
His niece fae isnt so bad tho
Comet260
I HATE that fucker.
ArchMagos
https://youtu.be/6lIqNjC1RKU?si=4mVPqL8tMQA5xrBm
GregoryLies
As far as im concerned, the trump administration is explicitly responsible for these deaths by refusing to fund the government and firing qualified personnel. This is ultimately Trump's fault.
Margrave9000
Should be top comment under any disaster.
Thorbane
Eh, this is probably more of a symptom of the general paralysis that's been going on since the GOP decided they wanted to play obstructionist in the Obama years. Oh, and Reagan. We just don't have the capacity to train enough controllers, and haven't for a long time.
Comet260
AND the fuckers that voted for that shitstain. I'll never forgive them. Ever.
Margrave9000
All 160 million of them have blood on their hands.
GregoryLies
Our fellow citizens, normal non-nazi federal employees, should not be weighed down seeing their own survival and the survival of their families and peers hanging in the balance for Trumps' malignant political gains.
GregoryLies
They should be able to concentrate on their work, not be overworked, and be able to trust the people around them can do the same and that none of them were shafted into positions with responsibilities they werent readyand trained for to fill shoes of people wrongfully fired because of a bunch of white supremacist fearmongering.
louster
GregoryTrues
Sylvetrix
IIRC ATCs have one of the highest suicide rates of any profession 🙁
Filanwizard
I would drive the jet fuel tanker around a busy airport before I would ever go up in that tower and be ATC. Hell I will even push farther, I would drive the honey wagon before I would do ATC.
JackieTreehornProductions
Dentists I think. ATCs have some of the highest rates of alcoholism, divorce however when I wrote a paper on it following the Reagan fiasco.
DukeSliscus
Photographers are up there too ( because of war journalists and other international journalists being exposed to a lot of horrific shit regularly)
MrsSlavicHorse
I thought veterinarians were pretty high up there at some point, it makes sense though, seeing people being horrible to animals and having access to the drugs
IHaveGreatKittenRecipes
Plus the people who just dispose of the animal the first time it isn't perfectly insta worthy. My childhood family vet had a rotating cast of a half dozen office cats that people had brought in and demanded be put down for simple shit like peeing outside the box or clawing furniture. He convinced them not to kill it, took the cat, and it lived in the office with the other cats. They were all adoptable and usually found homes. That has to destroy a bit of your soul, seeing people do that.
battery1979
Dentist, ATC, and I think Police were top three when I went to ATC school in 2001.
TAMUhowdy82
Veterinary professionals have about the highest suicide rate
frozenlake247
Makes me think of the MASH war versus hell quote.
“There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.”
LazerSpacePirate
Surgeons are up there too :/
PrincessBatCat
Wait, why dentist?
DukeSliscus
Imagine if every person who came into your office hated being there and lied to you every time you asked them a question, and you have proof of there lie and you have to be professional and not call too much attention to it.
JackieTreehornProductions
Nobody likes them. The dread seeing them, going, fear, etc. It wears on them mentally.
frozenlake247
I imagine that’s compounded by the “why would that be hard on them” issue. Being effectively socially ostracized but having it dismissed & unrecognized is especially hard. Even worse it’s hard to explain to others bc people aren’t saying the negative stuff outright or even aware that they are transferring their issues to the person.
So a “successful” dentist that wanted to do something good and help people is seeing fear and resentment from the people they are trying to help all day everyday.
PrincessBatCat
Ah, that makes sense.
shalafi71
You just heard a man destroyed. I forgive him. He will never forgive himself. And no, no amount of fucking counseling will make it up.
demosteness
That’s a man that has a heart. He will never forget it but he’ll have to learn to love and accept the imperfection of life and himself.
battery1979
That's why I never made it past ground control qualification.
SideBoobsWillGetYouBanned
Yes it can. Counseling and therapy will help enormously. I don't understand why people disregard the impact it can have. Feels like an American thing
frozenlake247
Note: The “American thing” isn’t just limited to access or other administrative aspects either. Therapy in the US also suffers a lot of the same flaws as the society in general. It’s often profit motivated (often more about keeping you going than actually helping), overly influenced by religion, ableist (esp about not recognizing or disregarding the affects of disabilities and systemic issues), and prone to operating on an assumption of national exceptionalism.
