Summary

The Trump administration emailed air traffic controllers urging them to quit and accept buyouts 24 hours after a fatal Reagan plane crash.

At 8:30 p.m. Thursday, the email urged federal employees to pursue private-sector jobs, offering pay incentives and vacation benefits while on government payroll.

This program contradicts established rules by allowing second employment, sparking union concerns about losing experienced personnel amid an air traffic controller shortage.

Trump blamed previous administrations for safety issues and misrepresented FAA standards, intensifying culture wars as officials remain uncertain about the buyout program’s future.

  • UpperBroccoli@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    19 hours ago

    If their aim is to kill as many Americans as possible, they are doing a superb job. By that metric, Trump is the best president of all times.

    • Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      I do hope the majority who get canned and who suffer voted for him. Everyone else, including myself, I feel sorry for and hope we can either ride it out or get out. His supporters should go down with the ship poor and depleted.

    • kembik@lemm.ee
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      18 hours ago

      Seems like he’s going for maximum damage, bet he gets a Russian airlift from the white house just before it crumbles.

  • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    In an apparent attempt to ignite the culture wars and further discredit the FAA, Trump falsely claimed that the agency’s website lists individuals with “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism” as “qualified” applicants for the air controller position, CBS News reported.

    Wait. Wait…

    and dwarfism

    Okay. Everything in his claim is wholesale made up, but what could possibly be wrong with an air traffic controller having dwarfism? There is nothing inherent about that condition that should preclude a person from being able to do this job. Many ATC coordinate flights traveling through Class A airspace, which is way up in the stratosphere, using computers. They might need a higher seat or something to reach the controls, but that’s it.

    Trump genuinely thinks air traffic controllers just stare out windows all day, doesn’t he? And because he says this, now ignorant people will be imagining that their plane is coordinated by a little person in a tower, standing on their tippy toes.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      19 hours ago

      Trump genuinely thinks air traffic controllers just stare out windows all day, doesn’t he? And because he says this, now ignorant people will be imagining that their plane is coordinated by a little person in a tower, standing on their tippy toes.

      Given that Airports were key to our victory over the British literally a century before Airplanes were invented… Probably

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    17 hours ago

    Would be funny if all remaining ATCs decided to quit and get a job on a different country. Take the land route to Canada or Mexico, or a ship to elsewhere.

    • kent_eh
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      17 hours ago

      Maybe they could give AirForce1 some “special” instructions as their last duty before being kicked out of the building?

  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Ah yes, just what we need right now… FEWER controllers in an industry that’s already short-staffed, and with two very recent fatal plane crashes. Perfect fucking idea.

  • cabron_offsets@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    You know what, fuck it. I hope they quit. Let’s accelerate this whole bullshit to its conclusion as fast as possible. Seems to me the only way through this fascist hellscape is by pissing off enough people to provoke a popular response.

    • Rooty@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Accelerationism is helping the enemy. You should be doing the exact opposite - resisting, rallying and counterattacking.

    • Bloodyhog@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      A lot of people had this attitude in Russia. Let the evil guys run the country to the ground, and then rebuild into a better structure. This will happen, I think, the only problem is that can take decades and millions of people dead in the process. No suggestions here, just a note…

      • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        I think you underestimate just exactly how popular Putin is with the Russian people, or I should say was originally. I don’t think he’s as popular now because of the “police action” in Ukraine and the number of Russians who have died to it and the economic hit the country has taken as a result of it. But he was insanely popular with the Russian populace through most of the 2010s.

        • Bloodyhog@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          Your point does not contradict mine, unfortunately. He was and is popular. Maybe a little less so now, but he would win fair elections now, I think. The line many people in Russia take is “he is the only one who could take us out of this mess. Without him the country will collapse”. And there are, of course, a lot who wholeheartedly support his imperial ambitions, just like there are plenty of magas in the US.

        • FanciestPants@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Didn’t he win his last election with something like 94% of the vote. The dude is outrageously popular… or there might be something else going on.

    • Nalivai@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Accelerationism is the stupidest idea ever. Shit being fucked is the natural state of things, and if you just let it slide, it will gradually come to it and stay there forever.

  • ultranaut@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Given the persistent and extreme understaffing of air traffic controllers it wouldn’t take that many quitting at the same time to have a massive impact.

    • athairmor@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      What do the think is going to happen? Privatize air traffic control? Or just rank the economy so bad they buy everything up?

      • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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        5 hours ago

        They absolutely want to privatize it.

        And there will be many more plane crashes when they do.

      • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        That has already been suggested by his minions. Let the airlines manage everything. Including baggage and body checking.

        Oh god, the very idea…

        • nova_ad_vitum
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          6 hours ago

          Even if that’s your goal getting ATCs to simply quit all at once isn’t the way to go about it lol. I hope it works. It’ll ground all flights and cripple the country and bring this stupidity to it’s conclusion quickly.

      • goldteeth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        Well the cynic in me says “to undermine the public trust in the safety of air travel so people become more isolated, unwilling to organize, and dependent on either corporate-controlled media or gasoline-powered cars to maintain contact with any part of the world outside a 20-mile radius,” and the nutjob conspiracy theorist in me sure thinks he could make a convincing corkboard out of it if you gave him enough thumb tacks and red string, but once again I could be making the mistake of assuming they’re going into this with a plan and not just flailing wildly to make it look like they’re addressing a problem they have no idea how to solve.

        • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          In Hungary, Fidesz just either forces the media to not report on protests until they can get a picture where they can pretend only a few people attended, or they send the “football fans” (skinheads) in.

        • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          just flailing wildly to make it look like they’re addressing a problem they have no idea how to solve.

          Yeah, rumor goes this started because the FAA had issues with Starship blowing up and raining debris, and Musk deciding to teach them a lesson.

          • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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            22 hours ago

            It’s more that SpaceX has consistently lied on the forms that it gave the FAA, EPA, etc and have been cited multiple times. (See the saga about the blast deflection plate and the deluge water being industrial runoff they were letting drain into the nearby protected wetlands)

            The starship exploding thing was a proverbial slap on the wrist and Elon still threw a fit.

          • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            The thing is that the Starship issue really isn’t that big a deal. There is always an FAA investigation after every spacecraft or aircraft flight anomaly.

            It’s not the first time and definitely won’t be the last that a craft will fail to get to orbit, especially experimental ones like Starship units current iterative form.

            The bigger question with the Starship anomaly is whether the active flight routes in that area during the launch window were normal or unexpected. Closer to the launch site there are large restricted areas, and launches are negotiated ahead of time and paths well known. Planes aren’t normally under the direct flight path for that exact reason.

      • silly_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        He could totally intend to privatise ATC. They’re already halfway done with privatising education, and there’s no need to even mention healthcare.

  • .Donuts@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    How does it go again? “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity”

    The fact that they are using these tragic events as a means to dismantle the government even more quickly is horrifying to watch from the other end of the pond.

  • xapr [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 days ago

    I see that Trump is trying to reduce US carbon output by drastically reducing commercial air traffic, either by simple lack of air traffic controllers or by making the public too scared to fly! Quite the environmentalist! /s