Now that’s scary

I didn’t need another reason not to visit the US, but the news has produced an unexpected one.

CNN reports: “Air traffic controllers in Philadelphia were guiding planes to Newark Liberty International Airport [the second busiest airport in New York] in New Jersey last week when communications suddenly crashed.

“For at least 90 seconds, controllers lost the ability to see planes on radar scopes and for a minute they could not communicate with pilots.”

The April 28 outage impacted information coming from radars located at a facility in New York, where the air traffic controllers used to manage flights heading to Newark.

Control over the airspace was transferred to Philadelphia in July. The radars are now operated using a remote line the source described as “a long extension cord”.

Similar outages have happened twice before.

About 15 to 20 flights were being controlled when communication and radar went down.

No crashes occurred, but at least five staff needed to take 45 days of trauma leave afterwards.

Their jobs are highly stressful at the best of times.

New air traffic control applicants must be younger than 31 years old so they can work the mandatory 20 or 25 years needed to qualify for pensions before their mandatory retirement age of 56.

They can’t work beyond that because so much physical stamina and mental sharpness is needed to perform the job.

So imagine how much panic and distress those 90 seconds of zero communication must have sparked for them to need counselling.

You think of the US as being the leader of the first world, equipped with all the latest resources.. 

But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the system used to manage air traffic at Newark is “incredibly old”.

“We use floppy disks. We use copper wires,” he said. “The system that we’re using is not effective to control the traffic that we have in the airspace today.”

Floppy disks. Seriously?

Count me out. Well, that’s melodramatic. I counted myself out months ago, when the new President was elected.

Not that he has anything to do with the floppy disk situation, but fixing it should be a much bigger priority than ridiculous stuff like reopening Alcatraz as a maximum security prison, reversing the ban on plastic straws and using AI to generate images of yourself as the Pope.

The outlook for the US inbound travel industry is already dire. Visitor numbers are absolutely tanking.

Australian visitor levels to the US fell by 7% in March compared with the same time last year, Germany is down 28%, Spain 25%, the United Kingdom 18% and South Korea 15%, just to name a few.

But the President has dismissed concerns.

“Tourism’s doing very well,” he told ABC News.

That’s about as ill-considered as his AI generated image on May the Fourth of himself as a Star Wars character wielding a red light sabre.

Or maybe that WAS considered. Who knows during these crazy times.

Song of the day: Divinyls “Boys in town – get me out of here”