American aviation is near collapse?

verstandhandel

no paywall: https://archive.ph/20260323153943/https://www.theatlantic.co...

SecretDreams

The final paragraph is maybe the most relevant. It goes well beyond just aviation. I'm sure we've all felt this. > The ICE deployment is a particularly extreme example of what the political scientist Steven M. Teles has dubbed “kludgeocracy,” in which the government reaches for short-term, improvised solutions while resisting real reform. “‘Clumsy but temporarily effective,’” Teles has written, “also describes much of American public policy. For any particular problem we have arrived at the most gerry-rigged, opaque and complicated response.” The U.S. aviation system has been held together by such patches for years, but the kludges may finally be failing.

mikkupikku

I'm not saying the article's thesis is wrong, much of it rings true to me, but we have very comprehensive data and statistics concerning air travel so I'm deeply unimpressed by this article instead hanging its argument on a hodgepodge list of incidents instead of digging into the data to get some proper numbers.

ryandrake

Just a standard warning to readers: when you use an archive.ph (or other archive.today) link, you risk your computer's resources being used to participate in a DDOS against another web site, as reported/discussed recently on HN[1]. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46624740

Someone1234

A lot of core services in the US are near collapse, because society focuses on short-term value extraction, over long term success. If you look at the US's history, there was a much better balance between the two (with the core being seen as a lever towards future wealth). You see this in education, infrastructure, public health, scientific research, housing, and energy. All foundational systems of a society, which compound the value of everything else, but they aren't immediate profit centers so kick the ball down the road. It is an attitude problem first and foremost; and I'm not sure how you fix that . PS - This also impacts private enterprise, like corporations. Enshittify their current offerings for the next quarter bump but ruin their brand reputation/long-term viability.

nimbius

it is a perfect storm: - deregulation of airlines in the 1980s led to rampant consolidation of routes and SPOF hubs that only work for revenue purposes and offer no real resilience in traffic planning. over-subscription of flights and lack of any real competition compounds this issue. - climate change and global warming increasingly exacerbate severe weather conditions that ground aircraft and incur delays or cancellations in an already fragile system - reagan-era policy hostile toward air traffic control labor unions that once checked the excesses of capital resulted in understaffing issues for more than two decades later. poor regulation of working hours, outmoded systems, and wage stagnation has further stressed the ATC system. - the partial government shutdown has caused massive delays and cancellations of flights as the artifice of security theater begins to break down under its own political morass. the solution is reform and regulation through policy change and investment. this is not possible in late stage capitalism (Streeck, 2016.)

HarHarVeryFunny

Problems related to air traffic controllers and TSA staff aren't a sign of "american aviation" being near collapse - they are a sign of american goverment being near collapse. This is critical national infrastructure - stop playing stupid political games with it.

jorblumesea

This is largely true for almost all US public services. Decades of focusing on the needs of the 1% is producing a situation where almost everything is under funded or poorly implemented. Critical infrastructure isn't a priority.

buredoranna

People who dedicate their lives to studying an industry, can get very good at being able to predict the probability of events in their domain. These same people are commonly off by orders of magnitude when predicting the magnitude of these same events. The author of this article won the "Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting". I'm going to infer from this, that he's better at political reporting, than he is at predicting the future of an entire industry. And if he is truly convinced of this outcome, he should be shorting the airlines. (I'm gonna guess he hasn't done that). (edit: syntax)

rsync

I am flying from SFO -> DEN in a few days and I see that Denver wait time is 4 minutes and, as is well known, SFO does not use TSA or federal security staff. Denver does, however, so I wonder why there is no wait at DEN and hundreds of minutes at Houston/Atlanta/JFK ?

znkynz

I am amazed every day that people are expected to turn up every day to work while being unpaid. In westminster-style parlimentary systems, if a government can't guarantee supply[1], they are sacked, and a snap election is called. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_and_supply The paralysis of the political system in the US is either a feature or a bug depending on your point of view i suppose, but no question that it is entirely dysfunctional that a government can continue existing if it can't pass a budget.

riffraff

This is not news, there was an episode of Last Week Tonight on the Air Traffic Control crisis last summer[0]. From memory: on the human side airports are understaffed, there are no young controllers in the pipeline, attrition is high, and the less people are available the higher the burnout rate, which creates a vicious cycle. On the technical side, airports are unmaintained, systems are obsolete and crumbling. John Oliver makes the case that most of the issue is that the FAA is financed through discretionary spending so e.g. it's subject to shut downs and can't do long term planning. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeABJbvcJ_k

FpUser

>" A careful, iterative process of safety regulation culminated in a 16-year period, from 2009 to 2025, when no U.S. airline had a fatal crash." This is quite amazing