QueenOfTheFey
Yeah, it's definitely an American thing.
My dad had a mental break after decades of trauma resulting in the worst case of ptsd the WCB office in our city had ever seen. Therapy became his new job. He went 5 days a week for a year, and then slowly dropped down to the point where he's retired. He'll never be able to go back to work, but he's able to function as a person again, even if he still has bad days. That's not something to be dismissed.
Forensickle
When "no amount" is actually "the amount you can afford" rather than "all you actually need", then I really do understand people that think that.
Especially knowing that with therapy it usually does get worse before it gets better, and if you run out of funds/access to therapy during that phase it's pretty damn easy to come to the conclusion that it was at best pointless, and at worst needlessly antagonistic
SideBoobsWillGetYouBanned
Even worse.. Sometimes I honestly forget that there are places where you actually can't afford something as important as therapy. I wrote the above with the assumption you'd get the help you need regardless of sessions or expertise needed.
Forensickle
And it's not just the US. That has happened to me, in a country with "free" healthcare. For mental health "free" is actually 10 sessions discounted by $110, which depending on the psych leaves a gap of $80-120ish usually. After 10 sessions it goes to full rate of around $200. So best case you have 8 and a half hours with a therapist to be completely recovered (if you have the $800 still)
SideBoobsWillGetYouBanned
Uff, sorry to hear that. When I was in therapy I paid at max $8 per session without a limit as long as the therapist felt it necessary to keep going. Didn't matter what kind of specialist I spoke to. Mental health should be as covered as physical health for everyone everywhere.
We live in a strange world
Vortexhelios320
I just hope that he knows to (and is able to) reach out if/when he needs to. It won't make it up, but it can still help to not be alone.
shalafi71
Better to have someone's ear, agreed, but he'll take this day to his grave. I feel awful for him. So fucking smart and professional, one slip, two deaths, millions in damage, airport closed, every nightmare come true for such a man.
frozenlake247
And in fairness he should carry it with him. We all should. The fact that airports haven’t been shutting down since the first completely preventable and predictable disasters last year is an indictment of ALL of us.
No I don’t hold this person particularly responsible for this disaster and neither should they.
That said every single person that chooses to fly in the US or enables this system to keep limping on in these conditions is complicit and should carry that responsibility.
Vortexhelios320
Does anyone know any details yet of what actually happened? All my sources are just giving the basics. I would imagine that if there was ANYTHING in the slightest that might help him to not blame himself entirely, it would be shown in the investigation.
I know it would just be a grain of sand moved on the scale of guilt, but...
TankardHoot
Tower was preoccupied with a United craft reporting fumes making some of the crew nauseous. There wasn't a gate available so they were deciding if they needed air stairs. Crew started reporting it was becoming an emergency. The fire team was crossing the airfield to assist. Tower saw the fire truck too late and radioed for them to stop but they were already crossing the runway in front of the CRJ. https://youtu.be/Pbm-QJAAzNY Tower audio.
Vortexhelios320
Damn. As a layman, from the sound of it it seems like he was made to do too much at once, still saw the problem right before it happened and did everything he could. He may have even prevented it from getting worse.
shalafi71
These professionals hold themselves to high standards. "It's my fault.", is the default. And what many don't get is, that's a fair way to live. No excuses, no one else to blame, if an error occurred on your watch, it's on you. You could have done something different, ANYTHING different to have avoided the outcome. I find it easier to live with than passing blame.
frozenlake247
This. There can also be a level of catharsis in freely and openly “owning” reasonable guilt/responsibility. I think a lot of the world misunderstands how much of the emotional/mental burdens we carry has just as much to do with attempting to shrug off or dodge those feelings as with taking on guilt that we don’t deserve.
Vortexhelios320
Oh, definitely. But aside from this pesky sympathy and empathy combo that I still can't find a way to turn off, "it's my fault" mentality has the cruel downside of causing good people to wear down faster in this imperfect world while the "never my fault" people can keep going and cause problems. The world needs as many good people as it can get, so all I can do is hope that this person finds enough solace to stay in it.