Daryl Campbell
Appearances
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
It seems as though the communication issues between first officers and captains in regards to assertiveness is possibly the number one contributing factor to commercial airline crashes in history. And it has not been solved.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
This dynamic between captains and first officers is one of maybe the leading cause of commercial airline crashes in history. It's not the sole cause of the crash, but had someone asserted themselves, the plane might not have gone down.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
The training could be improved because right now it's terrible.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
There is a void in some training programs. You said it was bad. It is bad. The outcome is bad. It's bad.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
My name's Daryl Campbell. I'm an aviation safety writer for The Verge and author of Fatal Abstraction, how the manager of... Fuck shit, I fucked that up. All right, we got it out of the way. I'll do it again. Why the managerial class loses control of software.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
So you've probably seen some of the news articles about it. And it's really, again, only in the last couple of months, because everybody's been paying attention to aviation safety, that people are really saying, oh my gosh, there's the Newark airport. They're losing the ability to see airplanes. They're losing radar for minutes at a time.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
And that's not something you want to hear when you've got airplanes flying towards each other at 300 miles an hour. So it is rightfully very concerning. But the thing is, what's been happening at Newark has actually been happening for almost a decade and a half. And it's in sort of fits and starts. It'll get really bad and then it'll get better again.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
But now we're seeing a combination of air traffic control problems. We're seeing a combination of infrastructure problems. And they've got a runway that's entirely shut down. And the way that I think about it is, you know, while Newark is its own special case today...
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
All of the problems that it's facing, other than the runway, are problems that every single airport in the entire country is going to be facing over the next five to ten years. And so we're really getting a preview of what's going to happen if we don't see some drastic change in the way that the air traffic control system is maintained.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
So the first problem is just one of staff retention and training. So on the one hand, the air traffic control system and the people who work there, they're a pretty dedicated bunch, but it just takes a long time to get up to the point where you're actually entrusted with airplanes.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
So it can be up to four years of training from the moment that you decide, okay, I want to be an air traffic controller.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
So couple that with the fact that these are government employees and like many other agencies, they haven't really gotten the cost of living increases to keep pace with the actual cost of living, especially in places like the New York, New Jersey area, where it's just gone up way faster than in the rest of the country.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
Yeah, I think the cost of living is still outpacing the replacement level at a lot of these air traffic control centers. And then the washout rate, just of the people who are learning for the first time, is actually pretty high. We've seen the average staffing level at a lot of American airports get down below 85%, 80%, which is really where the FAA wants it to be.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
And it's getting worse over time. And then at Newark in particular, it's down to about 58%, I think, as of the first quarter of this year. So this is an emergency level of staffing at a baseline. And then on top of that, you have, in order to keep the airplanes going, you've got people working mandatory overtime.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
mandatory six-day-a-week shifts, and that's just accelerating that burnout that naturally happens. So there's just a lot of compression and a lot of bad things happening independently, but all at the same time in that kind of labor system that's really making it difficult to both hire and retain qualified air traffic controllers.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
Yeah, and, you know, to his credit, they have announced some improvements on it. They've announced a lot of new funding for the FAA. They've announced an acceleration of hiring, but it's just a short-term fix. So to put it in context, the FAA's budget usually allocates about $1.7 billion in maintenance fees every year.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
And so they've announced a couple more billion dollars, but their backlog is already $5.2 billion in maintenance. And these are things like replacing outdated systems, replacing buildings that are housing some of these radars, things that you really need to...
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
just get the system to where it should be operating today, let alone get ahead of the maintenance things that are going to happen over the next couple of years. And it's really this fight between the FAA and Congress where everybody's willing to have a photo op to say, yeah, we're going to do a lot today to fix these problems.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
The captain has made a decision. The first officer understands it's wrong. But the first officer doesn't have the ability to speak up about it.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
And it works for a little while. But then three years down the road, the same problems are really still occurring. You got that one time shot of new money, but then the government cuts back again and again and again. And then you're really just kind of putting out one fire, but not addressing sort of the root cause of why there's all this dry powder everywhere.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
So there's really no silver bullet, and all the choices are, let's say, not great to actively bad at baseline. So number one is you get the government to pay what it actually costs to run the air traffic control system. That empirically has not happened for decades, so I don't know that we're going to get to do it, especially under this administration, which is really focused on cutting costs.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
The second thing is pass on fees to flyers themselves. So that sort of $1,500 that we charge in the US, maybe that gets bumped up to $5,000. But then airlines are going to pass that on to the customer. And it's just like the conversation that, you know, Walmart's having with tariffs is that, you know, they don't want to do it.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
When they try to pass it on to the customer, President Trump yells at them and it's just not a great situation. The third option is to just reduce the number of flights in the sky. I mean, part of this is that airlines are just competing to have the most flights, the most convenient schedules, the most options for your routing.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
And that's really just led to this log jam at places like Newark, where you really have these constraints on it. I mean, right before all of this stuff happens, Newark was serving about 80 airplanes an hour. So 80 landings and takeoffs. Today, the FAA has actually started to admit restrictions on it, and now it's closer to 56 flights an hour.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
And that's probably the level that it can actually handle and not have these issues where you've got radars coming out and planes actually becoming in danger. But no airline wants to hear, hey, you have to cut your flight schedule.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
And in fact, we saw that with United, that their CEO was saying that the air traffic controllers who took trauma leave had walked off the job, which seemed to suggest that he didn't think they should be taking trauma leave because just got to have more planes coming in. And yeah, that's a competitive disadvantage for him. But you've also got to balance safety. I mean, you know, it's...
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
It's difficult to understand. It costs a lot of money to fix. This is your textbook why governments fail case study. And it's not really reassuring that, you know, in 24 hours I'm going to be in the middle of it again trying to fly out of Newark.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
Yeah. Oh, man. Well, that's what the schedule says. Let's see what time I actually get out.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
His book is called Fatal Abstraction, How the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software.
Today, Explained
A comedian tries to fix aviation
Sully announces the decision to attempt a landing in the Hudson River.